Mises Wire

The recent FOMC decision on Fed policy going forward was not unanimous. Let's take a look at who voted against the rest of the committee.

On the latest episode of Mises Weekends, Jeff Deist explains how the unprecedented actions of central bankers have helped spark renewed interest in Austrian economics.

Imposing restrictions on trade is not a mere academic exercise. It requires government agents, courts, prisons, police, and the whole panoply of the punitive, coercive state. To oppose free trade is to support more jails, fines, regulations, and more.

The Japanese response to negative interest rates was to buy personal safes. The German response is to pull money out of bank accounts and stick it in safe deposit boxes. Both are perfectly understandable reactions to the prospect of having to pay interest to a bank for holding deposits.

Mises: To seek to organize society is just as crazy as it would be to tear a living plant to bits in order to make a new one out of the dead parts.

Is government spending on infrastructure less of a misallocation than other spending?

Every now and then, I get a letter from a reader that is full of great observations. Here is one of them:

The Chinese regime is broke, so its liquidating its US debt holdings to keep its welfare-warfare state going. The problem is that the US depends on China holding that debt so the US can keep its welfare-warfare state going.

The US government owns immense amounts of dry land, but the US government also owns far larger amounts of ocean floor. Government ownership of such immense amounts of natural resources causes substantial distortions to prices and markets.

Listening to even a small portion of Simple Janet's incoherent babble makes very clear that the nation's central bank is well and truly impaled on its own petard.