With the recent financial meltdown in 2008, Austrian economics has experienced a revival by both professional and popular commentators.
At The Daily Caller, Mark Thornton wonders if the Fed has any plan at all, or if it’s just afraid to do anything in the face of such a weak economy:
Taxes sound like a boring subject, but Dan brings great energy and passion to the subject: he’ll tell us why the US “worldwide” tax regime violates the basic human right not to be hounded by a country in which you neither live nor have income, why Burger King was right to move its corporate headquarters out of the US, why greedy politicians hate tax competition, and why invasive laws like FATCA should scare anyone who cares about privacy.
The Baltic Dry Index is the index price for several types of container ships. The index price is very sensitive to global economic activity and the level of international trade. An increase in international trade increases the index price and a decrease in international trade decreases the index price. At the height of the housing bubble the index traded over 11,000 and most recently sank to historic lows near 608. The index is down 45% over the last year and 22% since the beginning of the year.
Ordinary people, and sometimes experts as well, tend to overreact to short-term economic changes. The current economic malaise in the United States and Europe has brought forth a bevy of commentators convinced that this time the economy has taken a permanent turn for the worse. Never again, they declare, will we enjoy growing prosperity as we did in days of yore.
Recorded at “Breaking Away: The Case for Secession”—the Mises Circle in Houston, Texas, on 24 January 2015.
“And yet what is secession? When we talk about secession, we are saying that this political line should be drawn here instead of here. Wow. What a terrifying proposition that we might want to propose such a thing as that.”
A new survey by American Express reveals that 29 percent of Americans keep at least some of their “savings” in cash. Overall 53 percent of cash holders stash their cash in a domestic hiding place. Surprisingly, 67 percent of dollar bill and coin hoarders among the millennial generation secrete cash around their domicile.
Pierre Lemieux wrote an indispensible book (Somebody in Charge: A Solution to Recession) for anyone who wishes to understand the before, during, and immediate aftermath of the “Great Recession.”
The book’s importance is greater than just his analysis of the crisis. He thoroughly exposes the underlying weaknesses and fallacies of the whole Keynesian policy-activism agenda driven by the “animal spirits,” the irresistible urge to action of those who wrongly deem themselves in charge.
