Greetings, All. As promised, I will be at Thai Tara at 7:00 pm, Tuesday night, December 9 for the Austrian Economics Society of Central Texas’ holiday season meeting:601 W. 6th St., just west of Downtown Austin, Texas.

Regarding the item from the Jerusalem Post (The Austrian School Flunks), I would only like to point out that even if investors realize (by studying the Austrian School teachings) that the rates are artificially low, they cannot help participating in the game because there is tremedous pressure (economic, financial, cultural) to do so; there is also a financial advantage in doing so (see the Dot-Com boom for a clear example). The same presumably happens to Greenspan: he knows about sound money but would be cutting himself o

The author of the Jerusalem Post piece (”The Austrian School Flunks”),makes the naïve assumption that an individual, knowing his personal time preference, knows as well the aggregate market’s time preference. Under this assumption the two problems raised could be true.

But some economists sure like to make it difficult where it doesn’t need to be.

I was reminded of this when I saw Tyler Cowen puzzling over the following question:

Why are not all buildings in a city block of the same height, given that their owners presumably face common costs and returns?

 

The  BBC reports that the Bush administration may back off from steel tariffs to avoid a full-scale trade war. Worth watching and listening for: will there be the slightest hint in any announcement that these tariffs were a mistake? Or will the Bush administration continue its infallibility pose even in the face of a policy that has been both politically and economically disastrous?

The Mises Institute is pleased to add Enrico Colombatto our its  adjunct faculty. He is Professor of Economics at the Univeristy of Turin, and author of  The Immorality of Anti-Globalism.

Murray Rothbard’s paper “The Hermeneutical Invasion of Philosophy and Economics“ (Review of Austrian Economics 3, pp. 45-70) will be translated into French and published in the collection “Modern Political Economy” for the Ecole Normale Supérieure Lettres et Sciences Humaines Press.

The continuous weakness in the growth momentum of bank lending is an important factor behind a weakening in the yearly rate of growth of our monetary measure — money AMS. In the week ending November 17 money AMS fell by $11.8 billion from the previous week. For the time being the growth momentum of money AMS continues to display softening. This in turn raises the likelihood that the reshuffling process is likely to peak sometime early next year.