When Sweden abandoned its open border with the rest of the Schengen Area, and started checking passports, that created a bottleneck in Denmark. Migrants and refugees were traveling through Denmark in large numbers, but when Sweden closed its border, many of those migrants stopped and stayed in Denmark.
Fear is in the air. Central bankers are warning of crisis, stock markets are falling, and even the media is realizing that the economy may not be as stable as our central planners would have us believe.
This is from the in-case-you-missed-it files. Thomas Sowell, my favorite Chicago economist, was a long-time supporter of the Federal Reserve bound by a Friedmanite monetary rule. In an interview in 2010, he called the Fed a “cancer” and advocated its abolition. It is no exaggeration to suggest that Sowell’s conversion to the anti-Fed view, and that of a number of economists since, reflects Murray Rothbard’s ongoing influence by way of Ron Paul.
On the eve of the World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland, William White, chairman of the Economic Development and Review Committee of OECD and former chief economist of the Bank for International Settlements, delivered a dire warning concerning an impending meltdown of the global financial system:
Although many analysts are and have been calling for a bottom in oil prices, there are three key reasons why oil can continue to fall substantially further from current levels near $30 per barrel:
One day in 1959, hundreds of students, educators, and grandees filled the enormous lecture hall of the University of Buenos Aires to capacity, overflowing into two neighboring rooms. Argentina was still reeling from the reign of populist president, Juan Perón, who had been ousted four years before. Perón’s economic policies were supposed to empower and uplift the people, but only created poverty and chaos. Perhaps the men and women in that auditorium were ready for a different message. They certainly got one.
