If a currency can’t be converted on demand into the underlying commodity, it’s not “backed” by that commodity.
The broke and broken country of Venezuela appears to be the first nation-state to issue a cryptocurrency token (the petro) as a means of escaping the financial black hole that’s consuming its economy: Maduro Launches Oil-Backed Crypto “For The Welfare Of Venezuela”.
When President Barack Obama wanted to curtail carbon dioxide emissions, he instructed his economic advisors to construct a way to calculate the emissions’ effect on society. The metric thus adopted by the EPA is called the “social cost of carbon” (SCC).
Nearly 40 years ago, Lawrence Reed published “Seven Fallacies of Economics” in The Freeman in which he noted that much of what the public believes about economics is fallacious because most people fail to understand simple opportunity cost. Given the current trends in political economy, it is a sad certainty that most if not all of the fallacies Reed listed are still taken as economic truths in much of the academic world.
Can political arrangements be dissolved peacefully? Legally? At the ballot box? By referendum? Or by any other mechanism short of outright violence and civil war?
According to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the answer to these questions is no. Speaking in California yesterday on the subject of immigration and sanctuary cities, he issued this remarkable statement that manages to upend the entire concept of federalism in just a few short sentences:
I’ve written recently about the Fed tightening the True Money Supply and that a cleansing may be approaching. However, Kasey Buckles, Daniel Hungerman, and Steven Lugauer tell us in their National Bureau of Economic Research working paper that we shouldn’t be just focusing on monetary aggregates but conceptions.
Orgaworld is a company which operates a waste treatment facility in London, Ontario, but it also emits offensive odours which affect residents and businesses in the surrounding community. This has been an ongoing problem since 2007 when the plant opened.
The Mises Institute has been doing some grounds work the past few weeks, and we had a special visitor today as we planted a new tree: Auburn football legend Pat Dye.
A player at the University of Georgia, Dye served as both head football coach and athletic director from 1981-1992. He was inducted in the College Football Hall of Fame in 2005, and the playing field in the football stadium is named “Pat Dye Field” in his honor.
Much has been said about the proposed steel and aluminum tariffs proposed by President Trump. It will likely usher in a trade war the US is ill-equipped to fight. Tariffs are just another tax. In general, tariffs are an all-around bad idea.
