To stay in power, governments have to keep spending money. They need to give money to their friends, to give money to their supporters, to carry out their various projects, and—most expensive of all—to have wars.
Alex J. Pollock
Alex J. Pollock is a Senior Fellow at the Mises Institute, and is the co-author of Surprised Again! — The Covid Crisis and the New Market Bubble (2022). Previously he served as the Principal Deputy Director of the Office of Financial Research in the U.S. Treasury Department (2019-2021), Distinguished Senior Fellow at the R Street Institute (2015-2019 and 2021), Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (2004-2015), and President and CEO, Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago (1991-2004). He is the author of Finance and Philosophy—Why We’re Always Surprised (2018) and Boom and Bust: Financial Cycles and Human Prosperity (2011), as well as numerous articles and Congressional testimony. Pollock is a graduate of Williams College, the University of Chicago, and Princeton University. His professional and academic work is available on his website.
