Abstract: This paper expands Fuller’s (2013) analysis of the net present value and interest rate changes in the context of the Austrian business cycle theory. During the boom phase of the business cycle, the economy shifts to a more risky position as the result of entrepreneurs’ profit targeting. To quantify this risk the duration, defined as the number of periods that elapse before the average present value dollar is received from a stream of cash flows, can be used.

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It’s one thing for mass democracy to produce bad results, in the form of elected politicians or enacted policies. It’s another when the democratic process itself breaks down because nobody trusts the vote or the people who count it. But that’s precisely where we are.

Election Day 2020 finally arrived, and it looks like it’s going to be a long process before the official winner is finally determined. There will be lawsuits over which ballots will be counted. Both sides will be accused of fraud and of other misdeeds. In the real world, there is always a gray area as to which votes are legit, and which are not. Determining the winners in elections is not a simple matter of just counting every vote. Very close votes are effectively tie votes. 

It’s been over a hundred years since Mises wrote The Theory of Money and Credit and since the inception of the Federal Reserve. Yet the Fed is still trying to figure out inflation, so much so that the Reserve Bank of Cleveland operates the Center for Inflation Research (CFIR) in order to:

I don’t subscribe to the rather strained arguments some libertarians make about voting. I don’t think casting a vote implies the voter is tacitly endorsing the political system. I don’t think a vote means the voter implicitly agrees to blithely accept the outcome.  I don’t even think a voter necessarily likes the candidate for which he or she has voted.