ZeroHedge recently reported an interesting trend occurring in the United States.

In the last few months, proponents of civil asset forfeiture reform have witnessed promising victories.

[From “More Than Quibbles: Problems with the Theory and History of Fractional Reserve Free Banking“ in the spring 2019 issue of The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics.]

[From “Taking Government Out of Politics: Murray Rothbard on Political and Local Reform during the Progressive Era“ by Patrick Newman in the spring 2019 issue of the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics.]

For most experts the central bank determines short-term interest rates by setting the target to the benchmark policy rate such as the federal funds rate in the US. Many economists are of the view that through the manipulation of short-term interest rates, the central bank by means of expectations regarding future interest rate policy can also dictate the direction of long-term interest rates. By this way of thinking, expectations regarding future short-term interest rates are instrumental in setting the long-term rates (and long-term rates are an average of short-term rates).

The European Central Bank’s recent move away from the exit from ultra-loose monetary policy has revived the debate on Europe’s potential “Japanification.” The Japanese scenario is gloomy. Since the bursting of the Japanese bubble in the early 1990s, growth has been stagnating, wage levels have been falling, and an increasing number of people has been forced into precarious employment. The so-called Abenomics, an immense Keynesian spending program financed by the central bank, has failed so far to jumpstart the ailing economy.

While stressing the importance of accountability within government, most writers fail to define this word in any meaningful way. Here is a typical example: “Accountability in government or in business has never been more important. We need to know our political leaders have integrity, are transparent and will rely on science and evidence to make critical decisions for all Ontarians.” [emphasis added]

Donald Trump has not had an easy, straight-forward relation with the Federal Reserve.

In April 2019, the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) published a report called Economic Sanctions as Collective Punishment (Weisbrot and Sachs 2019). The report tries to evaluate the consequences of the economic sanctions the United States imposed on Venezuela in August 2017.