The New York Times explains a point that has been clear to industry insiders for a very long time but is mostly lost on others. The issue concerns: why does banking seem to be broken? The answer has to do with the ridiculously low interest rates. Banks are drowning in cash – tending toward 100% reserve by default.
Sundays have become “clean-out-the-fridge” days in the Carden house, which leads to some interesting culinary experiments. Yesterday, I jerry-rigged something resembling a gyro using leftovers from a couple of meals: hummus, homemade pita bread, red onions, feta cheese, pot roast, and Cholula Chili Lime sauce. The end product was pretty good, if I say so myself (and granted, these were very small changes in what would have been a standard Mediterranean dish). A few weeks ago, it was shells-and-cheese with a spoonful of Sriracha chili garlic sauce mixed in.
The Vatican document on the world economy, as issued by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, is very puzzling. It seems to dabble in Austrian business cycle theory, naming credit expansion and loose money as the source of the problem.
I spent much of the weekend in Toronto, Canada, to speak at a Mises Circle held on Saturday. I spoke along with GMU Professor Larry White, Professor George Bragues, and Chris Horlacher (Maple Leaf Metals). The lectures, apart from mine (but, in my defense, it was my first time speaking at this type of event), were great.
A great deal of truth can be unveiled via “Crusoe economics” — the analysis of acting man in complete isolation. However, just as it takes two to tango, it also takes two to trade and two to fight; therefore, in the sciences of human action, it takes at least two (a Crusoe and a Friday) for questions of property, exchange, and justice to even arise. The analysis of a tiny two-person society can reveal a surprisingly large number of principles regarding these issues that remain true even in large, complex societies.
If there were a top-ten list for how many words someone had devoted to the cause of liberty, Leonard Read would surely be on it. The cofounder (along with Henry Hazlitt, who would also make that list) of the Foundation for Economic Education, the first modern libertarian think tank in America, devoted 29 books, hundreds of articles, innumerable presentations and endless energy to making the moral, ethical and economic case for self-ownership.
