Recent Podcast Episodes

There won't be a taper tantrum if the Fed seriously moves toward tapering. Investors now understand how the game works. Tapering doesn't actually mean the end of monetary inflation, and everyone knows it.

Because people strive to improve their condition, they exchange goods and, in this sense, they create the necessary conditions for the emergence of prices. Prices are simply an unintended consequence of the human quest to improve one's life.

Eleven states ban happy hour. These laws restrict the sale of alcohol at discounted prices during specially designated times. Unfortunately, many citizens regard these backdoor price controls as perfectly legit.

Many Lithuanian politicians are embracing outright segregation of unvaccinated Lithuanians. Fortunately, many Lithuanians are resisting. This fight is not about opposing vaccines, but about protecting basic freedom of choice.

Some think that beer's history of regulation begins with hops, but beer has been hemmed in by government red tape for much longer.

Gold was only included in the plans for the Bretton Woods system because of the veneer of solidity it gave.

The gold standard supposed a limit to the fiscal voracity of governments, and suspending it unleashed the perverse proclivity of the states toward indebtedness and to pass the current imbalances on to future generations.

Robert Murphy joins the show for a fascinating look at Mark Spitznagel's new book Safe Haven. If you're interested in the intersection of investing and Austrian economics, don't miss this episode!

In 1971, Nixon used a fiscal crisis to justify severing the dollar's last connection to gold. It was the same old story: "we must vastly expand government power because of a 'crisis.'" The government never gives up these new powers.

The collapse of the monetary order in 1971 reflected the massive dislocations and malinvestment of resources that ultimately turned the decade into one crisis after another. Keynesians are doing something similar today.

Bob gives a brief history of money in the United States, explaining that the dollar was much “harder” in, say, 1810 than it was in 1910.

Victor Davis Hanson's cartoonish conception of how foreign states act is not supported by history and contributes to the US government’s insane defense expenditures and destructive crusades around the globe.

Most Egyptians have lived their whole lives in a country where the government heavily subsidizes bread prices. But now the deeply indebted Egyptian state faces some tough choices, and Egypt's poor may suffer the most.

Fifty years after Nixon closed the gold window, prices are heading toward 1970s-era increases. Yet the Fed cannot increase interest rates as long as the politicians keep creating billions of new debts.

Even at a "mere" two-percent level, cumulative price increases over time are nothing to scoff at. Even worse, if we look at what people really spend money on, price inflation doesn't much reflect the conclusions of "official" stats.

Nixon’s closing the gold window should be seen as the end of the last remnant of the gold standard, not some kind of market failure. Governments controlled most of the gold and set its price.

Was covid merely the excuse to justify new police powers under the guise of public health—powers politicians will use to impose draconian controls in the future?

After more than a year of unprecedented state intervention in our private lives, have Americans accepted a grim "new normal"?

John Tamny chronicles the profound ignorance and malfeasance of policymakers at all levels during 2020.

In 1971, David Rockefeller favored a “new international monetary system with greater flexibility” and “less reliance on gold.” Seeing an opportunity to expand his own power, Richard Nixon enthusiastically embraced the scheme.