America’s Great Depression: Fifty and Relevant
AGD at 50 and the Quote for the Week
Read About the University of Texas Mises Circle
...and its recent session with Austrian economist and past Mises Summer Fellow, Per Bylund, on the economy of Sweden.
Recreating the Asset Bubble: The Fed’s Plan for Economic Recovery
While Keynesians continue to sing that lame old song about insufficient aggregate demand stimulus and the horrors of austerity and “market” monetarists prattle on about deficient growth in nominal GDP, the signs of an incipient asset bubble become more evident every day.
The Flat Tax Versus the Flat, Flat Tax
Although I am not a fan of the flat tax, this short video is well worth viewing. The look on President Obama’s face is priceless as pediatric neurosurgeon Benjamin Carson criticizes the punitive thrust of progressive income taxation at the National Prayer Breakfast.
Recessions: The Don’t Do List
Listening to a new report on the just-released GDP numbers while reading Rothbard’s America’s Great Depression (AGD) made me realize how relevant and important this work is relative to today’s poorly performing economy. The book briefly summarizes Austrian Business Cycle Theory (ABCT) and applies the theory to the period of the Great Depression from 1929–1933. The book is especially relevant in that it provides policy guidance for dealing with an economic crisis, based on ABCT and historical evidence.
The Myth of Fed Independence
The standard reply of the Fed and its partisans is that any such measures, however marginal, would encroach on the Fed’s “independence from politics,”
An economy built on an illusion is hardly a sound structure
George Melloan’s “The Fed’s Asset-Inflation Machine” in today’s Wall Street Journal, while not mentioning Austrian economics, provides some very Austrian sounding analysis of the impact of Fed policy, both current and past on the economy.
Some highlights:
Waging War on Work
Employment law is a mainstay of state economic policy. Few question its efficacy as a means to correct “market failures”—like unlivable wages for meaningful work—that would leave society in shambles. In fact, no serious debate exists among American policymakers about the benefits of such laws. Their utility is simply assumed.
But laws that restrict or stipulate the terms of voluntary employment contracts stifle economic progress and make life harder for everyone—even those for whom the laws were designed to aid.
Anarchy, State, and Gun Ownership
The controversy over whether the Federal Government should ban the possession by citizens of certain types, or all types, of firearms has been raging back and forth for a very long time. I remember as a child seeing news coverage of horrific acts of violence involving firearms. I also remember the seemingly interminable “national conversation” that inevitably followed these events. It seemed, and still seems, to rouse people’s emotions in a way that few other issues do. My parents, like most of their friends, firmly supported gun-control legislation, which meant that I did as well.
The Deflationary Spiral Bogey
Why should a price having fallen indicate that it will continue to fall? Why should past trends continue?
