Man the Pumps!

Was it just a Freudian slip that Greenspand started his recent encomium for Keynesian debasement with a reference to the Gold standard? It was probably inadvertent, but the contrast suggested between real, hard money, freely chosen by market processes, not arbitrarily by the State and its Financiers, was no less resonant for the fact that it was implicit, rather than as shockingly explicit as in Bernanke’s recent speech on the subject.

The Trial of Lott

Following Lott’s public flogging, many people were astonished by the Senator’s willingness to jettison all political principle for the sake of saving his status as Majority Leader. Why would a conservative Republican suddenly find himself embracing the full panoply of the left-wing racial agenda and criticize himself so mercilessly?

Can the Market Deliver Letters?

Like all government operations (public schools, domestic security, tax collection), the Post Office has to continually reform itself to avoid a complete public-relations meltdown. Thus did the Post Office become the Postal Service some twenty years ago. The Bush administration plans yet another version of this cosmetic change.

The Austrian Difference

It is possible for mainstream equilibrium economics to yield correct conclusions about the market system. But this is not a reliable approach, writes D.W. MacKenzie. The mathematical models of mainstream economics divert our attention from the processes and institutions that enable free and prosperous societies to exist and persist.

The Money Multiplier: Myth or Reality?

Most economists are of the view that the current monetary system amplifies the initial monetary injections of the central bank. Thus, according to a popular view, if the Fed injects $1 billion into the economy and banks have to hold only 10% in reserves against their deposits, this will cause a first bank to lend 90% of this $1 billion. The $900 million in turn will end up with a second bank, which will lend 90% of the $900 million. The remaining $810 million will end up with a third bank, which in turn will lend out 90% of $810 million, and so on. 

Why the Bill of Rights?

Few remember the reasons why the Federalists opposed the Bill of Rights, or why the Antifederalists (opponents of giving new power to the federal government) insisted that the new government be bound by them. However, since that debate still provides the basis for upholding our rights against federal assault, it remains as relevant today as two centuries ago.

H.L. Mencken: The Joyous Libertarian

This article originally appeared in the ”New Individualist Review,” vol. 2, no. 2, Summer 1962, pp. 15–27.

The extortions and oppressions of government will go on so long as such bare fraudulence deceives and disarms the victims—so long as they are ready to swallow the immemorial official theory that protesting against the stealings of the archbishop’s secretary’s nephew’s mistress’ illegitimate son is a sin against the Holy Ghost. ~ H. L. Mencken 

The Cone of Production

Given the economics of the cycle, writes Sean Corrigan, there are no easy choices. Standing the path of recovery are huge, perhaps unprecedented, imbalances, record indebtedness perched atop still-overblown asset prices, the ire of powerful vested interests, and a blind dedication to a whole pharmacopoeia of quack remedies and misdiagnoses.
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