The American 21st century bankruptcy show continues with cities, counties, and local special purpose districts (SPD’s) (local entities) for fire protection, hospitals, libraries, water districts, etc. One common bankruptcy theme was that when a project began and a bond-covenant issued, revenue from the project did not meet predictions, bond payments were not timely, the local entity could not renegotiate the bond payments with the lender(s), and so federal bankruptcy was their best option.

 “As long as it is kept within certain limits, inflation is an excellent psychological support of an economic policy which lives on the consumption of capital.” (Ludwig von Mises, Socialism, pp. 448-9)

In Paul Krugman’s latest column, he claims that Kamala Harris hasn’t advocated for price controls, only a ban on price gouging on groceries. Of course, these are the same thing. Krugman’s own principles text defines price controls as “legal restrictions on how high or low a market price may go.” A ban on price gouging is a legal restriction on how high a market price may go.

A review of: A Tale of Four Cities: From the Invisible Hand to Cancel Culture by Phil Duffy

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Minor Issues Podcast. I’m Mark Thornton at the Mises Institute.

It’s not unfair to say that the current unrest and rioting in the UK has been accompanied by a lot of inaccurate information. As with any event, everyone should be aware that it becomes a lot easier to spread false information and have people believe it. Tensions are boiling over and emotions are running amok, and it does not take a genius to understand why you should be more wary of misinformation when emotion is in the driver’s seat.

In A Cure Worse Than The Disease: Fighting Discrimination Through Government Control, M. Lester O’Shea criticizes the notion that we should legislate against unfairness. He poses the question as follows: “No one defends unfairness. So shouldn’t it be against the law?” In posing the question that way, his point is that the mere fact that we regard something as unfair – or even morally wrong – does not mean we ought to legislate against it.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Minor Issues podcast. I am Mark Thornton at the Mises Institute.

The great reckoning seems to be following the course that I have been charting by guesswork. In other words, the great trainwreck seems to be happening. Let’s see what we are experiencing so far.

Interest rates appear to be headed out of their long inversion. My anticipation was that the economy would not enter recession when interest rates started to invert, but rather when they started to reverse the inversion.

The mid 2000s saw a new intellectual movement emerge on the scene under the name of “New Atheism.” Representatives of the movement saw themselves as champions of the scientific method, of evidence-based reasoned analysis of the facts against the mystical, primitive superstitions of organized religion and all the societal, political and cultural harm it allegedly produces.

In June, the Texas Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit claiming that the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) had broken the law when it set the wholesale price of electricity at $9,000 per megawatt hour for about 80 hours during the Texas blackouts that occurred during Winter Storm Uri in February 2021.