Grove City College will host the twelfth annual Austrian Student Scholars Conference, February 26-27, 2016. Open to undergraduates and graduate students in any academic discipline, the ASSC will bring together students from colleges and universities across the country and around the world to present their own research papers written in the tradition of the great Austrian School intellectuals such as Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Murray Rothbard, and Hans Sennholz.

The other day I was having coffee with a new friend, a retired businessman who had customized luxury cars in California. I mentioned I had recently retired from owning an investment firm and had studied economics for many years, especially Austrian economics.

Like so many people, he said, “I really don’t understand economics and always have been confused by it.”

To which I surprised him with, “Of course you understand economics; it is the thought process you use every day to deal with three things: scarcity, property, and relationships.”

In the wake of last month’s shooting at Umpqua University in Oregon, national debate has once again been sparked over the role of firearm controls. Gun-control laws must be passed, we are told, that target these events and reduce or eliminate their frequency. However, much like most debates in the political realm, convenience and sound bites take the center stage over understanding root causes of violence itself.

From everyone at the Mises Institute, we’d like to wish you a Happy Thanksgiving weekend!

The Drudge Report today features the headline: ”BUST: 1.1 million Americans don’t have a toilet...”

Drudge then links to today’s article in The Week where the headline blares “A shocking number of Americans don’t have a toilet.”

Patrick Barron, an associated scholar with the Mises Institute, passes along a letter he wrote to the Philadelphia Inquirer in response to their article, ”Fed to help teachers learn finance“.

It’s quite interesting indeed when both progressives and conservatives seem to be nostalgic for those good ol’ days in the 1950s, for different reasons, of course. Conservatives want to go back to the nuclear Leave It to Beaver family and what not while liberals like to talk about those 90-percent tax rates that we owe our prosperity to. Or something like that. We’ll focus on the latter for the time being.

Earlier this year, the Swiss central bank joined Denmark and Sweden in implementing negative interest rates. Switzerland’s key bank rate remains at negative 0.75 percent. Bloomberg reported late last month: