When a country goes off the gold standard and onto the fiat standard, it adds to the number of “moneys” in existence. In addition to the commodity moneys, gold and silver, there now flourish independent moneys directed by each government imposing its fiat rule. And just as gold and silver will have an exchange rate on the free market, so the market will establish exchange rates for all the various moneys. In a world of fiat moneys, each currency, if permitted, will fluctuate freely in relation to all the others.

The United Kingdom (UK) is about to hold a referendum on June 23rd on whether it should leave or remain within the European Union (EU). Once unthinkable, the “Brexit” is becoming more and more plausible. It is seen by the mainstream media as a factor of uncertainty in Europe. For its critics, Brexit would lead to increasing nationalism and protectionism. Nevertheless, those same critics forget the European Union is not a free-trade area.

I recently was invited to speak at the annual convention of the Texas Libertarian Party, and was struck by how libertarians cling to an outdated and counterproductive conception of the political landscape. In particular, many libertarians remain wedded to a misguided understanding of what the threat to liberty really is, where it comes from, and thus how we ought to fight against it.

Surprising no one, the FOMC announced this week that they would maintain the status quo on the federal funds rate. Meanwhile housing prices are outpacing household wages, with Ryan McMaken noting that the Fed’s suppression of interest rates has led to consumers replacing “saving with consumer debt (i.e., mortgages) and a hope that people can continue to make the high payments every month.

The “true money supply” measure (an Austrian money-supply metric) is a measure of the money supply pioneered by Murray Rothbard and Joseph Salerno and is designed to provide a better measure than M2. The Mises Institute offers monthly updates on the TMS metric and its growth. 

There are basically only two ways in which economic life can be organized. The first is by the voluntary choice of families and individuals and by voluntary cooperation. This arrangement has come to be known as the free market. The other is by the orders of a dictator. This is a command economy. In its more extreme form, when an organized state expropriates the means of production, it is called socialism or communism. Economic life must be primarily organized by one system or the other.

This week, the latest numbers from the S&P/Case-Shiller index showed continued significant home price growth in most of the 20 cities within the survey. The cities with the most growth were found in the Western US and, to a lesser extent, the South:

According to the report: 

Mises Institute: What prompted you to write In Defense of Deflation?

Steven Horwitz has written about the limits of Austrian Business Cycle Theory (ABCT). He outlines three limits of ABCT as he sees it: