HSBC has apparently stopped letting customers withdraw more than £5,000 from their British bank accounts unless depositors can provide evidence of “why they wanted it.” According to the BBC:

Stephen Cotton went to his local HSBC branch this month to withdraw £7,000 from his instant access savings account to pay back a loan from his mother.

A year before, he had withdrawn a larger sum in cash from HSBC without a problem.

Here I speak to Chris Spangle and Dan Peffers from the We Are Libertarians Show. I go over Nevada and its’ current laws on prostitution. I speak about free market environmentalism and the history of government laws actually permitting trespassing by way of pollution. I also make a clear distinction between the free market and contracting out.

Recorded at the Mises Circle Southwest Regional in Houston, 18 January 2014. Includes an introduction by Jeff Deist.

In popular writings on Austrian economics, the terms “praxeology” and “economics” are sometimes used interchangeably, although economics is only one branch of the broader logic of human action. However, in The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science (1962), Mises did observe that economics is the best developed branch of praxeology, and this has certainly remained true over time. But the question often arises what the other branches of praxeology might be.

My article over at Mises Canada yesterday outlines why there is so much confusion when it comes to banking relations. It´s a product of the laws. In a bank run there are two sets of people - depositors and bankers - who both think they have a legal claim on one sum of money. Laws that allow for fractional-reserve banking ingrain this confusion in law.

Sound Advice for Janet Yellen

Tom Woods discusses the economics of the police state at last week’s Mises Cirlce in Houston.