In a unanimous opinion, the Supreme Court overturned the accounting firm’s June 2002 conviction. The court found that the jury instructions at trial were overly vague and broad. In essence, the trial court improperly found the company guilty without evidence of intent to commit a crime. There was no obstruction of justice or improper destruction of Enron-related documents. It turns out that the company was railroaded, having been made the scapegoat for the Enron scandal.

Jim Walker (an Austrian economist with the bank CLSA is reportedly forecasting another Asian crisis (Note: the Sydney Morning Herald requires registration to read the article, registration is free). (See also this in-depth study by Walker and others, although it is about 1 year old).

The fallout from the French vote of “no” on the EU constitution includes a sign that Tony Blair may scrap plans to hold a similar referendum--which effectively kills, for now, the whole effort to create an overarching government charter. The spin, which often has little to do with reality, is where it gets interesting. Did it represent a blow to the idea of liberalized markets in Europe? A rejection of centralization? Or was the whole event used by voters as a chance to punish the presidency of Jacques Chirac?

“The masses are misled by the assertions of the pseudo-experts,” wrote Mises, “that cheap money can make them prosperous at no expense whatever.”  The damage that this inflationary fallacy has done to our monetary institutions cannot be over-estimated. In spite of efforts by classical and Austrian economists to refute it, it refuses to die.

Hans-Hermann Hoppe will speak at the University of Bayreuth, Germany, at the Ludwig von Mises Lecture, May 31, 2005. Here is the promotional flyer. His topic: “Monarchie, Demokratie und die Idee einer natürlichen Ordnung,” is based on the paper in English here.

As I noted earlier Paul Krugman rejected the Austrian business cycle theory a few years ago, calling it “about as worthy of serious study as the phlogiston theory of fire.”[A theory of fire refuted by Antoine Lavoisier in the late 18th century]. Krugman wrote that he saw no reason why a investment bust would result in a recession because it would be compensated by increased consumption.