Recent Podcast Episodes

If executed perfectly, this swap allows the Fed to neutralize a shrinking money supply by swapping $2 trillion in mortgages for $2 trillion in government debt. 

Francis Fukuyama wrote The End of History more than 30 years ago, believing that the fall of the communist bloc would lead to a more peaceful world. We are still waiting for that moment of peace.

The populist “victory” of the Trump administration is perhaps the best evidence yet that a strategy of “vote harder” is simply not going to lead to any significant change in the power of the regime.

Philosopher Matt Zwolinski has declared libertarianism to lack any coherent standards. Zwolinski’s confusion is the result of his rejection of libertarianism as outlined by Murray Rothbard and others based upon free markets based on individual rights.

The government created a market for stolen goods, paid criminals cash for five months, watched robberies spike, arrested everyone at a mafia-themed party.

The recent DOJ indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center might be controversial, but what is not controversial is that the SPLC engaged in conduct that was more reminiscent of the Ministry of Love in 1984 than protecting someone’s civil rights.

Gold markets have been volatile, to put it mildly, and the drama isn’t over. Unfortunately, governments are so involved in the gold markets that true market prices are hard to find.

In the late 1800s, American finally went in search of empire abroad, taking land by force and subjugating people who simply wanted their captors to leave.

When the recent NFL draft was held in Pittsburgh, city officials declared bus fares would be free so fans would pack the auditorium where the draft was held. Who would have thought that making scarce goods free would bring about chaos with the bus riders?

It's not enough for an ideology to merely have a "good argument." Historical conditions must also combine to delegitimize the regime and its institutions. 

As the US is involved in yet another pointless war, we would do well to remember the real costs of war, how it strips us of our liberties, and destroys our futures.

Bob responds to a new working paper from the Geo-chartalism project, which claims to offer a complete theory of the price level by combining insights from Menger, Cantillon, and Warren Mosler.

The bulk of the US gold reserves held in Fort Knox are made up of impure “non-standard” bars that don’t qualify for use in international settlements.

The aggregate net worth of all Americans is $170 trillion. Total government liabilities (on and off the books) are $160 trillion. Rick Rule: "I just don't understand how that great big large number goes away." Neither does the Fed.

The UK does not have an energy problem, it has a freedom problem.

Luck egalitarians fallaciously declare property and wealth to be illegitimate or at least suspect due to a mysterious, unquantifiable force called luck. Their arguments fail even if what they claim about luck is true.

Ryan McMaken, Jonathan Newman, and Joshua Mawhorter of the Mises Institute take a look at the politics of "fedspeak" and what officials at the Federal Reserve really mean when they say they're going to fix the Fed.

The old republic is gone. The constitutional order of the Jeffersonian years—i.e., the so-called "American experiment"—was swept away long ago.

The dearth of child-bearing in western countries like the US is seen as a political crisis. Yet, if there is any place in our lives where government should stay out, it is in the area of childbirth.

The Trump administration’s downsizing USAID has brought the usual claims: that without US aid, millions of poor people around the world will die of starvation and disease. Not surprisingly, the claims are exaggerated.