Mises As We Knew Him

For Mises’s friends of his later years, the sharp outbursts in the memoirs, written at the time of his greatest bitterness and hopelessness, might come as a shock. But the Mises who speaks from the following pages is without question the Mises we knew from the Vienna of the twenties; of course without the tactful reservation that he invariably displayed in oral expression; but the honest and open expression of what he felt and thought.

Because the government can work magic

NPR reports that: “Now, as the year’s second half begins, most economists are saying the worst of the recession is over, and that slow growth will begin in the fall.”

I was going to insert a sarcastic comment about how these mainstream economists all predicted the bust, right? Or maybe a comment about how NPR works full time for the Obama administration. But it’s all too obvious at this point.

Anyway, short-term optimism needs to deal with this reality:

Dead Banks Walking

It’s widely acknowledged that hundreds if not thousands of banks are on the ropes and just waiting for regulators to wrap them in yellow tape some Friday evening. However, fewer than forty US banks have been seized this year. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) list of problem banks grew to 305 in the first quarter, the highest number since 1994, but of course the names of those banks are not released so that depositors can be forewarned.

How Zoning Rules Would Work in a Free Society

Like most other government legislation, zoning laws are a violation of property rights. They involve forcibly imposing a restriction on legitimate private-property use through legislative fiat. A person, who has acquired property through homesteading or through voluntary trade with another person who legitimately owned the property, should rightly be able to use his property in any way that does not intrude upon the property rights of others.

The Age of Folly

How about a bit of reality? Not the ridiculous promises from Washington: the absurd talk of “green shoots” while unemployment soars and investment falls; the silly guarantees that GM has a bright future, even as its stock price falls to less than the price of a Snickers bar; the nonsense about how if we spend more and inflate more, recovery will come tomorrow morning. The war on recession is a flop. Fail, fail, fail.

Oh Please. Can you believe it?

This is Greenspan, the former head of the Fed, whose job it is to keep the entire banking system afloat despite its inherent bankruptcy: “Government guarantees of the liabilities of institutions viewed as too big to fail thwarts the competitive process that produces capital efficiency,Of all the regulatory challenges that have emerged out of this crisis, I view the [“too big to fail”} problem and the…precedents, now fresh in everyone’s mind, as the most threatening to market

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