There is something almost absurd about a government minting money at a loss. A coin—the most basic unit—becomes instead a confession, not just of inefficiency, but of a deeper fracture between what money is supposed to represent and what it has become.
Last week “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth insulted Americans by claiming that a 50 percent increase in the US military budget – from an incomprehensible one trillion dollars to an impossible one and a half trillion – was a “fiscally responsible investment.”
“Thanks to President Trump’s $1.5 trillion defense budget, this War Department has moved from bureaucracy to business,” he said last Thursday.
In a way he was right, though. The huge increase is much more about “business” than what is needed to protect the United States from potential invasion.
Marx believed that once land is subjected to private property and competition, the superior economics of large-scale ownership will necessarily ruin and absorb the small proprietor. That sounds dramatic. It is also bad economics.
Now available as a physical book and free online.
From the Preface by Joseph Salerno:
Mainstream economists often treat inflation as a manageable side effect of growth, or even as a tool governments can use to “stimulate” demand. But, from the Austrian perspective, inflation is never neutral; it distorts prices, misleads entrepreneurs, and redistributes wealth in ways that undermine both liberty and prosperity.
Calls to “tax the rich” are, once again, gaining traction online in recent weeks.
It kicked off last month after New York Governor Kathy Hochul proposed a new tax on second homes in New York City worth more than $5 million. That got little attention, but it was New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani who turned it into a viral issue with a video promoting Hochul’s tax, filmed in front of a billionaire’s nine-figure penthouse.
April 9, 2025: The White House has spent four days insisting the tariffs are here to stay. The president himself posted that morning: “BE COOL! Everything is going to work out well.” His trade advisor is on television, calling market panic “no big deal.” There will be no pause. The message is unambiguous.
At 1:00 pm, someone buys 5,105 call options on SPY—the fund that tracks the S&P 500. The position costs $2.14 million. It will be worthless by the end of the day unless the market surges dramatically. It is a bad bet.
