If you examine the attached graph one factor that might jump out at you is that the current “recovery” has been the worst one since WWII in terms of the percentage job losses and the time necessary for a full recovery in the job market making it, already, the most expensive since WWII.

The most recent job report appears, on the surface, encouraging news for the U. S. economy. While the Federal Reserve and/or the President may, with support from much of the press, claim credit, the Wall Street Journal provides a more credible explanation, a minor change personnel of the ruling elite has created a “growth opening”.

Jim Grant recently appeared on Yahoo Finance. He was critical of central bankers and economists who fear deflation and argue for unorthodox monetary policy to present deflation. He says that deflation is natural in a modern economy and that falling prices should not be feared and should be called progress.

[Originally published in The New Banner: A Fortnightly Libertarian Journal on 25 February 1972. Thanks to J. Michael Oliver (The New Libertarian: Anarcho-Capitalism) for sending it to the Mises Institute. Thanks also to W. Robert Black III, of the New Banner Institute.]

”Recently, the Treasury Department secretary asserted that “The President’s policies and a strengthening U.S. economy have resulted in a reduction of the U.S.

While the headline numbers for the economy, including the stock markets and the unemployment rate, look very good, a “real” look at the economy produces an image of a dead end economy. For example, if you look at Gross Domestic Product in the US economy from the beginning of 2008 to the present and adjust it for inflation and population—a period of 7 1/2 years it has increased a total of a mere 3.3%. Of that increase, the growth of government spending alone accounted for 65%.

Much has been written lately, including by me, about the coming rejection of the dollar as the primary reserve currency of the world’s most important central banks.