Hanne Nabintu Herland’s The Billionaire World: How Marxism serves the Elite (2023) is a vital book that will help you understand what is going on in the world today. It will also help you to defend capitalism against objections that are all-too-common today.  Herland distinguishes two kinds of capitalism: real and fake.  The real kind is a voluntary society, in which people trade goods and services with each other, and everybody benefits. The fake kind is one in which a few greedy billionaires use the state to gain power and privileges for themselves.

New US House Speaker Mike Johnson struck a blow for liberty and justice last week when he finally authorized the release of all the tapes from the January 6, 2021 “insurrection.” We were told by no less than President Biden himself that this was the “worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”

The FBI was unleashed by the Biden Administration to hunt down hundreds of participants in this “insurrection” and lock them up in the gulag where they awaited trial in torturous conditions – many in solitary confinement.

Economists, investors, businesspeople, and yes, even our wise politicians seem to believe that the Federal Reserve, using its various “tools” to create money out of thin air (which is illegal for mere mortals like us), can control the economy and financial markets any way it likes.

In particular, these people believe that the Fed doesn’t want a recession and a stock bear market, and the Federal Reserve can simply prevent these economic events from happening.

The Market Is Much Bigger than the Fed

However, the world doesn’t work that way.

Ever wonder if you were living in the Dystopian States of America? Senator Rand Paul’s Deception: The Great Covid Cover-Up, published October 10, 2023, does not disarm those haunting feelings.

Depression-era bank robber Willie Sutton, when asked why he robbed banks, replied, “Because that’s where the money is.” By “money,” he meant United States currency. He never indicated how he scheduled his robberies, but some days of the year may be more profitable for bank robberies than others.

Disclaimer: Neither I nor the Mises Wire in any way endorses bank robbery, which is a federal crime.

On Sunday, the populist Austrolibertarian Javier Milei was elected president of Argentina. In the United States, the reaction ranged from concerned curiosity on the part of the political establishment to enthusiastic celebration across the populist Right—including, notably, some economic nationalists.

On Sunday, Javier Milei was elected president of Argentina by a comfortable margin, with 56 percent of the vote. He will be sworn in as president on December 10. 

One of the political trends of the past few years has been an expanding disconnect between political unity rhetoric and the increasing disharmony politicians’ proposals create.

Senior Fellow Jesús Huerta de Soto and Fellow Philipp Bagus write: