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.
Legendary investor Jim Rogers has advocated buying farmland and agricultural commodities for years, but a recent Reuters article discusses the current struggles faced by farmers in a time of high rents and falling commodity prices.
In the Washington Times, James Bovard takes a look at how DC would have us believe that they’re suffering greatly at the hands of unreasonable people. To paraphrase Nancy Pelosi: We’ve already cut all the far to the bone. There’s nothing left to cut!
And yet:
Ryan McMaken writes today:
All goods need not be allocated in response to the human-choice-driven price mechanism of the marketplace. Goods and services can also be allocated by political means. That is, states, employing coercive means can seize goods and services and allocate them according to certain political goals and the goals of people in positions of political power. There is nothing “neutral” about this method of allocating resources.
From Richard Ebeling’s Column in Epic Times:
Consumers’ Sovereignty, and Natural vs.Contrived Scarcity
by Richard Ebeling
One of the great myths about the capitalist system is the presumption that businessmen make profits at the expense of the consumers and workers in society. Nothing could be further from the truth.
