Douglas French

Articles

04/28/2025 Power & Market Douglas French

The gold price kissed $3,500 last week before backing off. The yellow metal’s price has churned violently up and down $50 to $100 daily. For some gold bugs, this price level seemed unimaginable...

Shower Heads Likely Going to Supreme Court

04/23/2025 Power & Market Douglas French

The first article in Jeffrey Tucker’s Bourbon for Breakfast is “The Bureaucrat in Your Shower” from 2006. Although I worked side-by-side with Jeffrey at the Mises Institute, I had no idea American...

Mercantilism Smells Like Stagflation

04/19/2025 Power & Market Douglas French

After two days of panic selling of stocks, recession and stagflation have become part of the conversation. Joshua Zietz wrote for Politico, “Stagflation — “the s-word rippling through Wall Street and...

Publications

Walk Away: The Rise and Fall of the Home-Ownership Myth

11/18/2010 Douglas French

Housing, a central priority for government policy for many decades, collapsed in 2008; even today, millions of homes are under water. This poses many economic and ethical issues. This elegant and fact-filled book by Doug French examines the

Early Speculative Bubbles and Increases in the Supply of Money

08/19/1992 Douglas French

The Housing Bubble was hardly the first in human history. What’s eluded historians is the same issue that eludes commentators today: the underlying cause of bubbles. This book is the first (and only) book to solve the mystery of the most famous

Media

A Reply to Shostak: Can Increases in the Gold Supply Cause a Business Cycle?

01/23/2025 Douglas French

In replying to a previous article by Frank Shostak, Douglas French writes that if an increase in the supply of gold ultimately leads to an expansion of bank credit, that is enough to start the boom-and-bust cycles, even if there is no central bank to accelerate the process.

Today’s Pols Are All Bryanites

11/26/2024 Douglas French

In his failed 1896 presidential campaign, inflationist William Jennings Bryan declared that he would “not crucify mankind on a cross of gold.” But at least even Bryan favored silver money. Today‘s political candidates will crucify us on a cross of paper.

The Unsustainable AI-Driven Lending Boom

06/21/2024 Douglas French

The endless bubble economy has a new lending craze: loans backed by AI chips. The problem is that while the chips serve as collateral, companies right now cannot make enough revenue to cover their costs.

The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.

Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.