We’re about six weeks into fiscal year 2024, but if this year looks anything like last year, we can assume the federal government will continue to pile up debt at astonishing rates. 

The U.S. Attorney’s office in the Eastern District of Louisiana just sent out a press release reporting that a New Orleans federal judge has sentenced a 28-year-old man, Derek Nolan, to 15 years in a federal penitentiary for drug-related crimes. 

For decades, I have worked to make the Mises Institute the world center for Misesian and Rothbardian economics it has become, and I’m glad to say that our Board of Directors has chosen a new president, Tom DiLorenzo, who is a great scholar and who will lead the Institute to new victories for freedom and Austrian economics. In this week’s column, I’d like to discuss some of Tom’s ideas.

As I wrote in my previous piece on statism and the Israel-Hamas conflict, states are organized crime rackets. Wars between states thus represent warfare between rival gangs. The proper libertarian position with reference to such gang wars is neutrality, or the opposition to all state parties to war. Neutrality includes opposition to interventionism, including opposition to sending arms and aid to other nations.

The Bureau of Labor Statistic (BLS) released new jobs data on Friday. According to the report, seasonally adjusted total nonfarm jobs rose 150,000 jobs in October, month over month. The unemployment rate rose slightly from 3.8 percent to 3.9 percent over the same period. 

Econometric model building attempts to produce a laboratory with controlled variables. By means of mathematical and statistical methods, an economist establishes functional relationships between various economic variables.

For example, personal consumer outlays are related to personal disposable income and interest rates, while fixed capital investments are explained by the past stock of capital, interest rates, and economic activity. A group of such estimated relations constitutes an econometric model.