Higher equity prices will boost consumer wealth and help increase confidence, which can spur spending. — Ben Bernanke, 2010.1

By Ron Paul

Global debt now exceeds $100 trillion, according to the Bank of International Settlements. Over the past five years, debt has increased by about $30 trillion. What’s more, governments have been the largest issuers.

Well, it’s official. Figures released by the Fed last week indicate that the total net worth of U.S. households has set an all time record in 2013 in terms of both nominal and constant dollars. In 2013 alone , total net worth climbed by $10 trillion from $70.86 to $80.66 trillion, the largest annual increase in household wealth in U.S history.

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Supporters of the welfare state might see it as a mechanism for transferring income from rich to poor with the idea of helping those at the bottom end of the income distribution, but in the United States, the welfare state is increasingly transferring income from the young to the old, regardless of the wealth or income of the transfer recipients.

Walter Block – The Errors of Friedman, Coase & Buchanan [Australian Mises Seminar 2012]. Here I speak at Mises University 2012. My lecture is about Friedman’s positive externalities’ argument of public schools, his broken window fallacy concerning WWII, the tradable emission rights, Friedman’s road socialism. I talk about the flexible exchange rates. I go on with Friedman on eminent domain, democracy and anti-trust. I also viciously attack Coase’s Lighthouse article and his anti-property rights beliefs and more!

Tom Woods talks to Robert Blumen about his article “Say’s Law and the Permanent Recession.”

By Andrew P. Napolitano

What happens when the United States government participates meaningfully in toppling foreign governments in the name of spreading democracy? That behavior usually results in unintended consequences and often produces disasters.