Mises Wire

Robert Wenzel recently noted just how truly international the Austrian School has become, and that the Mises Institute’s former Fellows are n

A central premise of Keynesian economics is that, during a recession, government spending increases total output through a “multiplier”

Japanese Prime Minister Shino Abe has been touring the US this week. Much of the week was spent apologizing for the War in the Pacific, but Abe's also on an economic mission. Japan continues to see lackluster growth thanks, no doubt, to its highly regulated and corporatist economy, and Abe's mega-Keynesian "Abenomics" plan. 

The great James Grant appeared on CNBC yesterday to discuss the latest Fed statement that removed any mention of prospective dates for raising interest rates.

Mises Daily Thursday by Jonathan Newman:

FedEx and UPS recently announced they will not deliver some goods that can be used to make guns. These companies should be free to do this, just as all owners should be free to decide with whom they will do business.

I visited Baltimore once, about 10 years ago, for an academic conference.  While I remember its colonial-era architecture, the historic cathedral that once housed the great Cardinal Gibbons, and fun, chowder-laden conversations with local and visiting economists in brew pubs—the image 

Police justify killings like that of Freddy Gray's on the grounds that such aggressive tactics are necessary to protect lives and property. But when widespread destruction of property, and threats to life and limb appear, the police are breathtakingly inefficient. 

Nevertheless, when we parse the data, we find the single women actually earn more than single mean, which reminds us that women, as a group "earn less" because married women or women with children tend to have larger gaps in their work histories, and thus tend to be less up-to-date in their fields, or have fewer years of experience.

Mises Daily Wednesday by Mark Thornton:

Measuring aggregate prices through a consumer price index is inherently arbitrary because someone decides what to measure and how. There are better ways to do it, but "fixing" the measure will do nothing to fix the ills of the Fed's monetary policy.

In this lengthy interview, Walter Block talks to the Brazilian libertarian group "Liberball" about a wide variety of topics from revisionist history to business regulation to Murray Rothbard.