The Mises Institute received the following questions about the Austrian business cycle theory:

Thomas G. Donlan, writing in this week’s Barron’s in a column Google’s Good: Who’s going to buy a stock that won’t go up?[link - paid site($)] claims that Google’s strategy of pricing their IPO through a dutch auction will be the beginning of the end of venture capital funding for start-up tech companies.

Analyst Jim Puplava has recently published Illusions, an essay on the coming financial storm. Puplava’s view is that the widespread consensus that the Fed will embark on a rate-tightening cycle is mistaken. The financial markets have in essence become addicted to easy credit and low interest rates. Excessive amounts of debt have been funded by money creation at these low rates, and an increase in rates would be devastating to financial institutions, the mortgage market, and the GSEs.

Investor John Hathaway’s article Interest Rates and “The Death of Gold” presents his thoughts on the relationship between rising interest rates and the US$ price of gold, financial mismanagement by central bankers, the manipulation of the CPI to hide inflation, and America’s over-leveraged financial economy. In particular, Hathawy critiques the widespread belief in the ability of a small group of omnipotent and omniscient mandarins to guide the economy to their desired result:

As BBC and CNN report (and as Jeff Tucker blogs below), Krispy Kreme’s stock plunged when investors found out that the low-carb craze is affecting doughnut demand. This is unacceptable.

I know free traders will say that this is clearly good. After all, meat prices are rising. Butchers, cattle ranchers, and grocers all around the country benefit from the fact that people substitute away from simple sugars and toward protein-laden meats. Soy farmers are doing better, as well. This ignores the most important points. Honest, hard-working people are going to suffer.

Krispy Kreme hit by Atkins Crazy (BBC). Maybe they could fry them in lard? Here is Callahan on economists who define away the significance of changing tastes: De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum

During the 1960s, when Keynesian economics came to truly dominate the economics profession, there was a large influx of these “new economists” into government. The disastrous results included the “keynesianisation” of the economy and what is best described as an economic depression lasted throughout the 1970s and into the early 1980s.

Coins reveal how Hannibal bankrupted the Romans (British Archaeology)

Scientific analysis of Roman coins in the British Museum has provided new evidence that Hannibal, the audacious Carthaginian general, nearly bankrupted the Roman state during the Second Punic War in the late 3rd century BC.