The Russian central bank recently announced that it will stop buying gold at a fixed rate and will instead buy it at the negotiated rate from banks. Following the numerous sanctions imposed on Russia, the ruble had fallen tremendously against the US dollar, to get out of such a situation it had announced that it would buy gold at a fixed price of five thousand rubles a gram until June 30.

As hard as it is to believe, the Chinese regime is still employing a “zero covid” strategy and claims it can eradicate covid entirely through lockdowns and vaccinations. China’s draconian, nightmarish, near-total lockdown policy—which is notably still “necessary” in spite of widespread vaccination—has recently been revived in Shanghai, where residents are now struggling to find food.

Both Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard thought highly of Alfred Schutz, an Austrian philosopher and sociologist who studied with Mises in Vienna and worked as both an academic and an investment banker in Austria and later in the United States. (He spelled his last name “Schűtz” in Austria but Anglicized it to “Schutz.”) In today’s column, I’m going to talk about a few things we can learn from his book The Phenomenology of the Social World, which was published in German in 1932 and appeared in English translation in 1967.

Physicist John Stewart Bell said:

The scientific attitude is that correlations cry out for explanation.

Using the Federal Reserve’s data, see the Consumer Price Index (blue line) left axis and M1 Money Supply (red line) right axis for the 14 month period of January 2021 to February 2022:

[Editor’s note: Earlier this month Dr. Hans-Hermann Hoppe appeared on SERVUS TV for a discussion “On State, War, Europe, Decentralization and Neutrality.” An English translation of the transcript was prepared by Leonhard Paul, a law student from Germany.]

Interviewer: I would like to welcome our second guest in the studio. It is the philosopher and economist with an international range Hans-Hermann Hoppe. Nice to meet you, Mr. Hoppe.

The dream of a united Europe, the eternal longing of the empire. Do you also dream this dream?

While the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s expansion has been a central issue in the Russian decision to go to war with Ukraine, this is certainly not the only issue. Moscow has repeatedly maintained that a central factor in its decision was the protection of ethnic Russian minorities in eastern Ukraine from human rights abuses committed by the Ukrainian state.