When I interviewed for a teaching job at private college in Alabama more than twenty years ago, the recently elected governor had won partly on a platform in which the state would install a lottery system that would give students a $3,000 grant for college. As the provost and I discussed the prospects of this new program, he smiled and said, “We hope this lottery passes. Then we can raise tuition by $3,000.”

(The Alabama legislature, despite being controlled at the time by members of the governor’s party, failed to pass and implement the lottery.)

One of the most anticipated events on the Central Banking calendar commenced this week: Jackson Hole, where “policymakers, academics and economists from around the world” gathered to discuss plans for the future. Powell gave his much-anticipated speech on Friday, quickly getting to the tough talk:

According to commentators, countering inflation requires monetary authorities to actively restrain the economy, with “experts” believing that higher interest rates need not cause an economic slump. Instead, they believe that the Fed cab orchestrate a “soft landing.” It is questionable, however. that a soft-landing scenario is possible.

Few technological changes have been criticized as much as the enclosure movement, strongly associated with the British Isles, but actually rooted in the Netherlands. Consider this definition of the movement offered by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF):

Over the present year we have experienced record-breaking price inflation, a series of interest rate hikes, and an overall fall in stock prices. It is widely accepted that there is a bubble. A good way for Misesians to measure this is by comparing the price of capital (stock prices) to its replacement cost (book value). A normal ratio for the overall market should be close to one. Such a ratio means that value is being properly imputed, and that the structure of production properly reflects real preferences and relative scarcity.

There is a story of war and peace in the contemporary currency markets. It has a main plot and many subplots. As yet, the story is without end. That may come sooner than many now expect.

The narrator today has a more challenging job than the teller of the story about neutral, Entente, and Central Power currencies during World War I. (See Brown, Brendan “Monetary Chaos in Europe” chapter 2 [Routledge, 2011].)