The governor of the Bank of England actually mentioned the possibility of a Misesian-style reform toward 100% reserve banking, according to the Financial Times. “Or, in an idea that would mean the radical reshaping of the banking system, banks could be forced to match each investment made with funding over an equivalent time period, Mr King said.” Credit to the Cobden Centre for changing the terms of debate here.
The economic and business community constantly attempts to forecast the effects of various economic changes and government policies on corporate profits. But both the cause and effect of increasing profits are other than what most people imagine. It will therefore be helpful to gain a concrete understanding of what profits do and do not represent.1
As many readers already know, last week I launched a campaign to pressure Paul Krugman into debating me. In just the first week, this sophomoric 7-minute YouTube video has generated $35,000 in pledges. At this point, I don’t see how Krugman will ever live this down until he debates me on Austrian versus Keynesian business-cycle theory.
A new report documents the trend. What I do find annoying about these surveys is how they focus on values instead of policies. For example, it should not matter to a libertarian what a person believes about religion or morality so long as they do not want the government to do anything about it. Of course experience suggests that there is in fact no such wall of separation between values and policies in political practice.
I’ve noted before that the term “human rights” and, in particular, its usage in international law, has acquired a leftist, anti-property tinge–incompatible with the Rothbardian-libertarian conception of human rights as property rights. (See my Book Review of Patrick Burke, No Harm: Ethical Principles for a Free Market (1994), Reason Papers No. 20 (Fall 1995), at n. 13 and accompanying text; Murray N.
The government now says that taxpayer bailouts of Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac could reach $363 billion by 2013. Of course we are supposed to thank Harry Reid for staving off a “world wide depression” too.
Full story on the Fannie / Freddie bailouts here.
Also check out the Bailout Reader from Mises.org.
For several years now the Mises Institute has hosted Reason Papers; I helped them get the archives online and have been assisting with getting the PDFs in shape to put online and associated web-related matters. The journal was edited from 1974 to 2000 by my friend Tibor Machan (he published my first scholarly article in that journal in 1992), and since them by Aeon Skoble. It’s now being taken over by Irfan Khawaja and Carrie-Ann Biondi. Issue No. 32 has just been put online; the contents are below.
