Here’s a very nice video/animation of Rothbard’s America’s Great Depression, by a group calling themselves EconClips.

Donald Trump renewed his attacks on trade this week, announcing new tariffs with China and extending his steel and aluminum tariffs to previously exempted Europe. Since this is Trump, it’s certainly possible that this is another example of “maximum pressure” designed to get some sort of concession. Should this represent a genuine long-term embrace of protectionist trade policy though, American consumers will pay the price.

The economics of John Maynard Keynes as taught to university sophomores for the last several decades is now nearly defunct in theory but not in practice. Keynes’s 1936 book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, portrayed the market as fundamentally unstable and touted government as the stabilizer. The stability that allegedly lay beyond the market’s reach was to be supplied by the federal government’s macroeconomic policymakers—the president (with guidance from his Council of Economic Advisers), the Congress, and the Federal Reserve.

[Newsweek columns from September 3, 10, 17, 24, and October 1, 1951, and reprinted in Business Tides: The Newsweek Era of Henry Hazlitt.]

“As the owner, I’m looking at it big picture and long term.” Those are the words of Eric Mason, owner of a Chick-fil-A in Sacramento, CA. 

Mason was talking about his employees and sales. He believes successful restaurants are an effect of happy, well-paid workers.  That’s why he’s offering his employees wage increases that would boost their pay from $12-13/hr. to $17-18/hr. 

[Reprinted from Free Market Economics: A Basic Reader, compiled by Bettina G. Greaves.]

Of all aspects of the free market economic system, the role of profit-making by individuals is the one most subject to controversy. An air of apology seems to permeate any discussion of profit-making, even among those who generally commend the market society.

Mises never tired of telling his students and readers that trends can change. What makes them change are the choices we make, the values we hold, the ideas we advance, the institutions we support...Unlike Mises, we do not face obstacles that appear hopelessly high. We owe it to his memory to throw ourselves completely into the intellectual struggle to make liberty not just a hope, but a reality in our times. As we do, let us all adopt as our motto the words Mises returned to again and again in his life.

Growth in the supply of US dollars remained near a multi-year low in December, growing 2.9 percent, year over year.

In November, year-over-year growth in the money supply fell to a 129-month low, growing 2.7 percent. The last time the money supply grew at a smaller rate than November 2017’s rate was during March 2007 — at a rate of 2.1 percent.