When Rothbardian economists propose that the United States needs a Federal Reserve about as much as it needs a federal car company, it’s not surprising that Keynesians ridicule the notion. What is surprising is that otherwise laissez-faire economists, particularly of the Chicago School variety, think that the market economy is good at producing goods and services except when it comes to money.

A specter is haunting the world, and especially Europe: the specter of a sovereign insolvency. The acute sovereign-debt crisis is largely the result of government interventions in response to the financial crisis.

In a recent piece in the New York Review of Books, Paul Krugman and Robin Wells discuss two IMF publications and Reinhart and Rogoff’s This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly. Along the way, our reviewers repeat the myth that Herbert Hoover slashed spending, while the Federal Reserve implemented tight policies, and that this contributed to the severity of the Great Depression.

According to a recent paper over at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER): The researchers find that mandatory calorie posting influenced consumer behavior at Starbucks in New York City, causing average calories per transaction to drop by 6 percent (from 247 to 232 calories).

That’s 15 calories and the additional loss of property rights. It’s liberty on the cheap — in NYC, anyway.

October 22-23, 2010
Louisville, Kentucky

Conference Conveners:
Manisha Sinha (University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Departments of Afro-American Studies and History)
Kevin Barksdale (Marshall University, Department of History)

The writing side of the Liberty Watch crew recently convened for dinner and, of course, politics was the conversation of choice. Ron Paul supporters dominated the table. In fact, the expectant father is lobbying at home to name his newest after Ron. However his wife, the UNLV professor with child, announced that she is a John Edwards fan, and she seemed annoyed that her husband hadn’t “grown out of” his Ron Paul phase.

NASCAR has been one the hardest tickets in Las Vegas to secure, selling out six straight times prior to Sunday with attendance reaching 155,000 last year. Even Saturday’s Sam’s Town 300 race attracted 110,000, the third year in a row with attendance for the penultimate event reaching six-figures.