The remarkable life of Ron Paul began in Pittsburgh 84 years ago today, in 1935—seven months after Elvis Aaron Presley came into the world. We wish him a very happy birthday, and many more years of health and productivity. 

The legacy of slavery in America is once again becoming a hotly discussed topic. The New York Times has launched The 1619 Project, commemorating the 400th anniversary of the first African slaves brought to the colony of Virginia.

Late South African economist Ludwig Lachmann once wrote, “The future is unknowable, though not unimaginable.”

What he meant is, it’s beyond our ability to know what the future will bring. We cannot plan without errors, because we do not actually know anything about the future before it’s already reality.

The future is not simply unknown, which suggests a lack of information, but unknowable -- what will be is uncertain. There is no information. We are, in this sense, slaves to destiny.

[Excerpt from chapter 7 of Power and Market in Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 1308–12.]

When Donny Clark was arrested in 1990 as part of a twenty-eight-man conspiracy to grow marijuana, he was the only defendant who refused to accept a plea bargain. Clark insisted he was innocent. Five years earlier, Clark was convicted in a Florida court for growing marijuana, but he served his time and was now working legally as a watermelon farmer. The new case, which was built by a federal prosecutor in Tampa, involved a ring of marijuana growers that included two of Clark’s sons.

Stocks fell last week following news that the yield curve on Treasury notes had inverted. This means that a short-term Treasury note was paying higher interest rates than long-term Treasury note. An inverted yield curve is widely seen as a sign of an impending recession.

With scarcely two months to go until the date Britain is scheduled to leave the European Union, mainstream pundits are increasingly coming to realise that the formerly remote prospect of a No Deal Brexit is now arguably the most likely outcome.

Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign has served to once again confirm that his — and those of the “democratic socialist” and “progressive” movements — vision for society endorses an aggressive threat of violence against innocent individuals, and seeks to negate morality itself.

While often declaring goods like health care and day care “rights,” Sanders also insists that political solutions, rather than voluntary charity, are the only truly moral means of achieving justice.

Those who had hoped that things could not get worse with the monetary policy of the European Central Bank (ECB) have been proven wrong. At its last meeting on 25 July 2019, the Governing Council of the ECB kept interest rates unchanged: the main refinancing rate was kept at 0.00% and the deposit rate at -0.40%. At the same time, however, ECB President Mario Draghi has prepared the ground to lower interest rates even further in the coming months. What is the reasoning behind that?

Joe Weisenthal, who made his name in financial circles while an editor at Business Insider from 2008–2014, has been wondering aloud on his popular Twitter account why so many analysts think it’s weird for the world to be experiencing negative interest rates.