The very first votes of the 2016 presidential election season were cast this week in the Iowa caucuses. This is supposed to fill us with happy thoughts about self-government, civic virtue, rational deliberation, and about politics as the way the people’s will is put into effect.

Former baseball player José Canseco, who wrote a tell-all book on steroid use in baseball, is no fan of negative interest rates, recently tweeting:

Who is advising Japan? Forcing banks to lend all ¥ will not get 2% inflation. It creates loanees market with even lower rates. Dumb move.

Professor Salerno has often written and spoken on the war on cash that has been developing in Western economies—predominantly in the U.S. and Scandinavian countries—as a means to track citizens’ private financial dealings and enable negative interest rate policy. This phenomenon is part of the larger scheme through which governments cover their tracks in terms of monetary policy and prop up the banking system.

Recorded at the Mises Circle in Houston on 30 January 2016. Includes an introduction by Jeff Deist.

I received some requests to elaborate on certain points made during a speech this past weekend at the Mises Institute’s event in Houston. The talk contrasted the emergent alt-Right with the resurgent socialist Left, and how libertarians might tap into the populism embodied in both movements.

A few thoughts:

It should come as no surprise that the German government has finally succumbed to the pressure to join the global War on Cash.  It is now considering the imposition of a limit of 5,000 euros ($5,450) on cash transactions.  The official reason involves the usual statist malarkey that cash facilitates terrorism and criminality.

The Virginia Tech Professor who blew the whistle on lead in the water in Flint, MI thinks “public science” has been broken. Not knowing its been a broken system all along. In a recent interview, he comes forth with a stinging indictment of government-supported science. He does understand that this widespread problem of incompetent, worthless and dangerous research is a funding problem.