This year during Mises University, we want to share the perspective of students in the program. The following are YouTube shorts from some of this ye ar’s Mises Apprentices asking fellow students about the highlights from Tuesday, which included an evening pool party.
Mises University is going on the entire week. You can watch live from home at mises.org/live.
A federal judge this week vacated the desertion conviction of former US Army soldier Bowe Bergdahl, who was convicted in 2017 of desertion for leaving his post in Afghanistan. Bergdahl was then captured by Taliban forces, tortured, and imprisoned for four years before being freed by a prisoner exchange in 2014.
The price of a McDonald’s hamburger in the United States has inflated 3.75 percent annually over the last seventy years. McDonald’s has grown from a tiny hamburger stand in Des Plaines, Illinois, to the second largest fast-food chain on earth. Scale economies alone (never mind process and productivity improvements) should’ve allowed the price of a burger to decline materially over this period.
The PGA Tour and the Saudi-owned LIV Golf are seeking to move past their cutthroat competition and merge together, but United States regulators are stepping in and framing the potential merger as a threat to US sovereignty and an expansion of Saudi Arabian influence, citing the Saudi regime’s brutality and alleged involvement in the 9/11 attacks.
There is little doubt that the institution of the family in the West is in crisis. Birth rates have been declining in the USA, and most Western countries have fertility rates below replacement level. Abortions number over five hundred thousand per year, most of which are concentrated among low-income individuals.
Austrian economics properly understands the ability of commercial banks to create money by mismatching their depositor liabilities with their issuing of money substitutes (i.e., the creation of credit). One possible place for further exploration is the role that nonbank or foreign financial institutions play in the creation of credit and the broader implications on business-cycle creation.
