This article originally appeared in The Free Market, September 1999.

The idea that we need to be “self sufficient” when it comes to producing food just keeps getting more respect than it deserves. As Sallie James of Cato pithily observed, “I know of only two other countries that pursue a policy of total self-sufficiency in food: North Korea and Zimbabwe.”

Is it true that changes in stock prices are predominantly set by changes in money supply? At some level, it makes sense that an increase in the rate of growth of money supply strengthens the rate of increase in stock prices. Conversely, a fall in the rate of growth of money supply should slow down the growth momentum of stock prices.

The chart below seems to indicate that the yearly rate of growth of the combined South East Asian stock prices has a good visual correlation with the yearly rate of growth of the combined money M1.

Apple Pays Creative $100 Million To Settle Patent Suit--Creative uses its patent on “Automatic hierarchical categorization of music by metadata” (PDF copy; FPL version) to

Human Rights and the Republican Moment: Insights from the Political Theory of Freedom, by Magdalena Zolkos (University of Alberta)

Lots of Austro-talk in the new issue of the Journal of the History of Economic Thought.