The Harm in Hate-Speech Laws
[The Harm in Hate Speech • By Jeremy Waldron • Harvard University Press, 2012 • vi + 292 pages]
The Myth of the Great Depression of 1873
In a comment at Coordination Problem, “Is This How the Myth of the Laissez Faire Herbert Hoover Was Invented?” Barkley Rosser challenges Austrians with the following, “As it is, I await somebody explaining the 1870s to us, still the second worst depression in US history, and one where there was pretty much complete wage and price flexibility as well as no Fed, although as Steve Horwitz points out, there was a lot of state regulation of banks.”
It might be useful to quote Rothbard in depth on the “myth of the ‘great depre
At Last, a Memorable Commencement Speech
Even at Grove City College where commencement speeches are not filled with leftist banality, they often enough succumb to the banality of the occasion. But once in a while, a memorable one is delivered.
An Austrian Defense of the Euro
1. Introduction: The Ideal Monetary System
Theorists of the Austrian School have focused considerable effort on elucidating the ideal monetary system for a market economy. On a theoretical level, they have developed an entire theory of the business cycle that explains how credit expansion unbacked by real saving and orchestrated by central banks via a fractional-reserve-banking system repetitively generates economic cycles.
When Anticipation Makes Things Worse
The rational expectations of bankers and speculators should, if anything, exacerbate the cycle.
Passing the Bailout Buck
Recently, there has been an intense debate in Europe on the TARGET2 system (Trans-European Automated Real-time Gross Settlement Express Transfer System 2), which is the joint gross clearing system of the eurozone.1 The interpretation of this system and its balances has provoked divergent opinions.
Socialism in Practice: The Lethal Laboratory
What is the longest-running socialist experiment? What has its success been?
If someone asked you to defend the idea that socialism has failed, what would you offer as your example?
Where did modern socialism begin?
In America.
That’s right: in the land of the free and the home of the braves. On Indian reservations.
They were invented to control adult warriors. They had as a goal to keep the native population in poverty and impotent.
Did the system work? You bet it did.
The Fiasco of Fiat Money
I.
Today’s worldwide paper-, or “fiat-,” money regime is an economically and socially destructive scheme — with far-reaching and seriously harmful economic and societal consequences, effects that extend beyond what most people would imagine.
Fiat money is inflationary; it benefits a few at the expense of many others; it causes boom-and-bust cycles; it leads to overindebtedness; it corrupts society’s morals; and it will ultimately end in a depression on a grand scale.
The Demand for Money
U.S. banks are awash in deposits as the industry continues to lick its wounds from the 2008 crisis. The net loan to deposit ratio for all banks is just 70%, the lowest level since 1984, reports David Reilly for the WSJ.
Rothbard in Switzerland
Thorsten Polleit emails:
Today, Murray N.
