The Mises Institute receives a constant stream of correspondence from around the world, and in this one item keeps coming up again and again. People often ask whether there have been any responses to Bryan Caplan’s essay “Why I’m not an Austrian Economist“ (thanks to Google, the version on his personal site is far more widely circulated than the one that appeared in the Southern Economic Journal).
The answer is yes. See
The Economist naively asks: “Why on earth can’t the world’s richest country ensure that Baghdad has water and electricity?” Time to re-read Mises’s 1920 essay: “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth“
Australian Austrian economics writer Gerard Jackson skewers the fallacy that home extracting equity by borrowing against higher home prices then spending the money is good for the economy. Borrowing, argues Jackson (considering for a moment the case of an economy without fractional reserve banking), is the postponement of a consumption opportunity. One person’s borrowing is exactly offset someone else’s savings, somewhere else in the economy, so the net effect on spending is nil. Jackso
Democracy equals public debt, but this guy thinks it’s wonderful.
Richard Russell in his Dow Theory Letter: “Following the greatest and most speculative bull market in history, we could have expected a severe and costly bear market which would have taken stocks back to great values. But because of the drastic, almost insane measures taken by the Greenspan Fed to battle the bear, this bear market will end with the death of the dollar as a reserve currency and most likely with the end to the US as the world’s sole superpower.” (Courtesy of D.B.)
Other states hear Ala.’s loud ‘no’ on taxes (USAToday):
States will have a hard time raising taxes to balance budgets following the decisive rejection by Alabama voters of the largest tax increase in state history.
Michael R. Sesit, writing in the Wall Street Journal ($), poses the question ”In a World of Bubbles, Which Will Pop Next?”. After reviewing a succession of bubles in paper assets and housing that have been inflating and popping in several countries over the last few years, he writes (sounding very Austrian):
Financial columnist Bill Bonner, a frequent critic of the world fiat money system, whacks recent efforts by the US government to get China to allow its currency to float. As Bonner has frequently opined, the dollar standard allows Americans to consume without producing and to spend without saving, by living at the expense of the rest of the world. Americans can do this because we pay with dollars that are created out of thin air, and everyone else accepts them. The rest of the world saves and we spend.
Chris Farrell of Scripps Howard News, for his “Sound Money” column, quotes Mark Thornton: “The stock market has largely held onto the gains of recent weeks. Apoplithorismosphobia is receding, too.
