Tatsuya Iwakura in Japan has translated numerous works by Austrian scholars into Japanese in recent years. Today he writes:

Timothy Geithner is finally cashing in for all his years of government service, including his position as the President of the New York Federal Reserve and as Secretary of the Treasury during the latest financial crisis. The Washington Post reports that Geithner has been appointed president and managing director of the private equity firm Warburg Pincus. The firm manages $35 billion in assets in over 100 companies. Geithner is expected to receive millions in compensation.

The British students demanding more Keynes and Marx have been joined, predictably, by British academics -- specifically, the self-described “post Keynesians” who think that mainstream economics isn’t Keynesian enough.

According to the popular way of thinking, bubbles are an important cause of economic recessions. The main question posed by experts is how one knows when a bubble is forming. It is held that if the central bankers knew the answer to this question they might be able to prevent bubble formations and thus prevent recessions.

It now appears that Housing Bubble II is cooling. After the Fed drove mortgage rates down to around 3.35% in May for a 30 year fixed-rate mortgage, home prices started climbing. In the sand states of California, Nevada, Arizona, and Florida, among the hardest hit areas, home prices increased by an average of about 25%. Bloomberg reports that mortgage applications have declined 17% since May and that price reductions are occurring on 25% of listed homes.

For Austrian economists doing economics is not about measuring things. However, it still can be useful to gauge the economic environment, whether that is the near term or long ago. Michael Pollaro here provide such an update of the money supply from over at Forbes. According to Pollaro:

Many young people want to know what has caused this ongoing economic crisis and many are looking for places to study Austrian free market economics. One University that is often overlooked is Troy University. Its faculty contain several free market economists who are sympathetic to the Austrian School of economics including former Mises Summer Fellows Dr. G. P. Manish and Dr. Malavika Nair. Troy University is located in Troy, Alabama not far from the Mises Institute.