There is a considerable Austrian literature on the unsustainable boom driven by credit expansion. When the boom ends, a depression begins. The depression is a transitional period of reduced production that lasts until entrepreneurs restructure capital and labor into sustainable uses. During the depression, there is unavoidable unemployment of both people and productive assets. The recovery is marked by an increase in production and the employment of resources that were idle during the bust.

Cuba is a dictatorship that uses terror and propaganda to repress its people. It locks citizens up, strips them of the most basic human rights, silences them, and confronts families using extortion and threats. The regime’s constant practices of illegal detention, the personal ruin of political dissidents, and limitation of fundamental rights have nothing to do with any blockade or embargo but everything to do with the totalitarian Communist dictatorship.

Editor’s note: Mark Spitznagel is President and Chief Investment Officer for Universa Investments.

Spring at the Mises Institute has been busy, with our incredible Rothbard Graduate Seminar week and events in Birmingham and New Hampshire. We are excited by the response to our Medical Freedom Summit, which featured an incredible lineup of speakers.

In his attempt at explaining what business cycles are all about, Milton Friedman held that the economy’s output is bumping along the ceiling of maximum feasible output except that every now and then it is plucked down by a cyclical contraction. He attributed this contraction to various shocks.

He was of the view that economic contractions involve declines in the economy’s output below its full potential ceiling or maximum level.

Friedman held that similarly to a guitar string the harder the economy is plucked down the stronger it should come back.

How well can anyone remember past Federal Reserve Chairs? There was Volcker, who allegedly solved the inflation crisis by raising rates and bringing about a recession. After Volker there was Greenspan who is still referred to as “the Maestro.” Followed by “Helicopter” Ben Bernanke... a name he probably doesn’t appreciate much. After Ben came Yellen and now Powell. With each new Chair came a bigger and bigger balance sheet and expansion of central bank powers. We now live in an era where the Fed garners a significant amount of attention; but was it always this way?

Inflation has been on the rise for the past year and in the last few months it has accelerated. In June 2021, inflation, measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI), hit the highest level since 2008. By inflation, economists refer to the increase in the general level of prices, which means that prices on average are increasing.