Central to the “Austrian” understanding of business cycles is the idea that monetary expansion — in Wicksellian terms, money printing that pushes interest rates below their “natural” levels — leads to overinvestment in long-term, capital-intensive projects and long-lived, durable assets (and underinvestment in other types of projects, hence the more general term “malinvestment”).
This New York Times article argues the the fear of deflation (i.e. apoplithorismosphia) is everywhere from major retail companies to the leaders of the Federal Reserve. Economist Kenneth Rogoff calls for a 400+% increase in CPI inflation for several years to come!
The theme of academic anti-Semitism has been much discussed recently in histories of the interwar period of the University of Vienna, in particular its Faculty of Law and Policy Sciences.
Ron Paul discusses the popular rejection of war and a renewed momentum toward world peace.
The story contains some errors of fact about Austrian Economics, but Walter Block is featured on NBC affiliate 33News in Louisiana. Click to watch the video. According to 33News:
The American Bar Association’s (ABA) Texas Capital Punishment Assessment Team recently reviewed the Texas death penalty system to find what surprises no one — it’s an expensive program that is run poorly and makes mistakes. The analysis, led by legal experts and former elected officials across the ideological spectrum, found that Texas relies on outdated, unscientific, and unreliable methods to prove guilt.
Toshio Murata, Ludwig von Mises’s only student form Japan, turned 90 this month. Here he is in Misesian attire with Marc Abela, organizer of the “Mises Meetings” in Japan.
