Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Minor Issues podcast. I am Mark Thornton at the Mises Institute.

The great reckoning seems to be following the course that I have been charting by guesswork. In other words, the great trainwreck seems to be happening. Let’s see what we are experiencing so far.

Interest rates appear to be headed out of their long inversion. My anticipation was that the economy would not enter recession when interest rates started to invert, but rather when they started to reverse the inversion.

The mid 2000s saw a new intellectual movement emerge on the scene under the name of “New Atheism.” Representatives of the movement saw themselves as champions of the scientific method, of evidence-based reasoned analysis of the facts against the mystical, primitive superstitions of organized religion and all the societal, political and cultural harm it allegedly produces.

In June, the Texas Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit claiming that the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) had broken the law when it set the wholesale price of electricity at $9,000 per megawatt hour for about 80 hours during the Texas blackouts that occurred during Winter Storm Uri in February 2021.

Last month, Britain made a dangerous swing to the left. Private education has been attacked, more public housing, the promotion of environmental Marxism, and much more. But that isn’t to say there wasn’t an unspoken gospel among the main parties concerning the deliberate impoverishment of the British Isles. Merely aesthetic differences separate them.

In Race & Economics, Walter Williams emphasizes the importance of causality in understanding racial inequality. He argues that it is not enough to document and track economic inequality — it is necessary also to understand its causes.

The recent market weakness suggests a combination of profit-taking and concerns about the latest United States jobs and manufacturing figures, added to the abrupt unwinding of part of the yen carry trade. Valuations had soared and market participants now demand central bank easing. However, rate cuts may not be enough to send markets to new all-time highs. Money supply growth and quantitative easing are needed to maintain these valuations.

One of the oldest weapons against politics is humor, and it is precisely this that politicians detest the most.