This article is adapted from a lecture delivered at the Revisionist History of War Conference at the Mises Institute, May 17, 2025.

One of the central myths of the modern Federal Reserve is that it is “independent.” The idea is that the Fed is squarely focused on its dual mandate from Congress and is not influenced by politics, presidents, or pressure from the Treasury to keep the government’s borrowing costs low. In a Q&A after his recent speech, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said:

This was the opening-night lecture at the 2025 Rothbard Graduate Seminar.

Freedom in One Lesson: The Best of Leonard Read
Edited with commentary by Gary Galles
Mises Institute, 2025; xii + 422 pp.

We owe a great debt to Gary Galles, a distinguished free market economist who teaches at Pepperdine University, for collecting no less than 97 of Leonard Read’s articles, accompanied by a commentary of his own in which he shows their relevance to contemporary issues.

One of Murray Rothbard’s priorities for the Mises Institute was to create a program that would serve as an academic refuge and incubator for young scholars in Austrian School economics and related fields. That vision led to the creation of our interdisciplinary Research Fellows in Residence program.

August 17, 2025, marks the end of an era: for the first time in two decades, MAS (Movement Toward Socialism) has been excluded from the presidential runoff.

Our great Senior Fellow Alex Pollock has pointed out that the reason Napoleon created the Bank of France was to make sure there was a bank that would always lend him money. Napoleon, of course, needed immense amounts of money because the French state was almost constantly at war during his reign. Having a central bank at his fingertips made it a lot easier for Napoleon to wage his wars on the rest of Europe.

US President Donald Trump has kicked off a tit-for-tat tariff war, claiming that foreign tariffs against American goods harm America and that American tariffs against foreign goods are essential to rebuild America’s manufacturing base. Frankly, it’s hard to keep track of all the reasons he instituted his “Liberation Day” tariff binge, except that the supposed benefits of tariffs are a life-long core belief that he refuses to reconsider. So, what are foreign countries to do?

It has been more than 16 years since the second Bush of the father-son political dynasty left office, but the damage done by these two men continues to affect the lives not only of people in the country but around the world. Unfortunately, in the present age of Donald Trump, both Democrats and never-Trump Republicans are rehabilitating their disastrous presidencies, asking us to forget their legacies of death and destruction. Over the next two weeks, this column will remind our readers of the carnage these two presidents left behind.

Last week, I noted that in spite of mounting pressure on Fed Chairman Jerome Powell and the FOMC to cut the target policy interest rate, the Fed absolutely should not do it. Although Powell claims that current monetary policy is restrictive, this is not the case. Indeed, following an injection of more than five trillion dollars into the economy since early 2020, the last thing we need is even more Fed intervention in the economy to add even more liquidity. I wrote: