Long before Ludwig von Mises wrote The Theory of Money and Credit and Socialism, Goldwin Smith was sounding the warning about paper money.

Readers might have seen recent advertisements on television in which former Alabama football coach Nick Saban urges people to support the Protect College Sports Act. Sponsored by Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, along with three other Republicans and four Democrats, the bill looks to reorganize college athletics to deal with this new era of monetary payments to athletes and other changes that have occurred in the last five years.

The Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) today announced that it will increase the target federal funds rate by 25 basis points to 4.0 percent. This comes after nine months of the FOMC holding the policy rate at 3.75 percent. 

The rate hike was no surprise and had been widely predicted by numerous observers. Stubbornly high price-inflation levels, coupled with August’s relatively stable employment data gave the FOMC political cover for a rate hike.

On the American Left, a familiar idea has taken root: that slavery was not just one feature of the young republic’s economy but its actual engine, the true source of the wealth that later carried the United States into industrial preeminence.