In the Bible it says, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone . . .” It also has been said that the one who strikes the second blow starts any fight. If the world is to avoid trade wars due to tariffs being imposed by the Trump Administration, both the United States and its trading partners in Europe and North America should look within themselves and ask if they are blameless in their own trade practices, and if it would not be far better if everyone were to simply follow a policy of free trade.

Over the years, I have heard multiple different things described as “not rocket science.” The implication was always that rocket science was just about the hardest thing to do, making virtually everything else easy by comparison. As an economics professor over many of those years, I have increasingly come to object to that characterization. I think the questions of social coordination that economics addresses may not require “rocket science,” but are in many ways much more complex and difficult, especially when it comes to imposing control.

In her book The Big Fat Surprise, Nina Teicholz controversially contends that United States nutritional guidelines have largely contributed to rising levels of heart disease and obesity in the American populace.

Today was the first day of this year’s Rothbard Graduate Seminar. A total of 27 students from 13 countries have joined us in Auburn to dissect and discuss Murray Rothbard’s economic treatise Man, Economy, and State. RGS stands alone as the sole academic program in the world that applies the tradition of a great book seminar to Austrian economics. It has proved to be an invaluable asset in developing modern scholars in the Misesian tradition, and is possible thanks to the incredible generosity of  Alice Lillie.

[Editors note: The new fourth edition of Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles is now available at the Mises Bookstore.]

Past all the incendiary rhetoric, one of the key differences between Democrats and Republicans is the question of how far-reaching government intervention should be. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the most recent battleground over regulations: net neutrality.

The list of countries with the largest trade surplus with the United States is led by China, which exports $375 billion more than it imports. It is followed, distantly, by Mexico ($ 71 bn), Japan (69 bn), Germany (65 bn), Vietnam (38 bn), Ireland (38 bn) and Italy (31 bn). If we do the exercise of putting aside the 2018 report of the USTR (Office of the US Trade Representative 2018 National Trade Estimate), the markets that have the more protectionist measures against the United States are China, the European Union, Japan, Mexico and India. What a surprise.

In an exchange with readers on Time magazine’s website on December 22, 2010, the Fed chief – at the time Ben Bernanke – was asked why the Fed is creating dollars “out of thin air”. His response was that the Fed does not print money.

In addition, since the early 1980 the Fed no longer pays attention to the quantity of money as such but rather sets a target to interest rates. This further reinforces the view that the Fed has nothing to do with the active generation of money “out of thin air”.

[From an interview with Hans-Hermann Hoppe conducted by Juan Fernando Carpio.]

Carpio: Why do economists in general not teach the role of saving for the economy?

In a speech this week to the Organization of American States, Vice President Mike Pence issued the standard, obligatory denunciation of the communist regime in Cuba, which the U.S. national-security establishment (i.e., the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA) have targeted for regime change ever since the Cuban revolution in 1959. Pence stated: