Kurt Richebächer is a heterodox economist who incorporates some Austrian concepts into his analysis. He has been a staunch critic of the lax Fed policy that has resulted in a series of asset bubbles and the obfuscation and obscurantism emanating from the Fed. In A Most Savage Credit Crunch, he looks at the impossibility of unwinding the bond bubble without some kind of crisis.
This just in...it’s not so much the usual set of scapegoats and bad guys that is to blame for chronic price inflation. A few economists have advanced the radical notion that we are seeing the effects of too much money printing by central banks. From an article titled Too much money to blame for rising price of oil, economists claim
CNN gives advice on how to deal with the awful problem of big and fancy houses (McMansions) popping up in your neighborhood, increasing property values and drawing a more well-to-do set. Oh the silent sufferings wrought by economic development!
About 23 years ago, reluctant Republican legislators acquiesced to increasing the statutory ceiling of the federal debt (then $1 trillion) at the behest of President Ronald Reagan, who assured congressmen that the measure would be a one-time event.
Perhaps the most ghastly aspect of wartime is how, in the name of fighting tyranny abroad, the US takes such strides in imposing it at home, thereby absorbing into our own political system the very thing we are supposedly combating. This happened in the Cold War. And today, one wonders what institutions from radical Islam the US will absorb in the course of its war on terror? Its anti-intellectualism? Its failure to embrace liberalism and progress? Its suspicion of outsiders? Its fanaticism? The inability of its legal institutions to distinguish between vice and crime?
Two large works were published in the 1800s on the subject in question. The first, Protection or Free Trade: An Examination of the Tariff Question, with Especial Regard to the Interests of Labor, was written by Henry George in 1886. The second, The History of Protective Tariff Laws, was written by R.W. Thompson in 1888. Yet today, over one hundred years later, Henry George is still with us, while R.W. Thompson remains obscure.
Since time is short and there are a practically infinite number of web sites and blogs, it might be interesting to try to see what are the top 5 blogs and top 5 sites visited regularly by Mises.org-ians.
Just like clockwork: first the natural disaster (Andrew, Hugo, or in this case, Charley) or major event (Super Bowl, Sugar Bowl, World Series), then the usual nonsense about the evils of price gouging. Fortunately, yesterday’s Daily Article provides a potent antidote (Don Boudreaux has an excellent post at Cafe Hayek).
