CNN has picked up on something that few in the mainstream press have noticed: the self-reinforcing character of the housing bubble. The consumer price index, which purports to measure price increases in the cost of living, does not incorporate housing prices, which have been climbing steadily over the last three years.
Bloomber columnist William Pesek reports that Asians Aren’t Dumping Treasuries Yet. The dollar was established as the world’s reserve asset by the Bretton Woods agreement, post World War Two. According to the agreement it was backed by gold (at least for other central banks), but after a tremendous bout of currency inflation, Nixon defaulted on this obligation rather than lose the entire US gold supply. The current monetary regime, a sort of ghost
I recently purchased a copy of the book Why the Markets Went Crazy: And What it Means for Investors. This book is by an English economist named Tim Lee. Lee’s economic views are quite mainstream (not Austrian at all).
Robert B. Zoellick, US trade rep., is quoted in the Washington Times: “Frankly, the safeguards gave the industry an opportunity to do what we hoped it would do.” Meanwhile, Zoellick is the leading advocate of “trade liberalization“ with the rest of world, which amounts to demanding that other countries open their border to US imports and investment even as the US shuts its borders to competitively priced goods.
Forgive this very silly blog on Austrian cuisine, but I couldn’t resist a link (thanks to Ian Padovan) to this report on “the new Cuisines of Austria and The Danube.” “Gently Heated Salmon, With a Julienne of Styrian Wurzelgemuse and chive-horseradish sauce” sounds like just the thing to have while reading in the Austrian Library.
King Banaian’s post at Liberty&Power presents a caricature of Austrian Business Cycle Theory that neither the quiz nor any Austrian could embrace. He writes that he is “unpersuaded that the length and severity of the Depression was due to wildly overexpansionary monetary policies in the 1920s.” The quiz question number 16 makes no such claim.
An interesting piece in American Conservative that quotes Hoppe and Tucker. See also his October piece, Conservative-Libertarian Split: Liberals Get It, Conservatives Don’t.
“Accustomed in economic circles to calling a stupid argument a stupid argument, and isolated (in Princeton, New Jersey) from the Washington dinner-party circuit, Paul Krugman has become the most prominent voice in the mainstream U.S. media to openly and repeatedly accuse George Bush of lying to the American people to sell budget-busting tax cuts and a pre-emptive and nearly unilateral war.” Terrence McNally interviews Paul Krugman for AlterNet.
