The Swiss central bank’s recent move to de-peg the Swiss franc from the euro reminds us of the importance of choice in currency. By pegging the Swiss franc to the euro, the Swiss central bank was in effect subsidizing the euro by refusing to compete with it. If carried into the long term, this would have meant a de facto monetary union between the euro and the franc.
Austrians never tire of emphasizing Mises’ point that the entrepreneur is the driving force of the economy. But surprisingly, even though we write a lot about the theory and current practice of entrepreneurship, relatively little work has been done to apply the Austrian approach to economic history.
The Mises Institute of Sweden has translated two Mises.org articles on the Swiss defection from the Euro peg into Swedish.
On 16 to 17 January 2015, the Ludwig von Mises Institut Deutschland held its first academic “Ludwig von Mises Seminar” in Frankfurt, Germany.
Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Guido Hülsmann, Philipp Bagus, and Thorsten Polleit gave lectures on methodology, the origin of the Austrian School, the state, business cycle theory, interventionism, monetary theory, and the inflation culture, among other topics.
Most people reading this were probably born before the modern state of Yemen existed. In my office is an outdated globe from the 1980s, and if one looks carefully, one will find the countries of North Yemen and South Yemen, which were both independent countries (from their respective dates of independence) until 1990.
The 2015 Houston Mises Circle, “Breaking Away: The Case for Secession” begins this Saturday morning. Watch all the lectures online, live from Houston, on Saturday, January 24.
Here’s the schedule for both in-person attendees and online viewers. The online events will begin with Jeff Deists talk at 10:00 AM (all times are Central):
Amongst the big winners from the Obama Fed’s Great Monetary Experiment has been the private equity industry. Indeed this went through a near-death experience in the Great Panic (2008) before its savior — Fed quantitative easing — propelled it forward into new riches. There is no surprise therefore that its barons who join the political stage (think of the last Republican presidential candidate) have no interest in monetary reform. And the same attitude is common amongst leading politicians who hope private equity will provide them high-paid jobs when they quit Washington.
Henry Manne passed away yesterday at the age of 86. Manne was a wonderfully smart, creative, and iconoclastic writer and teacher best known for his work on corporate and securities law, particularly his vigorous defense of insider trading and his pathbreaking analysis of the market for corporate control. He wrote on many other topics as well, including one near and dear to my heart, the organization and governance of higher education. Manne was also an academic entrepreneur, one of the founders of the law-and-economics movement.
