It’s been a big week for “the data.” At Wednesday’s FOMC press conference, Fed Chair Jerome Powell announced that the Fed was holding its policy interest rate steady at the current 4.5 percent.
[Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America by Sam Tanenhaus (Random House 2025)]
[Individualism and Economic Order by F.A. Hayek (Ludwig von Mises Institute 2009 [1948]; vii + 272 pp.)
In my last article, I discussed a beloved historical claim that MMT finds significant for their theory—that governments sometimes burned paper money they received back from the people in settlement of taxes. Historically, it is true that governments did sometimes burn paper money received back in taxes, but these examples are misread as confirming MMT.
Earlier this month, we looked at June’s CPI numbers and found that, yet again, the government’s own price-inflation data shows prices continue to grow above the central bank’s two-percent inflation target. As I reported on July 15, June’s CPI growth rate was the largest year-over-year increase in four months, and the largest month-to-month increase since January 2025.
