Ben Bernanke’s confided yesterday that he is unaware of any new method of stimulating economic growth. Spoke Bernanke: “As far as I’m aware, there’s no completely new method that we haven’t [already tapped].” So Helicopter Ben has run out of innovative and unconventional ways to create new money.
The Wall Street Journal takes note of Paul Krugman’s attack on “Austrian/Ron Paul types” (1/13/13) page C1, “Ahead of the Tape”).
We have all heard of the boy who cried wolf.
A similar charge is being leveled against pundits who warned of runaway inflation as a result of the Federal Reserve’s extraordinary stimulus. Economist Paul Krugman, for example, pilloried “Austrian/Ron Paul types” for being so wrong the past three years.
Even after a tripling of the monetary base, Mr. Krugman’s sanguine view is in favor.
[Part 1 of “The Secession Tradition in America,” a paper presented at the 1995 Mises Institute conference, “Secession, State, and Economy.”]
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“:
