There is not much that can be added to what has already been said about the proposal for the Treasury to mint a $1 trillion platinum coin to circumvent the debt limit, an absurd and gimmicky fiscal restraint which politicians impose on themselves and routinely honor in the breach. We may however usefully consider here some of the curious background details and one important possible implication of the proposal.
The United Nations Charter asserts the self-determination of peoples as a fundamental human right.
Old but not dated. Still one of my favorites. Miss seeeing it on my office door.
In a speech in New Jersey last week, Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank President Charles Plosser sounded an Austrian note in reportedly calling for the Fed to slow or halt its bond purchases in the near future because their benefits are “pretty meager” and they involve “lots of risks” including distorting the economy. Plosser also criticized the Fed’s zero interest-rate policy as counterproductive, stating:
Encouraging Growth and Recovery or Reducing Goverment Deficits and Debt: Not a Trade Off
Last week in “Thoughts on Capital-Based Macroeconomics”, Part III (drafted in early November) I made an argument that a Rothbardian anti-recession policy of slashing government spending while cutting taxes, “particularly taxes that interfere with saving and investment”, would be a win-win policy for addressing simultaneously the size of government/government debt/deficit problem and the on-going slow recovery.
Secrets and Lies of the Bailout by Matt Taibbi
“The federal rescue of Wall Street didn’t fix the economy – it created a permanent bailout state based on a Ponzi-like confidence scheme. And the worst may be yet to come.”
A new pro-state canard that has been trotted out lately has been to contrast levels of violence in pre-state versus state societies. It is pointed out that even the bloodiest of “state society” centuries (the twentieth) was an improvement on tribal society. Steven Pinker is often enlisted in this cause, particularly this passage from his “A History of Violence“:
James M. Buchanan, one of the past century’s most distinguished economists and most compelling champions of free markets, died earlier today at age 93. His professional career spanned more than sixty years, during which he wrote extensively on public finance, economic philosophy, and other topics in related areas. With Gordon Tullock, he founded a new subfield of economics, public choice, which has become established as a flourishing area of research, writing, and teaching.
My graduate school professor and one-time George Mason University colleague, the Nobel laureate economist James M. Buchanan, has passed away at the age of 93. In a 1990 article in the Review of Austrian Economics I argued that many (or most) of Jim Buchanan’s most important contributions to public finance and public sector economics are rooted in his Austrian School, subjectivist roots. Jim’s books, Cost and Choice, and What Should an Economist Do?
