May’s FOMC minutes were released at 2:00 eastern today and included the same self-confidence about the strength of the economy, the progress on inflation, and the good employment numbers. Any sign of weakness, especially in the GDP numbers were waved away as being “transitory.”

[This article is part of a series of occasional posts which will explore the immense treasure trove of unpublished papers, lectures, memos, correspondence, and notes in the Rothbard Archives at the Mises Institute.]

In 1961, F. A. Harper of the William Volker Fund, and later the founder and president of the Institute for Humane Studies, asked Murray Rothbard to list and opine on the “outstanding libertarian educators of our time.” Rothbard responded in a letter dated July 9, 1961. 

The Bernanke-Yellen bubble is impacting many sectors of the economy. Agriculture land, motor vehicles and auto loans, banking, bonds, contemporary art, corporate stocks, higher education and student loans, mergers and acquisitions, ocean shipping and cruise lines, social media, technology, housing, real estate, and land markets have been noticeably affected.

Credit-fueled bubbles generally have a wide-ranging effect on the economy, but might all this just be a sign of sustainable economic growth?

For the past year or so, the Fed has come across as more or less “hawkish;” preferring to position themselves as ready to tighten monetary policy via continued interest rate hikes. Following the recent several hikes, the Q1 GDP numbers came in terribly low and the Fed’s anticipated source of “economic growth,” consumer spending, hasn’t been up to par either. The economy, quite frankly, looks sick despite the Fed’s best efforts to increase the cost of living (what they refer to as inflation).

Mises Cuba has announced that Nelson Rodríguez Chartrand is missing. The organization believes he was taken by state security forces.

An influential left-wing think tank has called for the government to create millions of jobs for those without a college degree, leading to headlines like The Nation’s declaration that “It’s Time for the Government to Give Everyone a Job.”

When the cable TV sports giant ESPN announced 100 layoffs recently, including letting go a number of high-profile broadcasters, a lot of people took notice, and well they should: things no longer are business as usual in sports broadcasting, and we are not even at the beginning of the end, and maybe not even the end of the beginning.

A strange caricature of the laissez-faire liberal (i.e., libertarian) ideology persists. Namely, that libertarians are all required to pursue an individualistic lifestyle in which each person lives on his or her own with few social or economic connections with others.