One of the main draws of the Austrian School of economics, at least for me, is that all its insights are grounded in real happenings; the school’s entire body of economic literature is meant to explain tangible things that actually happen. Whereas other schools of economics focus on some ethereal monolith known as “the economy”—a mystical being whose forces and wiles can only be divined through Cartesian coordinate planes—the Austrians study the discrete actions taken by living people that form the economy.

As US debt soars and foreign central banks stockpile gold, four members of Congress today introduced a bill to require the first comprehensive audit of America’s gold reserves in decades.

Public memorials, statues, and art play an important role in the popular understanding of history. Even those who may lack the time or inclination to study history in any depth may acquire a general understanding of history from what they see and hear around them as part of the general cultural expression. This explains why revolutionary movements often destroy or remove public art, such as the infamous case of the statues destroyed by the Taliban.

You hear about gas prices everyday. The President brags that per-gallon prices have dropped to $1.99 in some places. After paying over $4.00 here in Las Vegas, I wonder where he is talking about. He ran on bringing down prices at the pump, saying “drill baby drill” constantly at his rallies.  

Money-supply growth rose year over year in April, marking the ninth month of growth in a row. As of April, the money supply appears to be continuing into a period of solid monetary growth coming out of a period of historically large swings in monetary trends from early 2020 to mid-2024. Although some critics of Jerome Powell and the Fed have claimed that the Fed is implementing excessively tight monetary policy, the money supply has grown by more than $600 billion since mid-2023. 

A new record: the monetary inflation starting in the US as far back as 2009/10 is still under way more than 15 years later. There has been no episode of serious monetary disinflation such as would create a meaningful intermission before the next monetary inflation. Under the fiat or hybrid fiat money regimes since 1914 the previous joint record for longest monetary inflation without break was 10/11 years, as in 1938–48, 1962–73 and 1995–2006. Typically, unbroken spells of monetary inflation have been shorter—including 1921–8, 1933–6, 1950–56, 1976–80, 1985–9, 1991–4.