The Free Market 26, no. 7 (July/August 2008)

A quick scan of any newspaper suggests that high fuel prices have disrupted our daily affairs. While politicians and pundits across the political spectrum are fretting about the need for a national energy policy, wringing their hands about the apparent un-American-ness of our dependence on foreign oil, and worrying that the massive run-up in gas prices in recent months will lead to an economic downturn, market forces are quietly adjusting so as to soften the blow and solve the problems that arise.

The Free Market 26, no. 8 (September 2008)

You are uptown in a shopping district of a small community, and you pass by the meat shop, the wine shop, the coffee shop, two churches side by side, a coin shop, an antique store . . . and hold it right there.

The Free Market 26, no. 9 (September 2008)

The Paulson bailout failed in the House. It wasn’t a death blow to the plan, but it should have been. This wasn’t an economic plan: it was a heist.

It will go down as The Great Bank Robbery of 2008.

The economics behind it were nonsense, but we are naïve if we spend much time even considering the “arguments” for it. This was a money and power grab, pure and simple.

The Free Market 26, no. 10 (November  2008)

Writing the introduction to Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt was a labor of love for me. You know how women sometimes say to each other “This dress is you!”? Well, this book is me! This was the first book on economics that just jumped out and grabbed me. I had read a few before, but they were boring. Very boring. Did I mention boring?

The Free Market 26, no. 11 (December 2008)

We are now hearing ominous warnings about imminent deflation. Checking the welcome page at AOL this morning, I see that the lead item in the financial news section heralds “The Looming Threat of Deflation.” This headline encapsulates two highly problematic ideas. The first is that deflation would necessarily be a bad thing. The second is that deflation is likely to occur in the near term.

The Free Market 27, no. 1 (January 2009)

Today the highest-price good that people buy besides their houses is their car, and this reality leads people to believe that we can’t possibly let the American car industry die. We couldn’t possibly be a real country and a powerful nation without our beloved auto industry, which is so essential to our national well-being. In any case, this is what spokesmen for the big three say.

The Free Market 27, no. 2 (February 2009)

We are fortunate to be living in these times, for we are seeing the unfolding of events long explained and predicted by the Austrian tradition. Maybe that sounds implausible. What is fortunate about our times? The economy is tanking, stocks have been pummeled, unemployment is rising, and Washington is pursuing the worst combination of economic policies since Hoover and FDR. Nor does the new guy in charge seem to have a clue about the limits of what government can do.

The Free Market 27, no. 3 (March 2009)

The works of Leonard E. Read, who founded the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) in 1946, are now online at the Mises Institute. It is probably not the complete collected works, but it is all that he collected in book form. These are books that shaped several generations of activists, donors, writers, and intellectuals. They are the books that kick-started the libertarian movement after World War II.

The Free Market 27, no. 4 (April 2009)

In a March 11 Wall Street Journal op-ed, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan tried to exonerate himself from the housing boom and bust. Even though more and more analysts are realizing that Greenspan’s low interest rates fueled the bubble, the ex-maestro himself uses statistics to defend his record.

The Free Market 27, no. 5 (May 2009)

John Maynard Keynes often employed flowery language like “animal spirits” and “liquidity trap” to describe things he did not understand. He was, after all, more of a bureaucrat than an economist. In fact, he would best be described as an anti-economist because he eschewed things like supply and demand and held the opinion that government could run the economy.