Day of Reckoning
Imagine, for just a moment, that US government debt were rated in the same way that municipal bonds or regular corporate debt are.
Economic Lessons from the Pawn Shop
There are many great shows like these that feature the same basic economic principles.
Pseudofacts from the MSNBC Three
If the Keynesian talking heads were right, there should have been an increase in the pace of recovery in 2010.
Where Is the US Stock Market Heading?
On Monday, August 8, the S&P 500 stock-price index fell 6.7 percent to close at 1,119.46. The index fell 13.4 percent from July, and this was the fourth consecutive monthly decline. It has fallen 17.9 percent from its high of 1,363.61 in April this year.
Also, the index’s growth momentum has fallen visibly. Year on year, the rate of growth declined to 6.7 percent from 17.3 percent in July.
Today’s Economy in Three Sentences
The wavelike movements affecting the economic system, the recurrence of periods of boom which are followed by periods of depression, [and it] is the unavoidable outcome of the attempts, repeated again and again, to lower the gross market rate of interest by means of credit expansion. There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.
No Wonder There Was a Revolution
Most people assume that tougher penalties deter crime, but there is reason to doubt it.
Here is a case from before the French Revolution.
(Un)happy Birthday, Fiat Money
Forty years ago today, on the morning of Sunday, August 15, 1971, the US president, Richard Nixon, declared the inconvertibility of the dollar into gold. It was to be the great liberation that Keynesians and governments had dreamed of for decades. The results, however, have been catastrophic.
Abolish My State’s Income Tax (Please!)
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue until resisted.”Frederick Douglass
I have written here about Alabama’s tax structure in the past, noting that charges of its regressivity are vastly overstated, compared to other states.
In Defense of Internet Anonymity
Private organizations can set their own policies and allow customers to decide for themselves whether they want the service on those terms. But something more than customer policy is happening with all the latest demands for real names; the state is pushing this.
Libertarian Controversies
In an email exchange with Walter Block a few years ago, in response to some pessimistic comments I had made about the prospects of our libertarian movement, he wrote me,
Dear Stephan: I never feel like dropping out. Never. No matter what. To me, libertarianism is a most beautiful thing, right up there with Mozart and Bach. Illegitimi non carborundum.
