The Bank of Japan announced an unexpected major increase in its Quantitative Easing policy increasing its purchases from 50 to 80 trillion Yen sending US stock markets to all time highs and Japanese markets to multi-year highs. Some people made a bundle because of the move, others lost a bundle.
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — U.S. investors scored a Halloween treat.
Just when the current “discussion” on economics by public intellectuals like Paul Krugman hits bottom, Business Week decides to dig the hole even deeper by lionizing John Maynard Keynes. Keynes, according to BW, had the theories that can “fix” the currently moribund world economy.
The 2022 Olympics (i.e., the Winter Games) is now down to only two applicant nations: China and Kazakhstan. This follows the withdrawal of Norway after the taxpayers of Norway balked on ponying up the cash necessary to make the Olympics a playground for the world’s richest cronies and politicians.
For the last decade (or more), Canadians have been ebullient about their home-grown housing boom. Home prices in Toronto have grown by leaps and bounds over the past decade. New homeowners have rushed in to take advantage of what seems like a surefire path to riches.
One can make the case that in a thoroughly decentralized and anarchistic society, persons may find themselves in a state of practical near-quarantine because private owners of airlines, airports, lodging facilities, and even communities with private security may refuse entry or passage to persons suspected of being contagious. In such cases, persons would be restricted to places owned by themselves or by those who will agree to allow the person on the premises.
Michael Pollaro writing at Forbes.com reexamines the implilcations of the ending of Quantitative Easing policy by the Federal Reserve: “The lion’s share of the supposed economic strength we see today is both artificial and unsustainable because it is built on malinvestments born out of the monetary largesse underwritten by the Federal Reserve’s policies.
Coming in Monday’s Mises Daily, Patrick Barron will explore the moral hazard that often plagues collective security organizations like NATO. Why be careful, responsible, and restrained with your own defense when you can get the taxpayers in a foreign country to pay for it?
Today, the news from Europe illustrates this well. From today’s Open Europe news summary:
Sean Corrigan writes: “In its latest edition, in a piece entitled ‘Monetary Policy: Tight, Loose, Irrelevant’, the ineffably dire Ekonomista considers the work of three members of the Sloan School of Management who conducted a study of the factors which – according to the
Introduction
Economics, wrote Joseph Schumpeter, is “a big omnibus which contains many passengers of incommensurable interests and abilities.” That is, economists are an incoherent and ineffectual lot, and their reputation reflects it. Yet it need not be so, for the economist attempts to answer the most profound question regarding the material world.
