[Originally published at EconLog.]

Recently, some of my friends singled out this piece by Jeff Deist , president of the Mises Institute, as truly awful. When I actually read it, however, it seemed like a reasonable presentation of a plausible view. Deist:

Here we go again. A fed official is once again going to the media to repeat the age-old myth that the Fed is totally independent of political influence.

The last time we heard about this from someone at Powell’s level what last year, when Steve Mnuchin reminded everyone of the Fed’s alleged independence in January:

When it comes to human migration, nearly everything we hear nowadays in relation to the United States and Europe is related to immigration into North America and Europe.

Historically, however, governments have often been as concerned with emigration as they have been with immigration.

It’s easy to find income inequality in the United States when we compared the super-rich with the middle class. But when we compare the middle class to the “poor” there’s a surprising amount of income equality.

But how can the middle class have incomes similar to the poor? Isn’t that logically impossible?

Brian Simpson (2017) in responding to my lengthy review of his two volume Money, Banking, and the Business Cycle, provides a welcome opportunity to identify the main distinctions between Simpson’s business cycle theory and Austrian business cycle theory (ABCT). Simpson’s earnest pleas to the contrary, I nevertheless remain unmoved that he advances our understanding of ABCT. In his response, Simpson asserts I made several errors in my initial review.

On the matter of immigration, even many commentators who support ease of migration also oppose the extension of government benefits to immigrants.

Not surprisingly, Judge Napolitano sees the Kavanaugh appointment for what it is — a nod to the DC establishment. On Fox and Friends this morning, Napolitano said:

The current frenzy over the vacancy on the Supreme Court in the wake of Justice Kennedy’s retirement highlights just how much power has been centralized in the hands of a small number of people in Washington, DC.