Isabel Good for the Economy?

I have just heard, on the news, that we are lucky that a hurricane is headed our way. It seems that economists say that past hurricanes have been good for the economy because they stimulate demand- demand for rebuilding things like broken windows. Better to call them ‘noneconomists’ as Mises might have. Who might they be? Krugman?

The Roots of the Federal Debt

The issue of government debt and deficits lay dormant throughout the high-revenue 1990s. But with recession and exploding government spending, the issue has become enormously important again. Sadly, just about everyone is missing the central point, which not that we need budget reform so much as drastic monetary reform.

Did the Framers Favor Hard Money?

H. Scott Trask sums it up: on the one hand, they believed in fractional-reserve banking, generally following Adam Smith’s currency and banking theories. On the other hand, they were resolutely opposed to government-issued paper money, fiat money, legal tender laws, inconvertible paper currency, and land banks. On the question of a national bank, they were divided.

US to China: Make Goods More Expensive!

Back when the pegged currency was deemed to provide the only bastion of stability during the Asian crisis, and hence, a stable economy for which to sell American goods, no one cared a whit about establishing a “free market” for the Chinese yuan. While no one is ever safe so long as Congress is in session and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is occupied, this administration’s policy, more so than any other in recent history, has been “buy here, sell elsewhere.”

The Living-Standards Debate is Back

There is an enormous literature on the “living standards” question, and most of it comes down to a debate over method. If our living standards are measured by consumption, the question of whether the current generation is better off than any previous one is easy to settle (Cox and Alm take this approach in “Myths of Rich and Poor”). But matters are complicated by looking at family living standards as the average American household with children began bringing in two paychecks instead of just one.

Something fishy in antitrust policy

This looks like a good case study in how the Austrian approach to competition is better than the mainstream view of competition and antitrust policy. It turns out that anticompetitive behavior might be good for the environment and fish markets and while “the focus of this article is fishery conservation, the analysis is potentially applicable to other contexts in which antitrust law inhibits  non-governmental common pool management efforts.”

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