More than five years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, economists are still searching to understand why it failed as badly as it did. By this I don’t mean why it went bankrupt – everyone is well aware that its exposure to the mortgage market coupled with a high degree of leverage (31:1 by 2007) meant that only a small loss on its vulnerable positions would eliminate all of its equity.
The headline in the print edition of the Denver Post of an associated press story on the nomination of Janet Yellen highlights a quote from President Obama, “She understands the human cost when people can’t find a job.” This statement about then-new Fed Chair Yellen, which emphasizes Yellen’s Keynesian-based commitment to the unemployment prong of the Fed’s
Frank Hollenbeck, in “Why Keynesian Economists Don’t Understand Inflation” argues that a fundamental shift in macro theorizing, shifting from the transaction version of the equation of exchange to the income form of the equation, particularly in theorizing about the demand for money is wrong theory and hence leads to bad policy and a inherent inability to understand inflation and its consequences properly. He summarizes:
The BBC is running a tragic but fascinating article about political oppression under the Ceausescu regime in socialist Romania. The article tells the story of Carmen Bugan, whose father, Ion Bugan, was repeatedly spied on, arrested, and tortured for political dissent. Since 1999, the files of the Romanian secret police, the Securitate, have been available to those who were investigated during the socialist period, and Carmen has uncovered the files kept on her family.
Since large banks are more or less adjuncts of the federal government that live off the sweat of taxpayers, all the while whining about how tough they have it, who can be surprised that large banks like Wells Fargo have been enthusiastic in their efforts to crush clients who dare do business with legal cannabis merchants? Notes the Denver Post:
By William Norman Grigg
A slave is somebody compelled to provide service to another. Elane Huguenin, a wedding photographer from New Mexico, was arraigned before that state’s “human rights” soviet for politely declining to provide her services to a lesbian couple planning a “commitment ceremony” (the state doesn’t recognize same-sex marriage).
Last Wednesday’s Mises Daily author Chris Casey discusses deflation, prices and markets on Power Trading Radio.
(It’s a video of a video, but the audio is very clear.) Hosted by the Loyola University Society for Civic Engagement on 27 March 2014, Mark Thornton appeared as a panelist (via Skype) to discuss some of the intended and unintended consequences of legalizing marijuana. Thornton provides an excellent summary of the early years of cannabis prohibition (hint: no one but the government seemed to want prohibition) plus a discussion of the many negative effects of prohibition.
From the panel recorded at the 2014 Austrian Economics Research Conference in Auburn, Alabama, on 22 March 2014:
