Mises Wire

What determines currency exchange rates? While “experts” present a number of theories such as trade balance, the most important factor is the purchasing power of the currencies in question.

In his inaugural address, President Donald Trump promised a “revolution of common sense.” However, one area of US government policy that has lacked “common sense” for more than a century is how this government deals with other nations. It‘s time for a change.

Things aren‘t going as planned. Inflation just rose to an 18-month high, and the Fed has stopped saying that it‘s making “progress toward the 2 percent objective.”

Much of the world‘s financial system is undergirded by the false claim that US government bonds are “risk-free.” The truth is that all is not well when it comes to banking and finance.

Osama bin Laden never commanded an army, but he managed to militarily and economically defeat the US by enticing its government to waste trillions of dollars with foolish military ventures in the Middle East and elsewhere.

While Rothbard offers a focused economic analysis that situates the crisis within a broader theoretical framework, Browning gives readers a sense of what it felt like to live through the crisis.

As the Trump administration cuts thousands of federal jobs, it‘s good to remember that the public sector‘s “services” provide no actual net value to the “national product.”

For all of the political and social turmoil in this country and elsewhere, the technological revolution marches on. While many pundits tell us we should fear these technological advances, the net result of them is positive, as new and improved technology advances capital development.

John Quincy Adams famously warned against the US going abroad in search of “monsters to destroy,” but while claiming to destroy monsters, the regime also creates and nourishes them.

If federal funds are cut off from the Kennedy Center, I guess America will have to go back to that dark age of American culture that existed before the Center opened in 1971.