At the conclusion of the BRICS summit in Johannesburg on August 24, 2023, it was announced that the five-country grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, had invited six more countries to join: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Argentina.

Bank CEOs always have their heads in the clouds. First, pessimists never earn a seat in the corner office. Plus, it takes a good-sized ego to climb to the top of a bank bureaucracy. A person running a bank believes they can sail the ship through any stormy economic weather.

Public goods, in mainstream economic theory, are goods that are nonrivalrous, where one person using a good does not preclude anyone else’s capacity to do the same, and nonexcludable, where owners of the public goods are generally unable to restrict anyone’s access to the good. Commonly touted examples include public lighting, like streetlights, radio, firework shows, military defenses, and flood defenses.

But once a commodity is established as a money on the market, no more money at all is needed.

—Murray Rothbard, Taking Money Back

The Fed’s distinguishing characteristic is its grant of privilege to buy assets with money it doesn’t have. No other person or institution can legally do this; those that tried would be indicted for counterfeiting.

Governments prioritize economic growth as a national policy to win elections. Economic growth is a concern for all citizens because increasing economic growth improves living standards. There are more opportunities for self-advancement and leisure in a booming economy, so people endorse politicians who demonstrate that they know how to transform a sluggish economy into a booming one. Voters usually benefit from government policies when they facilitate entrepreneurship and generate jobs.

The argument over trade is one that has been foisted back onto America by the likes of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. While most hold to the notion that Adam Smith ended the debate on trade policy in the 1770s, the issue has always been a prominent one in American history. The Hamiltonian Whigs and Lincoln Republicans have long stood opposed to the Jacksonian Democrats and their policy of laissez-faire capitalism.

The US consumer sentiment index, compiled by the University of Michigan, fell to 69.5 in August from 71.6 in July. A weakening consumer sentiment index is seen as indicating a potential downturn in consumer spending and the economy in general.

The Austrian school – on account of the logical, deductive character of its theories and their realistic applicability to the actual economy – is the only economic tradition that consciously aspires to the discovery of timeless, universally relevant truths that govern the realm of human action. Thus, it should come as no surprise that its analytical apparatus is naturally suitable for the evaluation of all the recent newfangled socioeconomic phenomena.