Adapted from “ Imperialism and the Logic of War Making.”

Volume 17, Number 3 (Fall 2014)

ABSTRACT: The great recession that lingered after the meltdown of 2007–2009 brought macroeconomic theory into disrepute. Although the profession’s fascination with macro models deserves criticism, the fundamental evolutionary principles of macroeconomics remain sound.

It is generally held that for an economist to be able to assess the state of the economy, he requires macroeconomic indicators which will tell him what is going on. The question that arises is this: why is it necessary to know about the state of the overall economy? What purpose can such types of information serve?

Eighty years ago, in the autumn of 1934, Ludwig von Mises’s The Theory of Money and Credit first appeared in English. It remains one of the most important books on money and inflation penned in the twentieth century, and even eight decades later, it still offers the clearest analysis and understanding of booms and busts, inflations, and depressions.

Murray Rothbard always maintained that Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, the teacher of Ludwig von Mises, was one of the greatest economists who ever lived.  And Böhm-Bawerk‘s influence on Rothbard’s great treatise, Man, Economy and State was pervasive.  Yet Böhm-Bawerk has never gotten his due, even from modern Austrian economists.  Indeed prominent Austrians have referred to Böhm-Bawerk as  a “Ricardian capital theorist” and to his project in capital theory as pointi

The Catalonian regional government has signaled that it plans to go ahead with a vote on secession from Spain on Sunday, November 9. The Spanish central government insists that the vote is illegal and the Spanish state will not recognize any vote for secession. (Such a blatantly anti-democratic move from a European government will prove to be interesting the next time the Spanish government waxes philosophical about the need to impose democracy in some foreign land.)

Friday marks the thirtieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Like most historical events that are commemorated as if they took place on a single day, the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, was just one of many interrelated events that led to the end of the system of Soviet client states in Eastern Europe, and the end of the Soviet Union itself, in December of 1991.

Recently the financial press and media has been abuzz as the Federal Reserve moved closer to the anticipated end to its massive bond and mortgage backed securities purchases known as quantitative easing. James Bullard, President of the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank, stirred controversy last week when he suggested the Fed should consider continuing the bond buying program after October.

Alaska and Oregon have joined Colorado and Washington in nullifying federal laws against the possession and sale of marijuana (DC also approved a more tame measure):