In his valuable article “War and Humanitarian Intervention,” in The Routledge Companion to Libertarianism (pp. 441–56), Fernando R. Tesón raises some interesting criticisms of Murray Rothbard’s views on war as part of a more general discussion of the topic, and I’d like to devote this week’s article to these. It has to be said, though, that a number of these criticisms are based on misreadings of Rothbard, which isn’t to say Tesón would like the true Rothbardian position better than the one to which he pays attention.

You know the economy is in trouble when a CNBC headline reads:

This was a good week for inflation numbers, but whether it can last is the big question

…citing the Consumer Price Index (CPI) increase by 8.5% and the Producer Price Index (PPI) increase of 9.8% from a year ago as a mild victory. However, the celebration came with a reminder that:

On July 2, Martín Guzmán, Argentina’s Minister of Economy, finally resigned. Guzmán, who holds a PhD in economics from Brown University and studied under Joseph Stiglitz, had originally been introduced as the “rational” element of the left-wing coalition that came to office three years ago. But there is only so much time that can pass until inconsistent policies produce undesirable outcomes, something about the United States needs to learn in order to avoid Argentina’s mistakes.

Appreciating cultural nuances is difficult without understanding the stories that provide insight into a society’s soul. Stories reflect a nation’s values, aspirations, and ideals. Songs, poems, and literature illuminate the tastes of citizens and even political and economic preferences. Economist and polymath Deidre McCloskey in her bourgeois trilogy argues that the evolution of a promarket rhetoric was central to the wealth explosion in the West.

The introduction of commodities into the market has interesting implications concerning Carl Menger’s value imputation. The subjectiveness behind this approach illustrates that marginal utility analysis may be used in the explanation of the price phenomena of a commodity, or more specifically, the price phenomena of a new item into the market.

A decline in the yearly growth rate of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) to 8.5 percent in July from 9.1 percent in June has prompted many commentators to suggest that inflation has likely peaked. If this assessment is valid then it is held Fed policy makers are unlikely to push for an aggressive interest rate tightening in the months ahead. Before one decides to agree or disagree on the likely interest rate policy of the Fed there is the need to ascertain what do we mean by inflation.