I am sorry to have to report that Ralph Raico has passed away. His intellectual brilliance was evident from an early age, and while still in high school, he attended Ludwig von Mises’s seminar at New York University. There he met Murray Rothbard, who became his lifelong friend. Ralph was one of the most brilliant members of Rothbard’s Circle
Annali D’Italianistica , “Speaking Truth to Power: From Medieval to Modern Italy.” Volume 34, 2016. Edited by Jo Ann Cavallo and Carlo Lottieri. The great historian of the Italian Renaissance Jacob Burckhardt said, “Power is evil,” and Jo Ann Cavalho and Carlo Lottieri, the co-editors of this volume, would with one caveat agree with him. They
Mervyn King is the British Ben Bernanke. An eminent academic economist, who now teaches both at New York University and the London School of Economics, King was from 2003 to 2013 Governor of the Bank of England. In short, he is a very big deal. Remarkably, in The End of Alchemy he frequently sounds like Murray Rothbard. King identifies a basic
Where Bernie Went Wrong: And Why His Remedies Will Just Make Crony Capitalism Worse . By Hunter Lewis. Axios Press, 2016. 284 pages. Hunter Lewis has rendered a great service with his new book. Writing from an Austrian perspective, he has given us the definitive analysis of the Bernie Sanders phenomenon. Though Sanders did not win the Democratic
The End of Alchemy: Money, Banking, and the Future of the Global Economy by Mervyn W. King W.W. Norton & Co. 2016 xv + 431 pages Mervyn King is the British Ben Bernanke. An eminent academic economist, who now teaches both at New York University and the London School of Economics, King was from 2003 to 2013 Governor of the Bank of England. In
A recent article in Bloomberg Markets by Michelle Jamrisko brings welcome news. “The gold standard is one of the oldest ideas about money, but the hardest of hard-money hawks sense an opening to breathe new life into it.” Unfortunately, those in search of information about the gold standard and its supporters will find little of use in the
William Weld, a former Governor of Massachusetts, has recently announced his intention to run for Vice-President on the Libertarian Party ticket, in concert with Gary Johnson. Weld has been since the 1990s greatly in favor at the Cato Institute, but Murray Rothbard viewed him with disdain. He often referred to Weld in the pages of The Rothbard
Fascism: The Career of a Concept . By Paul E. Gottfried. Northern Illinois University Press, 2016. Vii + 226 pages. Paul Gottfried’s immensely erudite survey of interpretations of fascism puts one in mind of Ludwig von Mises. Although Gottfried does not discuss Mises, readers of his excellent book will again and again be surprised and instructed
In a speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors on April 3, 2012, President Obama called a budget proposal of his Republican opponents in Congress “thinly veiled Social Darwinism.” What did did the president mean by this comment? The budget proposal in question, he claimed, would require drastic cuts in government programs designed to aid
[ Debating War: Why Arguments Opposing American Wars and Interventions Fail . By David J. Lorenzo. Routledge, 2016. viii + 233 pages.] David Lorenzo, a professor of international affairs at the National Chengchi University in Taiwan, has undertaken an ambitious task. America has engaged in many wars throughout its history, and all of them have
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.