The US Invasion of Iraq began on March 20, 2003. Since 2003, the United States took Iraq which was a dirt poor oppressive but secular authoritarian country where many religions were tolerated, and which posed no threat whatsoever to the United States; and turned Iraq into a much poorer basketcase of a country ruled by an authoritarian Islamist oligarchy in which non-Muslims are bombed and forced into exile on a regular basis.

A federal court has ruled that a US Department of Justice “monitor” will remain inside Apple Computer to supervise all the company’s pricing decisions.

The “monitor,” Michael Bromwich, was appointed when Apple lost an anti-trust case involving E-books. He bills for his time at $1,100 an hour and charged $138,432 for his first two weeks of “work.”

by Ron Paul

Last week Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel proposed an additional 40,000 reduction in active duty US Army personnel, down to 450,000 soldiers. As US troops are being withdrawn from the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, it might make sense to reduce not only the active duty military but the entire military budget. However, from the interventionists’ reaction to Hagel’s announcement you might think President Obama announced he was shutting down the Pentagon!

Gallop has just released its report on Prosperity and Well Being in the 50 States. North Dakota jumped 18 places to take the number one spot, thanks to the oil discoveries there.

Paul Krugman in End This Depression Now! and elsewhere uses a story about a babysitting cooperative near Washington, D.C., to illustrate how Keynesian stimulus policies work. Each of the families in the cooperative needed a babysitter if it wanted to go out for an evening. Every family was given a certain amount of scrip, each unit of which was good for half an hour of babysitting services. If a family wanted to go out, it could use its scrip to purchase the hours of babysitting services it needed.

[From The Daily Bell, March 2, 2014]

February 24, 2014: John O’Donnell and Merlin Rothfeld welcome Mises Institute President Jeff Deist to Power Trading Radio. Jeff talks about his new role and what the Mises Institute’s goals.  

Mark Thornton was featured on the Inside Track radio show of Tucson, Arizona on March 2. From the site: “In the second half hour, Dr. Mark Thornton of the Mises Institute returns to talkabout Austrian econommcs.” (The Thornton portion begins at 23:00.)