After a long delay, the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics today reported its price inflation report for the first time since the September report. According to the report, price inflation, as measured by the CPI slowed in November, both year over year, and from September to November. (Most October CPI data was not collected due to the federal shutdown.) 

When mainstream conservatism looks back at the legacy of William F. Buckley Jr., they often cite his making conservatism into something “respectable” and his excommunication of what are deemed “kooks” and “conspiracists.” Their most proud moment is Buckley’s purging of the John Birch Society, which is supposed to have made National Review and the conservative movement respectable. Further, the average apologist of the purge cites it as the moment that the conspiracy theorists were supposedly removed.

Interest is a core price in capitalism, transmitting resources across time rather than space and allowing entrepreneurs to transform resources into more productive forms that produce outputs of greater consumer value. Modern capitalism finally took off from the primitive market economy when markets developed with financier capitalists funding the capital goods necessary to increase labor productivity and wages and unleashing the Industrial Revolution.

This article first appeared on the Mises Wire May 11, 2021.

One of Ludwig von Mises’s brilliant achievements was his elucidation of Austrian Business Cycle Theory (ABCT) in his great 1912 work The Theory of Money and Credit. Mises expanded upon preexisting Austrian capital theory, which stresses the importance of time and uncertainty associated with the transformation of inputs like labor and natural resources into the final goods desired by consumer