The renaissance of industrial policy has been promoted by a breed of public intellectuals with considerable financial interests as they are well paid consultants for governments.

Our new book, Moonshots and the New Industrial Policy: Questioning the Mission Economy, takes a critical look at the renaissance of state capitalism and interventionist industrial policies. The book features contributions from 23 different scholars, it is published by Springer and available for free download.

According to some commentators, to counter inflation interest rates in the US must increase to a level that effectively restrains the economy. It is held that this increase in interest rates does not have to cause a recession if Fed’s policy makers could orchestrate a “soft landing.” The economy is portrayed as a spaceship that occasionally deviates from a path of “stable” economic growth and “stable” prices. All that is required to fix the problem is for the central bank to give a suitable “push” to the economy (i.e., the spaceship) to bring it back to the right growth path.

The 2024 Presidential election appears to be a showdown between two major party candidates vying to display the most evident lack of understanding of economics.

There is a popular perception that the role of the state is to uphold and enforce “fairness” much like a playground monitor ensures that children are not bullying each other, and that everyone is getting a fair chance to be included in the game. The fear is that if teachers do not monitor the schoolyard it might descend into the Lord of the Flies. Likewise, the state is said to have a moral duty to ensure fairness and goodwill among all citizens in their interactions with each other.

From 1949 to 1962, two libertarian giants exchanged several letters until a sharp conflict caused the correspondence to cease abruptly. An American entrepreneur and a staunch libertarian-anarchist, Raymond Cyrus (R.C.) Hoiles (1878–1970) established an impressive newspaper syndicate that would eventually become known as Freedom Newspapers, Inc.—the largest libertarian communications network to date.

Price controls, higher taxes, government intervention, and subsidies paid for by printing a constantly devalued currency.

These are the essential pillars of “21st century socialism” and the radical left Peronism that obliterated Argentina. These are also the main elements of the economic plan presented by Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party. Undoubtedly, this is the most radical socialist economic plan ever announced by the Democrats.

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell held a press conference at the annual Jackson Hole economic conference today, and he all but said that a September cut to the federal funds rate is a done deal: “The time has come for policy to adjust. The direction of travel is clear.”

Naturally he threw in the usual propaganda phrases about how the Fed is data driven. He continues: “the timing and pace of rate cuts will depend on incoming data, the evolving outlook, and the balance of risks.”

As the saying goes, “Personnel is Policy.” President Trump learned this the hard way, depending heavily on the very Washington, D.C. swamp creatures whose swamp he sought to drain. George W.