With neither major party able to secure a majority of seats in the national legislature and the two parties unable to agree on a coalition government, for the last 10 months Spain has had a do-nothing caretaker government for the first time in its history. While basic government services continue, no new legislation is being proposed, foreign policy is stuck in place, and many infrastructure and other government projects are frozen.

Last year during a bout of the flu, I was at the doctor’s office. The doctor asked me what I did for a living and I told her I edited an economics web site. She replied with something along the lines of “that sounds like a truly terrible job.” She meant that she imagined economics was simply too difficult and laborious an activity to possibly be enjoyable. 

It is no secret that secret Swiss bank accounts are not so secret anymore, as political elites throughout the world led by the U.S. government wage an all-out war against financial privacy, even to the point of scheming to stamp out cash.   But Swiss financial innovation knows no bounds.

The Mises Institute was founded as a research center based on classically liberal ideas that have always been under fire: the ideas of Mises and the tradition of thought he represents. That means a focus on the Austrian School of economics, and, in political philosophy, individual liberty and the need to prevent the State and its interests from crushing it, as all States everywhere are inclined to do.