Good News Paul Krugman has declared a “better-than-Goldilocks soft landing” due to (his favored) measures of price inflation reaching two percent and real GDP growing at 3.3 percent. Bad News Credit card delinquency has doubled since 2021. Regional bank stocks fell over 10% after Powell’s FOMC press conference. The civilian labor force has fallen
Many are questioning the Federal Reserve’s political independence lately. A reporter asked about it at the end of Chair Powell’s FOMC press conference , and it also came up in Powell’s 60 Minutes interview : PELLEY: Your decisions inevitably are going to have a bearing on this year’s election. And I wonder, to what degree does politics determine
Stock markets tumbled this morning when the January Consumer Price Index (CPI) data came in hotter than expected. If you are wondering what the connection could be, the answer is that higher-than-expected price inflation means a longer-than-expected wait for the Fed to cut its interest rate target. It’s clear that financial markets are addicted to
Five days before the last Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting, Tho Bishop wrote about how the Fed and other agencies are preparing for a crisis without telling everyone they are preparing for a crisis. In his article, he showed how the Fed and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency were working on a policy that would require banks
Total public debt reached $34,001,493,655,565.48 at the end of 2023, with over $2.5 trillion added since the end of 2022. The U.S. Treasury reported $6.1 trillion in outlays, but only $4.4 trillion in receipts for the 2023 fiscal year, resulting in a deficit of almost $1.7 trillion. Figure 1: Cumulative receipts and outlays of the U.S. government
About a month ago, I called out Paul Krugman for blaming economic pessimism on Republicans. He compared the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index to what he sees as a “surreally good” economy and came to the conclusion that the survey respondents must be warped by partisanship. Instead of honestly reporting about their views about the
The Babylon Bee advertises itself as “Fake news you can trust.” The outlet produces the best satirical news, and this is especially true ever since big Democrat donors acquired large stakes in The Onion and turned it into the comedic equivalent of FDA-approved fiber cereal. At least it keeps us regular ly updated on the fact that The Left Can’t
Paul Krugman is desperate to declare victory over inflation and that a soft landing has been achieved. His latest victory lap op-ed cites the Atlanta Fed’s survey of Business Inflation Expectations (BIE), which has settled down to 2.2 percent for the coming 12 months. The BIE reflects about 200 Atlanta-area business executives’ responses to survey
Ludwig von Mises’s Economic Policy: Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow has become quite popular recently. The Mises Book Store has sold out of its physical copies, and the PDF, which is available online for free , has seen over 50,000 downloads in the past few days. This surge in interest in Mises’s ideas was started by UFC fighter Renato Moicano,
The Bureau of Economic Analysis released January figures for Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) today, including the price index based on that data. News headlines report the year-over-year percent change in the PCE price index: 2.4%. This gives the impression that price inflation is heading towards the Federal Reserve’s supposed target of
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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.