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. 5 (May 2002) We are inundated by the forces of malevolence and deceit: terrorists, lying CEOs, stock hustlers, power-mad politicians, conniving regulators, conspiring pressure groups, and paid-off pundits. They seem to be everywhere. Revelations about Enron and its political connections remind us that even the business
The Free Market 20, no. 6 (June 2002) The headlines of the business pages have been trumpeting the arrival of recovery now for months. How do the experts decide when recession has turned to recovery? By looking at the data, which come in packages labeled in various ways: the GDP, the leading indicators, the unemployment rate, industrial
The Free Market 20, no. 7 (July 2002) Economic life is an intricate global system of exchange, one that works without any central direction. It generates prosperity and its own form of order within the framework of liberty. This is what is sometimes termed the magic of the marketplace, and we should never under-estimate its power. We can see by
The Free Market 20, no. 9 (September 2002) So long greenbacks; hello pinkbacks. So says the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, which promises to start changing the color of money next fall, beginning with the $20 bill. This bill already received a makeover four years ago. By inflating Andrew Jackson’s head, giving him a vague postmodern look,
The Free Market 20, no. 10 (October 2002) What a sight: the legislative and executive branches of government celebrating as they impose new criminal codes against corporate fraud, each politician trying to outdo the other in their moral outrage against business. These are people who created and guard what is perhaps the greatest financial fraud
In an awful, but not unexpected, ruling on a long-standing dispute between Europe and the US, the World Trade Organization says that the US must stop permitting US exporters to set up foreign subsidiaries that save as much as 30 percent in taxes they would otherwise pay. Now the US must either raise taxes by eliminating loopholes or face massive
In its dealings with foreign nations, the U.S. generally tries to maintain the moral high ground in its pronouncements and policies. But by slapping a 30-percent tariff on foreign steel, the U.S. has hit rock bottom in hypocrisy and favoritism, and everyone knows it. The idea here is to help one inefficient, bloated, and pampered industry at the
This speech by the president of the Mises Institute was given before students, professors, trustees, and others at an awards dinner sponsored by the Adam Smith Club, Campbell University, Buies Creek, North Carolina, April 4, 2002 . Rockwell and entrepreneur Lewis Fetterman received the club’s Free Enterprise Award . Free-market economics, of which
Among the greatest failures of the free-market intellectual movement has been to allow its ideas to be categorized as a “public policy” option. The formulation implies a concession that it is up to the state--its managers and kept intellectuals--to decide how, when, and where freedom is to be permitted. It further implies that the purpose of
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.