To call them devastating is an understatement.
There have been 8,771 wildfires recorded in Northern and Southern California this year, so far, burning an equivalent of 3,346 square miles. The economic costs, increasing by the day, are now over $13 billion, a figure that will double once the bills from SoCal come in.
The greatest costs are the human ones, especially the loss of human life.
On Friday December 8, 2017, the price of bitcoin closed at $15,206– an increase of 28.3% from November. The yearly growth rate stood at 1,474%.
Many economists and financial commentators hold that in the unregulated market of the internet economy, bitcoin is likely to emerge as a new form of money that is going to bypass the central-bank supervision.
Bitcoin, the invention of a person, or group of people, using the name Satoshi Nakamoto, was launched on January 3, 2009.
It is obvious to most people that real tax reform means reducing taxes and government spending. However, in the current tax reform “package” there are all sorts of changes in the tax rates, tax brackets, deductions, exemptions etc. But the end result is virtually no net tax relief, little economic growth, and a substantial increase in debt. Most importantly, many people will lose valuable tax loopholes and as Ludwig von Mises said “capitalism breathes through the loopholes.”
The Bill of Rights was finally ratified on December 15, 1791. Most of the new Constitution of 1787 was devoted to raising taxes, centralizing government, and destroying self-rule in the independent states.
The Bill of Rights, however, was a bright spot in an otherwise unhelpful and unnecessary document.
From 2015’s article “The Bill of Rights: The Only Good Part of the Constitution“:
For the past month, Bitcoin has reached a new all time high every week. On December 11, Bitcoin reached it’s all time high of over $17,000 per coin. Bitcoin witnessed an impressive 1600% increase in value during the past year. The cryptocurrency market increased from $18 billion in January 2017 to over $475 billion in December. Bitcoin is going through the process of monetization and the cryptocurrency market is being financialized.
This week, the US Federal Reserve raised the target for its key rate — the Federal Funds Rate — to 1.5 percent. That’s the highest its been since 2008, although well below 5.25 percent rate reached during the last expansion. Europe, however, has signaled it has no plans to follow the US in moving key rates upward.
Many Mises.org readers know that Lew Rockwell, founder of the Mises Institute and quiet benefactor to countless individuals in libertarian circles over the decades, continues to recover from a recent back injury. While the episode has not quelled his enthusiasm for liberty, recovery is no picnic.
The Trump administration recently announced it was considering a partial reversal of the Obama administration’s designation of new national monument lands in Utah. The lands in question were already federal lands, but Obama’s move heightened restrictions on the usage of the land, and lessened the likelihood the lands would ever be transferred to state control.
Congratulations to former Mises Research Fellow Karl-Friedrich Israel for successfully defending his thesis at the University of Angers in France.
Dr. Israel’s academic research has largely focused on monetary policy, monetary theory, and the history of macroeconomics.
