Joe Gillis: You’re Norma Desmond. You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big.

Norma Desmond: I am big. It’s the pictures that got small. —Sunset Boulevard (1950)

The Initiative

The referendum on the Swiss Gold Initiative will take place on November 30.1 The Initiative demands the following: (1) The Swiss National Bank (SNB) shall be prohibited from selling any of its gold reserves; (2) the SNB’s gold reserves must be stored in Switzerland; and (3) the SNB must keep at least 20 percent of its assets in gold (i.e., th

A major problem with the mainstream framework of thinking is that people are presented as if a scale of preferences were hard-wired in their heads. Regardless of anything else this scale remains the same all the time. Valuations however, do not exist by themselves regardless of the things to be valued. On this Rothbard wrote,

A surprising range of news and opinion outlets have memorialized a string of anniversaries related to the Great War over the last few months: the assassination of the Archduke, the July Crisis, the start of the war, etc. Newspapers, magazines, the blog world, the top ten list sites, and Youtube channels have all featured anniversary observations.  

Economic analysis is a powerful tool. But while powerful, it is also amoral; not inherently moral or immoral. Whatever you want to accomplish, applying accurate economic analysis to the issues can help you do it better. If the purpose is good, you can achieve more of it; however, if the purpose is to impose harm, you can achieve more of that as well.

Your support of the Mises Institute has helped create an intellectual powerhouse for liberty. Thanks to you, the Institute can use cutting-edge technology in reaching an ever-expanding audience across both traditional and new media channels. We are educating the young and providing new ideas to a world starved for an alternative to the failed economics of government.

The Federal Reserve’s doors have been open for “business” for one hundred years. In explaining the creation of this money-making machine (pun intended — the Fed remits nearly $100 bn. in profits each year to Congress) most people fall into one of two camps.

In addition to Judge Napolitano’s video, we have now posted Ron Paul’s talk, and the panel discussion.

Now is a great time to register for the next Mises Circle, coming up on January 24 in Houston, Texas.

From The Review of Austrian Economics Vol. 1, No. 4, 1987.

From the first, the Austrians entertained a wish ... to apply their marginal utility theory to the case of money—which both the enemies of this theory and some of its foremost sponsors . . . declared to be impossible.