Independent Institute links to Burton A. Abrams’s (Research Fellow at the Independent Institute and Professor of Economics at the University of Delaware) sound criticism of Fed policy at Investors.com powered by Investor’s Business Daily. Abrams provides some of the best commentary I have seen on the Fed’s nonsensical commitment to 2% inflation as price stability.

Some highlights:

Mises Daily Friday by Brendan Brown: 

Janet Yellen testified before Congress this week, but the Senate Republicans, who claim to be the guardians of monetary sanity, failed to show any true understanding of monetary policy and the damage the Fed has inflicted.

[This article is adapted from Chapter 11 of The Fed at 100: A Critical View on the Federal Reserve System.]

A new deal with the International Monetary Fund is in the books for Ukraine, a deal designed to provide rapid macroeconomic stabilization for a country fraught with war. In three weeks, Ukraine expects a first installment of $8 billion as part of a $40 billion bailout scheduled for the next few years.

Over  at EPJ Bob Wenzel offers an interesting take on market monetarist Scott Sumner’s dismissive critique of contrarian Tyler Cowen’s  position that “monetary policy just doesn’t matter that much” during the recovery phase of the cycle.  Wenzel awards the first round to Sumner in this blogospheric contretemps.  We await Cowen’s response with interest.  

In the 1930s, peasants who were starving because of the Soviet regime’s brutal farm collectivization policy lamented, “If only Stalin knew!” Nowadays, American social scientists look at floundering federal programs and lament: “If only Congress knew!” And the solution is the “evidence-based” reform movement which will magically beget a new era of good governance.

Carl Menger, the founder of the Austrian School, is just as relevant today as ever. He died 94 years ago today in 1921.

Joseph Salerno sums it up:

I often get questions from potential writers about good topics for Mises Daily articles. Now, we carry a wide variety of topics, ranging from articles on Game of Thrones to articles on the economics of auto repair.