Bubble Unto Others
Last week, The Economist ran a piece on the rather uneven relationship between the monetary power of the Fed and that of other smaller countries, such as emerging markets.
1. Defenses on the Free Market
ECONOMISTS HAVE REFERRED INNUMERABLE TIMES to the “free market,” the social array of voluntary exchanges of goods and services. But despite this abundance of treatment, their analysis has slighted the deeper implications of free exchange. Thus, there has been general neglect of the fact that free exchange means exchange of titles of ownership to property, and that, therefore, the economist is obliged to inquire into the conditions and the nature of the property ownership that would obtain in the free society.
Power and Market: Government and the Economy
Lew Rockwell on the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank
Lew Rockwell weighs in on the American state’s recent capitulation on the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. The Obama administration has been staunchly against the new institution, fearing it might fuel de-dollarization and some day compete with the WB and IMF. However, after numerous US allies decided to work with the AIIB, the US suddenly decided it could live with the AIIB.
Rothbard and Hummel on Private and Semi-Private Warfare
In his chapter on the radicalism of the American Revolution from Conceived in Liberty, Murray Rothbard digressed into a brief aside about the role of guerrilla warfare as a type of non-state military defense:
Our Current Illusion of Prosperity
President Obama and Fed Chair Janet Yellen have been crowing about improving economic conditions in the US. Unemployment is down to 5.5 percent and growth in 2014 hit 2.2 percent.
Journalists and economists point to this improvement as proof that quantitative easing was effective.
How the West Invented Individualism
Inventing the Individual, by Larry Siedentop, Belknap Press, 2014
I lived in Morocco a few decades ago and needed some furniture for our apartment. A college student I had befriended, Hamid, offered to take my cash and negotiate with the dealer for me while I drank coffee in a nearby qahwa because, as he said, the price of the furniture would triple if the merchant glimpsed an American within a block of his store.
Mises Weekends: Paul-Martin Foss on the Journey From Ron Paul’s Office to the Carl Menger Center
Jeff Deist and Paul-Martin Foss discuss Ron Paul’s years fighting the Federal Reserve, why Carl Menger still matters, and why the Beltway types are wrong when they want to tinker with—rather than end—the Fed.
“In other words, you cannot accurately forecast a recession or financial panic by looking at either the announcement or the completion of the world’s tallest building”
The headline from The Economist reads:
Tower of Babel: Is there such a thing as a Skyscraper Curse:
They explain the curse using my article without mentioning me, but at least they did reference my paper at the end of the article. Based on new empirical evidence apparently I am wrong about the connection between record setting skyscrapers and economic crisis. Drat, done in by the empirical evidence.
