Almost anyone who follows social media is familiar with the latest tweets by Senator Elizabeth Warren, who has pronounced her verdict on higher food and gasoline prices: they are nothing less than the result of corporate greed. In fact, according to Warren, there is no inflation, only corporations arbitrarily raising prices in their relentless pursuit of … profits.

In a November 21 interview with MSNBC’s Joy Reid, Warren declared (later placed on Twitter):

Most emerging and developed market currencies have devalued significantly relative to the United States dollar in 2021 despite the Federal Reserve’s aggressive monetary policy. Furthermore, emerging economies that have benefitted from rising commodity prices have also seen their currencies weaken despite strong exports. As such, inflation in developing economies is much higher than the already elevated figures posted in the United States and the eurozone.

The main reason behind this is a global currency debasement problem that is making citizens poorer.

This article is unashamedly in Friedrich von Hayek’s category of “second-hand dealers of ideas.” In fact, it is lower than that being third-hand.

This Thanksgiving, may you never forget the words of the United States of America’s Vice-President Kamala Harris, as reported by Fox News:

Prices have gone up and families and individuals are dealing with the realities of the bread costs more, the gas costs more, and have to understand what that means.

Trust is a crucial ingredient for economic growth and innovation. Without the engine of trust fueling, the free flow of ideas innovation would come to a scurrying halt. Before people can cooperate in business and research, they must harvest an environment that cultivates trust. Through the cross fertilization of different viewpoints, we reap the fruits of innovation. Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and Wall Street would not exist if creative minds were unwilling to share ideas.

Market reforms in Africa can be thwarted because of propaganda asserting that markets are a Western import. Notwithstanding the currency of this belief, it is patently absurd. Markets flourished in Africa prior to colonialism, and wherever they are repressed, the result is social immiseration, as economist William Hutt points out in his pathbreaking study, The Economics of the Colour Bar.

I just came across and article which reminded me that this November 16 was the 15th anniversary of the death of Milton Friedman, one of the past century’s greatest advocates of freedom. As someone who has followed his writing for most of my adult life, I can barely believe he has been gone that long. On the other hand, the abyss between the freedom he advocated and the world we now inhabit is so vast, I can barely believe he has only been gone that long.

It is commonplace to hear about how much more we know than our ancestors. And many have long taken that to imply that we are more advanced than they were, or that the accumulation of knowledge will continue to improve (progress, if you claim to be a progressive) over time.

By most commentators, since the early 1980s, correlations between various definitions of money and national income have broken down. The reason for this breakdown, it is held, is financial deregulation that made the demand for money unstable. Because of financial deregulation the nature of financial markets has changed; consequently, past definitions of money no longer hold.