The Free Market 20, no. 1 (January 2002) In the post-attack world, in which politicians attempt to impose the national security state at home and wage war abroad, a simple point has been obscured: it all started with a multiple hijacking. The theft of the planes was made possible not with grenades or heavy explosives but with box cutters—the
The Free Market 20, no. 2 (February 2002) Shortly after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush created an Office of Homeland Security. How many of us have stopped to ponder the meaning of that action? For more than fifty years, the United States has maintained an active—some might say
The Free Market 20, no. 2 (February 2002) Economists are fond of writing open letters to politicians in attempts to lead them down “proper” policy paths. In 1930, a thousand economists signed an open letter to President Herbert Hoover asking him not to sign the infamous Smoot-Hawley Tariff. Hoover signed it anyway, creating one more disastrous
The Free Market 20, no. 2 (February 2002) With Greenspan’s widely reported “rate cuts” this fall, most people would probably be surprised to find out that the federal funds rate is not set by Greenspan. It would also probably surprise these same people to learn that only weeks after short-term rates hit rock bottom, longer-term rates rose
The Free Market 20, no. 2 (February 2002) Consumer protection regulation is the consumer’s worst nightmare. In fact, it is not protective at all. It is merely another one of those regulatory rackets that has the appearance of providing necessary security for a collective group in an entirely positive sense while encompassing no negatives. After
The Free Market 20, no. 3 (March 2002) The mortgage markets of America are on the verge of nationalization. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Home Loan Bank System (all government-sponsored enterprises, or GSEs) have become giants in the mortgage markets. The Big Three have grown at such a rapid rate over recent years that at the end of
The Free Market 20, no. 3 (March 2002) As with all economic calamities, pundits will find some way to blame the meltdown and collapse of Argentina on capitalism, deregulation, or the private sector generally. Such nonsense. This crisis is a product of government incompetence, made to order by the IMF, the Argentine political leadership, and the
The Free Market 20, no. 3 (March 2002) My first “real job,” the summer before my senior year in high school, was selling shoes in a small retail store in my hometown. The job paid only what was then the federal minimum wage, $3.35 an hour, but, then, my labor was probably barely worth that. At least the work was honest and productive. The
The Free Market 20, no. 3 (March 2002) On May Day 1971, the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, later known as Amtrak, took over a group of overregulated bankrupt private railroads. Officials of Amtrak, which is a blending of the words American and track, announced that the government would make money on these bankrupt railroads. The public
The Free Market 20, no. 4 (April 2002) If the Enron bankruptcy proves anything, it is that there are sinners in all walks of life, and that the market economy provides mechanisms for rooting out and punishing systematic liars. Those who clamor for Congress to “do something” to assure that this kind of thing will never happen again are
What is the Mises Institute?
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.