“Commercial real estate is also dependent on finance, but it’s far less of a driver for the banks,” Susan Wachter opined in a recent edition of the Opelika-Auburn News. And while Ms. Wachter, a professor of real estate and finance at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, is right to be bearish on the prospects for commercial real estate, she is far too sanguine about the effects dud commercial real estate loans will have on the nation’s banks.

“In all the general assemblies Marin always demands that the older boys like him shall have more work than the younger ones. There is always a big discussion on this; sometimes it is settled one way, sometimes another. “I can work all day from sun-up to dark,” boasts Marin, “and it won’t hurt me now. But when I was little, I sprained my wrist from working too hard and it will always be a bad wrist. And our younger ones now are working beyond their strength; I see them with heads and backs aching in the hot sun.

It has in common with the classics all those qualities of clear thinking, objective presentation and lucid exposition which distinguish the wise philosopher from the merely intellectual pamphleteer.

Hesiod, Democritus, Xenophon, and Aristotle provided significant insights into economic theory through praxeological deduction. Stoic thought presents a coherent notion of natural law. Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Pao Chingyen, and Ssu-ma Chíien, Taoists in Ancient China, provide insight into the spontaneous order of the market and the effects of government intervention.

It is vitally important to view action as purposeful behavior as this view leads to the exposure of fundamental elements of social cooperation governing all of human existence. The role of the individual in society, the importance of private property, peaceful and secure coexistence, and the search for maximum capacity all extend from the moment of action. Our current political organization impedes the path toward perfect execution of our innate capacity, ability, and potentiality as well as lessens the impact of the actuality and intensity of achievement and progress.

Here is my piece on this Ron Paul idea in the Christian Science Monitor:

Since it was introduced in February, Representative Ron Paul’s “Audit the Fed” bill (H.R. 1207) has gained 282 congressional cosponsors. If adopted, the bill would allow the Government Accountability Office to review, not only the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet, but its recent monetary policy deliberations and transactions.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke opposes the plan, saying it would undermine the Fed’s hallowed independence.

The recently-published Hoppe festschrift, Property, Freedom, and Society: Essays in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, contains a cornucopia of articles of interesting to Austrians and libertarians. A fascinating one is Chapter 14, Joe Salerno’s “The Sociology of the Development of Austrian Economics,” which is based on a speech presented at the Ludwig von Mises Institute’s First Annual Austrian Scholars Conference, Auburn University, Alabama, January 26-27, 1996, on a panel entitled “The Future of the Austrian School.”