Contrary Investor provides some statistics, graphs, and charts showing the unsustainable growth in debt at all levels. Consumer, corporate, and government debt levels are at or near historic highs. While interest rates are low, cash flows are manageable, but if, for example, the Fed were to have its hand forced to raise interest rates to defend the currency, things would be more difficult.

“Today, Fannie Mae (nyse: FNM - news - people ) will announce plans to expand its support of a ten-year, $2 trillion, first-time home buyer lending program called American Dream Commitment.”

From Gael J. Campan

The Jerusalem Post published a response, entitled Austrian School Flunks, to an earlier article of mine on the subject of deflation. Here is my response, before it was edited:

Dear Colleagues:

We owe it to our students to give them the most full and accurate information we have about phd programs. Don’t get angry with me if I’ve been unjust to your school, or ignored it altogether. My info is only as good as what I’ve been given; please correct any errors and omissions in what appears below. I’m limiting this to phd programs! If I am skimpy in my description of yours, it is not because I am purposefully denigrating you. It is due to the fact that I have not yet been corrected by you. Please help me make this the best list of this sort it can be.

Lew Rockwell’s book—Speaking of Liberty—is eliciting very flattering commentary from readers of all sorts—and it occurs to us that these comments would be very useful in promoting the book. Some of these comments, then, are printed below. But so that Mises.org is not said to be guilty of puffery, the comment section of this blog is working so well that readers should feel free to add their comments—positive or negative.

Mises’s workplace at the Chamber of Commerce (on the Stubenring 5-12). This is also where the Austrian Institute of Business Cycle Research was located, and where the sessions of Mises’ private seminar took place. Look for the commemorative plaque placed by the Mises Institute in 1988.

Mises’s residence from 1904-1934: Wollzeile 24, 3rd floor. However, the house that presently stands at this address is a post-war building.

Chris Westley recently asked a discussion group about “mainstream monetary economists who expressed doubts about conventional monetary tools over the last few years.” I recently saw Kris Mitchener of Santa Clara University present a paper “The Great Depression as a Credit Boom Gone Wrong,” which he coauthored with the eminent Berkeley economist Barry Eichengreen.

Many investors purchased absurdly overvalued stocks during the late ‘90s and have since suffered devastating losses. The explanation now given for this is that the stock market was in a “bubble” which has burst, but those buying stocks at the time were not able to identify the bubble.

As the Free Trade controversy continues to reverberate, it is ironic, too, that UK First Citizen Antoine RobespiBlaire’s new megalomaniacal bonne idee is to ‘remove Africa from poverty’ by making sure aid programmes are (a) larger and (b) more scientifically managed in that wonderful way which has done so much at home to turn Britain into a place of which Mussolini would be proud... but Free Trade to help the benighted Dark Continent out of penury?