Last month, when a host of media outlets began talking about the Trump administration’s alleged “battle against breastfeeding,” few of them — if any — mentioned the fact that the US federal government continues to subsidize the baby formula industry to the tune of billions of dollars.
According to the Federal Reserve’s Underlying Inflation Gauge , the 12-month inflation growth in June was 3.33 percent. That’s the highest rate recorded in 158 months, or more than 13 years. The last time the UIG measure was as high was in April 2005, when it was at 3.36 percent.
Money supply growth fell in July, dropping to the lowest rate recorded since February of this year. Overall, money-supply growth remains well below the growth rates experienced from 2009 to 2016.
In July, year-over-year growth in the money supply was at 4.1 percent. That was down from June’s growth rate of 4.4 percent, and was also down from July 2017’s rate of 4.9 percent.
[Editor’s note: our immigration roundtable is a series of articles presenting the views of prominent Austrian and libertarian thinkers. By necessity each article provides only a basic overview of those views, with links to original sources.]
Our goal is to present each thinker’s views on immigration by excerpting his or her writings on the subject.
When not assisting the continued politicization of America’s most powerful legislative branch, the media this week has relished in a variety of news items continuing to push the narrative that President Donald Trump is mentally unfit to hold office.
One of most fascinating aspects of progressives (also known as “liberals”) is the blindness they display to the adverse consequences of their very own government programs. Instead of acknowledging what their statist programs do to people and then calling for their repeal, they inevitably call for new government programs to address the ills that their government programs are causing.
In January of 1819, the New York City district attorney made his case against a man who allowed his pigs to roam the streets of the city, creating a nuisance. Although the attorney called no witnesses, he regaled the jury with horror stories about the problems associated with letting pigs roam the streets of New York. This practice, which was commonly observed in poorer localities, created a nuisance when, for instance, young boys got in trouble for riding the pigs. Sometimes, the pigs would defecate on people.
In his speech on April 7 2010 at the Economic Club of New York the President of the New York Fed, William Dudley argued that asset bubbles pose a serious threat to real economic activity.
The New York Fed chief is of the view that the US central bank should develop effective tools to counter this menace.
According to Dudley, it should be the role of the Fed to stop the expansion of the bubble while it is still in the making.
The chief effect credit expansion exerts on the productive structure is ultimately that it discoordinates the behavior of the different economic agents. Indeed entrepreneurs rush to lengthen and widen the productive stages and make them more capital-intensive, while the remaining economic agents are unwilling to cooperate by sacrificing their consumption and raising their overall voluntary saving.
