The Federal Reserve is continuing to experiment with new, more counterfeit-proof paper money. Recently, it was big faces, along with the introduction of a variety of other difficult-to-counterfeit characteristics into our Federal Reserve Notes. Next, maybe, it will be color. Or, writes Clifford Thies, perhaps the real issue is not the color on the back of the money, but money’s real backing.
The trouble with lowering the interest rate, writes Frank Shostak, is not that the Fed may lose a tool to fight a further downturn; the problem is that a lower rate now will make things much worse rather than better. Fifty years of experience suggest it will set in motion a much more painful economic adjustment in the months ahead.
Abraham Lincoln is incorrectly remembered as a restorer of liberty, while Prussian autocrat Otto von Bismarck is generally seen as a ruthless dictator, eager to sacrifice men to his policy of deciding the future of his countrymen "by blood and iron." Contrary to this view, Adam Young explains why both men should be viewed as allied together in the common cause of destroying the principles of classical liberalism.
The Dow would be several thousand points higher, were it not for government regulation that causes corporations to divert immeasurable resources to pandering to government regulators rather than pursuing profits. A major ingredient of stock prices is expected profitability, writes Thomas DiLorenzo, which regulation affects profoundly.
Newport, Rhode Island, is surely one of the most spectacular places in the United States, and, for what its amazing mansions of the Gilded Age represent, it should be considered the Mecca of American capitalist private wealth, suitable for pious pilgrimages of every sort.
News reports now indicate that WorldCom's overstatement of its profits in the last few years may exceed initial reports. But, writes George Reisman, whatever the ultimate figure may be—$7.1 billion or even $10 billion—it pales into insignificance in comparison with the overstatement of profits regularly engineered by the U.S. government.
Somehow, someway, it always comes back to the central bank. Alan Greenspan is letting it be known that rate cuts are not out of the question. The hint alone sent the financial markets soaring. Yet, writes Lew Rockwell, to attempt more artificial credit injections at this stage is extremely dangerous.
This is the last formal lecture by Ludwig von Mises delivered May 2, 1970 at an economic seminar in Seattle, Washington.
Even apart from Hans Hoppe's policy prescription--that private ownership ought to characterize all of society, economy, and government, while all public ownership should be banned as a form of theft--his thesis offers a highly fruitful framework for understanding everyday political affairs. Jeffrey Tucker explains.
Brazil, which is so blessed by nature and by an entrepreneurial population with one of the highest rates of self-employment in the world, has been kept down by a misleading ideology. Antony Mueller explains the political effects of embracing Auguste Comte, an embrace which no financial bailout can fix.
