Sad news this morning (here and here) that a lady involved in the “high end” prostitution business killed herself because of government prosecution — she knew her life was over since she would be in prison for the best years of her remaining life (from her perspective). Her mother found the “D.C. Madam” hanged in the shed — with a note announcing her intention.
See what you think of this print ad for Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism.
1. He has been awarded the Loyola College Department Chair’s Award for Excellence in Teaching Economics;
2. The Franz Cuhel Memorial Prize for Excellence in Economic Education from the Prague University of Economics, presented to to him at the Prague Conference on Political Economy, April 18.
Robert Ekelund, famed economist and Austrian fellow traveler, has entered the Van Cliburn Amateur contest on Youtube. Here is his video. He is playing the Bosendorfer at the offices of the Mises Institute. You can also buy his book or...his CD.
This is a wonderful article in the Investors Business Daily: He Made Free Markets Invaluable. The author is Paul Whitfield, and, unusually in the world of journalism, he put a ton of work into this. He maps out a min-biography of Mises and explains his significance in the world today:
According to Lew, Ron’s new book is #1 on Amazon and will debut at #7 in Sunday’s NYT, making it the biggest selling libertarian book of all time. Or just get the whole collection for $90.
Mises’s utilitarian, relativist approach to ethics is not nearly enough to establish a full case for liberty. It must be supplemented by an absolutist ethic — an ethic of liberty, as well as of other values needed for the health and development of the individual — grounded on natural law, i.e., discovery of the laws of man’s nature. Failure to recognize this is the greatest flaw in Mises’s philosophical worldview.
Brian Wesbury, chief economist at First Trust Advisors, offers in the WSJ an Austrian-sounding explanation of why (though I’m not sure of this “natural-rate = nominal GDP growth” stuff):
GDP was up 0.6% for the second straight quarter. If you consider population growth we are in a recession. If you consider the phony baloney inflation statistics, then we are in a recession. If you look at consumer confidence and public opinion polling we are in a recession. If you go to your local mall and talk to the store managers you will find that we are in a recession. The only place that we are not in a recession apparently is in the “official world” of Washington DC.
