Every so often, I check my investment portfolio to see how it is doing. (I stay out of stocks these days, but that is due to my personal situation and is not to be taken as investment advice.) Portfolios are collections of various financial instruments that one is holding, and one always hopes that their value will head in the right direction over
Economists and pundits mistakenly call the Federal Reserve System’s security holdings a portfolio. It is anything but. Original Article: “The Fed’s Portfolio Is Nonexistent: The Fed Does Not Invest. It Destroys Investments” This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher
The Free Market 20, no. 11 (November 2002) As the markets continue to wallow in bear territory, and as consumer—and, more important, investor—confidence falls, writers and commentators of all stripes have weighed in to give their two cents’ worth concerning the key question: who or what is at fault? Not surprisingly, Democrats have
The Free Market 23, no. 7 (July 2003) No one can argue about the current moribund economy, complete with falling stock prices, nonexistent profits, layoffs, airline bankruptcies, and exploding federal and state budget deficits. People certainly have argued about the cause of this downturn, but few people have accurately pointed out why there is
The Free Market 18, no. 8 (August 2000) The president of the United States was ecstatic. Never had economic prospects in this country looked better. Unemployment was at its lowest level in years, the rate of inflation was relatively low, and the economy had grown continuously for almost eight years. No doubt, said the experts, this country was
The Free Market 19, no. 6 (June 2001) Myths are myths, whether told by storytellers or by Tom Brokaw on NBC Nightly News . Brokaw has recently taken to telling his viewers that the consumer is spending enough to prevent a recession. The reasoning goes as such: Confident consumers do not fear the future, which means they spend almost all (if not
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 latest figures coming from government statisticians reveal that a few problems may be coming down the road. For many years, Americans have been told that we can have easy money from Alan Greenspan’s Federal Reserve and no perceptible inflation, all at the same time. While the whole thing was a lie from the beginning, there was at least the
As the stock markets continue to fall and economic indicators point toward a recession, Democratic politicians are reviving charges that President George W. Bush has been “talking down” the economy. My first reaction to such charges, other than to dismiss them as nonsense, is to wonder whether or not politicians ought to be accusing their rivals
Bush supporters (and especially the editorial writers of the Washington Times and The Wall Street Journal ) seem relieved now that A lan Greenspan has officially proclaimed that the recession that began a year ago is now over. Even as people in New York City observed a brief period of silence to mark six months since the September 11
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