Dr. John P. Cochran was born in Fort Collins, Colorado and raised in Phoenix a Arizona. He received his B.A. in economics at Metro State College of Denver and completed his M.A. and PhD in economics at University of Colorado. He is currently Dean, School of Business and professor of Economics at Metropolitan State
College of Denver. He is also the co-author of The Hayek-Keynes Debate: Lessons for Current Business Cycle Research.

If you were not a scholar then what do you think you would be doing now? Do you have any hobbies?

Austrians and others interested in fractional-reserve banking (FRB) will find of interest a banking reform about to be proposed in the UK. Douglas Carswell, an Austrian economics-informed member of the UK parliament for Clacton, is planning to introduce a so-called “Ten Minute Rule Bill” after Prime Minister’s Questions tomorrow (Wednesday, Sept. 15) that could have significant implications for current centralized FRB practices.

One of the main functions of a price is that it carries information. What information does a price transmit? According to one theory, a price transmits information about the caprice of the buyer or the seller. Prices at the grocery store are high and wages for unskilled labor are low because fat-cat grocers and employers are just evil people. Their evil is given further expression during disasters: they take advantage of the plight of others and jack up the prices of the goods and services they have on offer.

[Nature, no. 3759 (November 15, 1941), p. 581–84]

The last ten years have witnessed in Great Britain a strong revival of a movement that for at least three generations has been a decisive force in the formation of opinion and the trend of social affairs in Europe: the movement for “economic planning.” As in other countries — first in France and then particularly in Germany — this movement has been strongly supported and even led by men of science and engineers.

Despite the massive fiscal stimulus package of nearly $800 billion approved by Congress early last year and trillions of dollars pumped by the Fed, the rally in various key economic data seems to be coming to an end.

After falling to 32.5 in December 2008, the ISM manufacturing index peaked at 60.4 in April of this this year.

In August the index stood at 56.3. Also, the unemployment rate remains stubbornly high at 9.6 percent, with almost 15 million Americans out of work.

My first contribution to my weekly Forbes column/blog “The Economic Imagination” (which was going to be “Guerrilla Economics,” but it turns out that’s copyrighted) is up. There will probably be a couple of hiccups with Forbes’ new publishing platform and the first post might change accordingly, but I’m pretty excited about it.

The New York Times Science article headline says that the scary resurgence of the bed bug is baffling to scientists, but the bafflement evaporates by page 2 of the story: “Many pesticides don’t work, and some that do are banned.”

Forbes published this surprising piece by John Tamny. I sure hope he is right.

French economist Jacques Rueff once said “Tomorrow, to save man, we will give him a real currency.” For a world that has suffered nearly 40 years of economy-retarding currency instability, that tomorrow is very near.

... that it’s not made in a log cabin. Log Cabin Syrup, that is.

Seems the good state of Vermont is afraid consumers will confuse Log Cabin All Natural syrup with 100% maple syrup.

“The FDA said it does not have a definition for ‘natural.’”

The old statism (Progressivism, New Dealism, Stalinism) was all about forcing material progress on people even when the economic structures and people make them work were not prepared for it. So we had these huge dams made to force electrification in the U.S. and Russia. Wires had to be stretched all over rural areas so they could be modernized. We had interstate highways built. Everyone had to be industrialized and abandon the old agricultural ways. We did the whole space thing.