Recent Podcast Episodes

Mark Thornton dives into the misunderstood world of precious metal premiums.

It was no secret that President Franklin Roosevelt hated Germany and all things German. Heavily influenced by Silas Marcus MacVane. FDR embraced MacVane's left-leaning progressivism.

Many "social justice" advocates claim to appeal to a “higher law,” but they usually refuse to acknowledge economic laws because those laws stand in their way of creating the "just" society.

This week we cover the Fed's latest policy meeting, the awful new jobs report, and rising debt levels 

The long-awaited biography of William F. Buckley Jr. is hardly worth the wait of thirty years. David Brady, Jr., reviews it, saving our readers the pain of reading themselves.

While Hayek did not write directly about the American Civil War, some of his writings provide insights on the conflict.

While it is true that colonial era governments sometimes burned paper money after receiving it in the form of taxation, why they burned the money is for reasons other than what MMT advocates are claiming. In the end, the MMT promoters are telling a false history.

Rothbard took the American Revolution to be mainly libertarian in its inspiration, but he contends that the libertarian impulses of the Revolution were betrayed by a centralizing coup d’état.

Not only are modern monetary theory (MMT) cultists dishonest about the role of money, they also are dishonest about money‘s history. By taking issue with Carl Menger‘s historical version, they expose their own ignorance of how money came about.

We like to think of the “deep state” as a conspiratorial entity. In reality, the term describes much of what the federal government does in broad daylight.

Abraham Lincoln is best known for his role as a wartime president, but his economic policies were a precursor to the New Deal. From railroad subsidies to a national banking system, Lincoln paved the way to the Progressive Era and beyond.

EU Central Bank President Christine Lagarde has declared that anything that might lead to private currencies must be stopped. Yet, as F.A. Hayek noted, one way to confound central banks is through private currencies.

America recently celebrated Independence Day, but Americans were too quick to abandon their own individual freedoms and individual sovereignty and submit to the state.

The Trump administration has withdrawn its promised $4 billion for the California Bullet Train project because this project does not have a viable future. While they may complete the 171-mile Central Valley portion, the rest of the project is dead in the water.

The proper answer to who should be Fed chairman is…nobody. Nobody knows the “correct” interest rate.

President Trump is proposing a $1.5 million levy on Chinese-built ships that enter US harbors. Since a majority of cargo ships have been produced by Chinese shipyards, the costs would be substantial. This action also would damage US exports, yet another unintended consequence of US policies.

The old classical liberal political tactics of constitutionalism, state building, and universal suffrage have clearly failed. 

The Federal Trade Commission has fined the makers of the video game Fortnite more than $500 million ostensibly for violations that have no legal basis. This is yet another case of the feds shaking down producers in the name of “consumer protection.”

Discussions of wages often miss the all-important economic of a worker‘s diminishing marginal value product (DMVP), and the WNBA is no exception.

The White House is boasting about a new trade “deal” with the EU. But every supposed benefit that comes from the agreement applies only to a small subset of the country while leaving the American public, as a whole, worse off.