True story: Many weekends during my studies in Changzhou, China, my friends and I would go out to have a drink only to realize that our favorite bar was not open that night. In fact, all of the city’s clubs would be closed. The reason? Police had decided to crack down on these nightclubs. These would mostly be drug-related crackdowns, but other reasons such as prostitution would make the list. This seemed to happen in cycles. Once the crackdown happened, things would cool down and gradually build up again to reach a climax, in which another crackdown would happen.

Relief is spreading among economic analysts and stock market experts. Energy prices are decreasing noticeably. The energy supply this winter seems secure; in Europe, government support for consumers and producers is available if needed. China is turning away from its zero-covid policy, and production is ramping up again. High goods price inflation is still a major concern for consumers and producers, but central banks are delivering at least some interest rate hikes to hopefully reduce currency devaluation. So should we bid farewell to crisis and recession worries? Unfortunately, no.

On January 10, the French government announced plans to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. The change would mean that after 2027, workers in France would have to work 43 years to qualify for a government pension, instead of 42 years. French workers promptly took to the street in protest decrying even this very small reduction government welfare. 

I am sorry to have to report that Yuri Maltsev has passed away. He was a professor of economics at Carthage College in Wisconsin. He held various government and research positions in Moscow, Russia. Before defecting to the United States in 1989, he was a member of a senior economics team that worked on President Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms package of perestroika. Before settling in the Midwest, he was a senior fellow at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, DC. a US federal research agency.

The macroeconomic situation in Japan seems to be coming to a head. When the Bank of Japan, under its President Haruhiko Kuroda, announced on December 20, 2022, that it would raise its interest rate ceiling on ten-year Japanese government bonds from 0.25 percent to 0.50 percent, share prices in Tokyo plummeted and the Japanese yen appreciated sharply.

At the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos this year, Klaus Schwab gave a televised interview where he said that stakeholder capitalism will become the ideal economic system for efficiently allocating resources in order to “master ze future.” However, the problem with Schwab’s stakeholder capitalism is that it is inconsistent with its stated ends. Furthermore, Schwab’s ideas are not new. Most of them are variations of old ideas like social responsibility and fixing market failures.

If you live in the United States, you are most likely familiar with empty storefronts, especially in malls. Once-great shopping centers are now suffering vacancies and a lack of patrons. To the readers of mises.org, it should not be surprising that the government is largely responsible. The state, through various interventions, has led to more vacant storefronts and financially struggling malls than there would be otherwise. Let me explain using a personal anecdote.

Some economists have suggested that inflation results when the money supply expands faster than the rate at which goods and services are produced. They correctly point out that this expansion of the money supply will generally lead to rising prices. But what most economists fail to mention is that inflation can exist even when prices are stable.