Money Creation—Not Low Interest Rates—Is Behind the Boom-Bust Cycle
When it comes to understanding business cycles, Austrian school scholars stand on firm ground while critic John Tamny is all at sea.
When it comes to understanding business cycles, Austrian school scholars stand on firm ground while critic John Tamny is all at sea.
France faces a future of spiraling debt and declining economic growth. So Emmanuel Macron has now embraced economic nationalism as a way out. It's not likely to work.
With oil prices in likely long-term tailspin, corrupt governments can't count on oil sales to bail them out anymore. But Mexico's government didn't get the memo and still clings to the state oil monopoly.
Thirty million Americans are now unemployed, in part thanks to government "lockdowns." Meanwhile, unemployment in many cases doubles the unemployed person's risk of death through disease, suicide, or drug overdose.
Proponents of mandatory vaccines and enhanced surveillance are trying to blackmail the American people by arguing that the lockdown cannot end unless we create a healthcare surveillance state and make vaccination mandatory.
Although the money supply has greatly increased, accompanying growth in production has it possible to keep the current system of immense debt increase going for a long time.
The lockdowns of the past month have not been conducive to the common good. While they have saved the lives of many people, they have also endangered—and are still endangering—the lives and livelihoods of many others. They have created a new and dangerous political precedent.
Can tort law play a positive role in how we deal with infectious diseases? Accad and Koka interview Dorit Reiss, a professor at UC Hastings College of the Law.
Debt-ridden countries such as Italy will come to rely more and more on Germans and other northern Europeans to finance their debt. This will require a more unified Europe. Or the whole thing may collapse.
We continue our survey of Human Action by finishing up Part Six of the book, Mises's analysis of interventionism.
BBC images from India show the human toll of the coronavirus shutdown. Americans should take note, and soon.
Many argue that unregulated markets would fail due to lack of consumer knowledge, or information asymmetry. But competition in free markets actually gives rise to all kinds of mechanisms that help consumers make informed decisions. This is as true of medical tests for any other good.
Thanks to the growth of the state over time, political stakes have become much higher, and groups fear that they will be crushed by the other side if they lose. Crisis-induced cohesion is not a silver bullet, but rather a ticking time bomb.
The whole idea of government regulating so-called monopolies in order to promote competition is based on fallacies. If anything, such intervention only stifles market competition and lowers living standards.
Bob Murphy tackles some Keynesian and MMT fallacies that have resurfaced in light of the response to the coronavirus.
"Saving lives versus saving money" comparisons confuse ends with means. The end of saving the economy is not to have more money. The end is to have resources necessary to preserve the lives and health of countless human beings.
Government restrictions on production are driving prices up as unemployment drives them down. It's impossible to say now whether price inflation or price deflation will be the predominant factor in the crisis's next phase.