Many people are up in arms over President Trump’s red-carpet welcome of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS). They cite the CIA’s conclusion that bin Salman orchestrated and ordered the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi after he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to secure documents relating to his upcoming marriage.

At a press conference yesterday, Trump observed that “things happen” in life but emphasized that bin Salman played no role in Khashoggi’s gruesome murder, which bin Salman himself denies playing a part in.

A recent debate between Dave Smith and YouTuber “Liquid Zulu” highlighted a deep misunderstanding of libertarian theory related to the nature and scope of the philosophy, and its axiom, the Non-Agression Principle. Liquid Zulu argued for an uncompromising position — that it is always immoral to violate the NAP, without exception. This rigidity was tested with hypotheticals. In one, an alien race threatens to destroy Earth unless someone steals a single penny. In another, a man could save his dying mother only by stealing his neighbor’s ladder.

The late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century philosopher F. H. Bradley is not at the center of contemporary philosophical discussion, but he was, in my opinion, one of the greats, and, in his book Ethical Studies (first published in 1876) he raises some important questions criticisms of utilitarianism, mainly of the sort favored by John Stuart Mill and Henry Sidgwick.

Inflation isn’t an economic metric — it’s a political tactic. When governments lie about inflation, they’re not miscalculating; they’re stealing from you. Mises Institute Fellow Karl-Friedrich Israel joined The Peter McCormack Show to explain how inflation quietly enriches asset holders, punishes workers, and pushes Europe into a slow, silent decline.

The brief Mexican-American War (1846-1848) was one of the US’s five constitutional wars, that is, it is one of the only five ever declared by Congress. A brief history of the conflict can be reviewed in this 3-minute history video, as well as in Patrick Newman’s Cronyism. Of course, longer treatments of the war are also available.

Governments assume they can print as much currency as they like and it will be accepted by force. However, the history of fiat currencies is always the same: first governments exceed their credit limits, then ignore all the warning signs and finally see the currency collapse.

Today, we are living the decline of developed economies’ fiat currencies in real time. The global reserve system is slowly but decisively diversifying away from a pure fiat currency anchor towards a mixed regime where gold plays the dominant role, not fiat currencies.

Europe’s leaders apparently learned nothing from Napoleon’s disastrous 1812 campaign, and they now seem determined to pursue war with Russia. 

It’s a weekend in Pittsburgh and lots of people here and elsewhere around the country are waiting for a money-losing service called government transit.