A number of things have served as money throughout history: shells, tobacco leaves, even cigarettes in POW camps and prisons. Now those operating in the urban drug trade are using Tide detergent as currency.

Supermarkets and drug stores in some areas of the country can’t keep the detergent on the shelves. During a recent police raid on a drug dealer’s home in Washington D.C., the police found what they expected—cocaine—but also noted the 20 large bottles of Tide on the dealer’s shelves.

Mises Institute adjunct scholar Terry Ridgway passed away on March 13th.  Professor Ridgway taught economics at UNLV for 30 years.  Although I never had Ridgway as an instructor, my thesis chairman Murray Rothbard suggested that I select Prof. Ridgway to be the third member of my committee from the economics department.  Hans Hoppe was the second.

Phillip Bagus, interviewed on RT, discusses the second Greek bailout. (Jump to 16:15.) I’ve transcribed the interview below. Bagus explains the logic of imports and exports by bringing the analysis down to an individual level, much as Rothbard does in Man, Economy, and State, Chapter 3, Section 5. He also makes a Rothbardian call for Greek national repudiation.

[Our Enemy, the State (1935)]
 

In the era of franchised unisex stylers like Supercuts and Great Clips it’s hard to imagine that barbers and cosmetologists are fighting over who can have a barber pole advertising their shops. The latest legislative fights over the swirling red, white, and blue poles are in the states of Minnesota, Michigan and North Carolina.

The New York Times reports of more financial woes for municipalities. Suffolk County will run $530 million into the red over the next three years and has declared a financial emergency. The New York state oversight board already seized financial control of Suffolk’s Long Island neighbor, Nassau County.

Danny Hakim writes,

Robert Wenzel would like to see more Rothbardian history.

He seems to me entirely right; it’s imperative that those who knew Murray set down their stories about him.  Here is one of mine to start things off. Murray had an incredible memory for historical  detail. One I was telling him that I had manged to stump Mel Bradford by asking him Rutherford Hayes’ middle name. Murray said, “It was Birchard, of course.”