“America … goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.” 

– President John Quincy Adams (1767–1848)

In the days of the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump’s opponents began to suggest that he was too mentally unstable to be president. Specifically, it was said he couldn’t be trusted with the presidency’s most dangerous and unchecked power: the power to unilaterally launch a nuclear war.

[This article is part of the Understanding Money Mechanics series, by Robert P. Murphy. The series will be published as a book in 2021.]

At Counterpunch, Michael Hudson has penned an important article that outlines the important connections between US foreign policy, oil, and the US dollar.

In short, US foreign policy is geared very much toward controlling oil resources as part of a larger strategy to prop up the US dollar. Hudson writes:

Oil prices surged Tuesday night following the Iranian government’s missile attack launched in response to the US’s killing of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.

According to CNBC, US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures surged 4.5 percent, or $2.83, to $65.53, their highest level since April.

Abstract: Rules and rule-following are becoming better understood as decision-making and coordination mechanisms. Further, that hierarchy is an under-appreciated element of natural spontaneous, rule-based, orders has caused confusion. The article argues firstly that the ability to meld rule-following and hierarchy in one theory of the firm presents an opportunity for a possible consistent Austrian theory of the firm.

In 2006, I asked whether or not Ken Lay really was a criminal following his conviction in federal court for crimes allegedly committed while he was the CEO of ill-fated Enron. My conclusion that he had not committed real crimes did not exactly resonate with some readers and certainly not with the media at large.

Deriding Chile for its economic inequality is fashionable among detractors of its economic model. Chile’s economic success during the forty years has not been enough for its loudest critics. Looking for whatever hole they can find, they frequently cite Chile’s inequality as a sign of concern.