. . . says Thomas Mayer, a former IMF economist and former Chief Economist of Deutsche Bank Group and Head of DB Research, and now a Deutcshe Bank Senior Advisor. In a letter today to the Financial Times, Mayer writes:

I just arrived back from lecturing at the week-long Free State Project’s Tenth Annual Porcupine Freedom Festival, a huge gathering of libertarians of all stripes from all over the U.S. in the beautiful White Mountains of New Hampshire. As you can see by browsing the schedule, the festival was chock full of educational and social events as well as commercial activities of the “grey market” (and perhaps darker) variety. Many of the vendors accepted an array of payments media.

You will probably never see Ralph Raico, professor emeritus of history at Buffalo State College, holding forth on the History Channel surrounded by wide-eyed naïfs eager to improve their mastery of American Establishment gospel. His new book, Great Wars and Great Leaders: A Libertarian Rebuttal (Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2010) shows why.

There is now a Ludwig von Mises Institute in South Africa. This interview with Chris Becker describes the Austrian scene in South Africa and the purpose of the Institute. However, it also has a good discussion about the decline of South Africa, the rise of Subsaharan Africa, gold and much more.

Robert Higgs has another must read in his “Etceteras …  Real Gross Domestic Private Product, 2000-2012” in the most recent Independent Review.

He provides good arguments on why government product should be (and perhaps almost was) excluded from income and product accounts. He then builds a measure of Real Gross Domestic Private Product for the Bush-Obama years.

EUCLIDEAN GEOMETER: Given the standard axioms of Euclidean geometry, I have proved that the interior angles of a triangle always sum to 180 degrees.

AUSTRIAN ECONOMIST: Okay.