The newest addition to our collection of  cafe songs of the Mises Circle in interwar Vienna. This one is sung to the familiar tune by R. Schumann.

A wonderful talk by Robert Landis to the Association of Mining Analysts has been posted on-line.  Landis gives a comparison between the “commodity paradigm” which holds that gold has been demonetized simply because governments decided that it is not money and is now a commodity like soy beans or wheat.  As governments figure out how to get rid of their unnecessary gold over the next five to ten years, it will eventually become completely marginalized.  This story is wrong from top to bottom as Landis s

Conrad Black, in today’s  Wall Street Journal($), defends the myth that the Roosevelt policies saved markets and capitalism from the ravages of the Great Depression. He does partly by making unemployment appear worse than it was at the begining of his term and better than it actually was towards the end of his term.

One of the most respected and longest-tenured asset managers in the world of finance, Jeremy Grantham, has penned a thoughtful critique of Alan Greenspan in (The Bubble Deflates - Part 7: The Easy Part Ends (10/02)  — starts on page 4 of the PDF file).  Grantham’s thoughts run along the following lines.  Greenspan showed through public statements and Fed records later released that he knew there was a bubble, and that its undinwing would do tremendous

Joseph Stiglitz examines the many ways that U.S. policies depart from the free markets the U.S. preaches for the rest of the world. The trouble is that Stiglitz himself approves of these bad policies, and falls back on a series of myths (e.g., deregulation caused S&L failures) to justify his position.

After every disaster, no matter how obviously bad, there’s always an economist (just as in  Bastiat’s story) who is prepared to suggest that there’s an upside.

• As part of the protectionist wave, “Farm Bill of 2002, passed by Congress and signed by President Bush, requires retailers to notify customers of the country of origin of the commodities by next September,” notes the  Washington Times. “The labels are meant to let consumers know where food is grown or raised, and to allow them to choose American products, rather than foreign....

Here we go again. The UAW’s plans are to worm its way into the Mercedes-Benz, U.S. International Inc. Tuscaloosa County Assembly Plant in Alabama. They have long been trying to infiltrate the foreign auto plants in the South, and they have failed miserably.

In July, during the start of negotiations with General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and DaimlerChrysler’s Chrysler Group, UAW Vice President Nate Gooden promised Vance would be a union plant within a year.