Uncertain Money and Uncertain Times

Ron Paul has often told the story of visiting Fed Chair Paul Volcker at his office and Volcker would immediately ask what the price of gold was that particular day. Perhaps he was checking on the damage to the dollar that he had done. Volcker had been “the point man at the Treasury Department in 1971 who managed the dollar’s untethering from gold,” wrote Christine Harper.

Celebrate the Mises Media YouTube Channel’s 20th Anniversary

For two decades, the Mises Institute has produced and published thousands of videos that have brought the insights of Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, and the tradition they inspired to millions of people all around the world.

Since our beginning in 1982, we’ve hosted seminars and conferences featuring the world’s leading scholars in Austrian economics, libertarian political theory, and revisionist history. But early on, the only way to benefit from these valuable lectures was to be physically present.

The Challenge of Distinguishing History from Fiction

Writers of historical fiction do not necessarily depict events that actually happened. Even though their narratives are constructed around events that did happen, they are free to take liberties with the historical facts. They invent parts of the plot, create dialogue from their imaginations, omit historical characters who existed, invent new characters, merge several characters into one, and the like. They do whatever the creators deem necessary to help the plot along, although they often stick reasonably closely to the historical timeline so that the events are broadly recognizable.

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Sérgio Alberich is President and Executive Director of Mises Brasil.

In Support of the Austrian Business Cycle Theory

Since the introduction in 1912 of Ludwig von Mises’s Austrian business cycle theory (ABCT) in his book The Theory of Money and Credit, it has been subject to relentless criticism. According to the ABCT, the artificial lowering of interest rates by the central bank via inflationary credit expansion leads to a misallocation of resources on account of the fact that businesses undertake various capital projects that, prior to the lowering of interest rates, weren’t considered profitable.