This essay is adapted from a speech delivered at the Mises Institute’s Supporters Summit in Hilton Head, South Carolina, on October 12, 2024.

“Printing Power” in our title has a double meaning: It can mean “printing power”—the power to print money, which central banks have. But we will focus on “printing power”—the central bank’s money printing as an essential source of the power of the state, including of course the Federal Reserve’s printing to promote the power of the United States government. 

During his 2024 presidential campaign Donald Trump repeatedly and in grave terms highlighted the possibility of the US dollar losing its world reserve currency status. This occurred at summits with business leaders at the New York and Chicago Economic Clubs.

Another national election has come and gone, and like many of our readers, I think the less awful candidate won. After all, a victory for Kamala Harris was likely to be interpreted as an endorsement of the status quo and a “mandate” for more of the same.

Unfortunately, though, opposition to the status quo is not the same thing as support for peace, freedom, or free markets. Dissatisfaction with the regime is good, but it’s not enough. 

The Austrian School of Economics represents a heterodox methodological approach to economics that significantly differs from the orthodox teachings represented by mainstream economics. The Austrian School’s approach is multidisciplinary, comprising not only economists but also historians, sociologists, jurists, and philosophers who aim to explain social phenomena stemming from human action, which serves as the fundamental pillar of the school.

One of the most popular economic fallacies of our time is the belief that the absence of a minimum wage would lead to limitless exploitation of employees in the economy. Minimum wage legislation prevents employees from being hired at pay rates below the mandated amount. Proponents of minimum wage laws claim that not having a minimum wage would lead to employees being paid very little for the amount of work they do.

Last week, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot to death on a New York City sidewalk in what was clearly a thoroughly planned-out attack. Over the next few days, as authorities hunted for the killer, online progressives did not try hard to hide their delight that a millionaire health insurance executive like Thompson was killed.

The “loss of China” to communism in 1949 was a pivotal moment in American foreign policy, for the fall of the Nationalist government (Kuomintang, KMT) led by Chiang Kai-shek to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under Mao Zedong marked a significant shift in the geopolitical landscape of Asia. It was quickly followed by the outbreak of war in Korea, and indeed Washington’s calculations regarding the peninsula became closely entangled with their calculations regarding the new regime in Beijing.