Last year, just as it was becoming increasingly clear that price inflation was mounting, Jerome Powell repeatedly denied there was any reason for concern. He called inflation “transitory.” A few months later, he admitted it was not transitory, but denied it was “entrenched.” Then, by late 2021, he admitted price inflation was getting out of control but still took no action of any consequence.

In fiscal year 2020, at the height of covid stimulus mania, Congress managed to spend nearly twice what the federal government raised in taxes.

Systemic debt and deficit spending are intrinsic features of today’s economic system. Unlike classical economics, where markets play the leading role and governments the supporting one, the existing economic model, driven by Keynesian theory, has inverted the roles. Keynesian economics, like other statist economic theories, is distrustful of (free) markets, thus making the state, an inherently bureaucratic and coercive institution, the captain of economic and social life.

For reasons familiar to any economist, American politics is a permanent duopoly in which neither party can gain a sustainable long-term advantage over the other, but that does not suggest or imply that neither party can collapse; it only implies that any collapsing party will soon be replaced. As we know, American parties come and go – not often, but not never either. The Federalists gave us several presidents, but they vanished; the Whigs the same; are the Democrats next?

There is a renewed interest in the West Indian colonies’ relevance to the British industrial revolution and the subsequent economic transformations that substantially altered Western society’s fortunes. This literature has been provoked by the urge to challenge earlier interpretations that underestimate colonies’ value to Western countries by showing how interconnected global economies were.

Although poverty has been reduced considerably in industrialized societies, it continues to attack developing countries. Approximately, 689 million people, or about 9.2 percent of the world, live in dire poverty, and most of them are in developing countries.

Real wages are falling, inflation is at a forty-year high, and the Atlanta Fed predicts we’ll find GDP (gross domestic product) growth at zero for the second quarter. Meanwhile, both the yield curve and money supply growth point to recession.

It’s rare to see a central banker discuss Austrian economics. Yet, the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond did exactly that in a recently published paper called: A Historical Perspective on Digital Currencies where they give their opinion on past literature as it pertains to the use of private currency.

While most of the world lifted covid-19 restrictions and learned how to live with the virus, China moved in the opposite direction and doubled down on its zero-covid policy.

The Mises Institute has worked for more than four decades to advance one purpose: the cause of economic freedom in academia and public life. The two comments on our work that I hear most often are: (1) you guys are doing a great job, and (2) it is not working.