Bubble, Bubble, Housing in Trouble
It appears that the Fed’s zero-interest-rate and QE policies have finally achieved its insane goal of re-igniting a housing bubble.
American Exceptionalism: From Gettysburg to Damascus
The American government has transformed itself from “humanitarians with a guillotine” to “humanitarians with weapons of mass murder and destruction.”
Is Pot too Potent to Legalize?
Prohibition encourages suppliers to concentrate the product to make it smaller and thus more potent. In this manner you get “more bang for the buck.”
The Truth About Economic Forecasting
Astrologers, palmists, and crystal-ball gazers are scorned while professional economists are heralded for their scientific achievements.
I Agree with Paul Krugman
In an unusually perceptive post, Krugman complains that “again and again, people on the opposite side prove to have used bad logic, bad data, the wrong historical analogies, or all of the above.” He points out that one side of the macroeconomic debate “is, in essence, political,” driven by “hostility to any intellectual approach” that might cast doubt on its preferred p0licies.
Policy or Regime Uncertainty: Recovery Aborted
Bill McNabb, CEO of the Vanguard Group, in today’s WSJ op ed Uncertainty Is the Enemy of Recovery discusses Vanguard’s estimate that policy uncertainty has created a $261 billion drag on the U.S. economy.
While it is good to see policy uncertainty highlighted, the more relevant concept is Robert Higgs’s regime uncertainty as discussed in these Mises Dailies and Circle Bastiat posts:
2013: William Butos Monetary Orders and Institutions: A Hayekian Perspective
William Butos was awarded the 2013 O.P. Alford III Prize for his paper Monetary Orders and Institutions: A Hayekian Perspective. The prize is given to the author of the paper that best advances libertarian scholarship.
Native American Reservations: “Socialist Archipelago”
Imagine a country that has a corrupt authoritarian government. In that country no one knows about checks and balances or an independent court system. Private property is not recognized in that country either. Neither can one buy or sell land. And businesses are reluctant to bring investments into this country. Those who have jobs usually work for the public sector. Those who don’t have jobs subsist on entitlements that provide basic food. At the same time, this country sports a free health care system and free access to education. Can you guess what country it is?
Learn about Lincoln from his Greatest Critic
Thomas DiLorenzo will be teaching Lincoln: The Founding Father of the American Leviathan, starting May 9.
The Embarrassing Error of the Empirical Economists
Economic Policy Journal’s takeaway on the Reinhart-Rogoff fiasco:
Austrian economics reject empirical data as a method to prove economic theory, for Austrians it is all about logical deductions. Thus, there is not much for Austrians to do, relative to the current Reinhart-Rogoff destruction at the hands of a U Mass graduate student, other than to grab some popcorn and watch with bemusement from the sidelines.
