The GSE Report , a watchdog of the housing agencies, keeps a close eye on these government-subsidized agencies that are fueling the housing bubble by packaging mortgages into “riskless” assets with the implicity promise of a government guarantee. Fannie purchases mortgage-backed securities that are packaged by banks, then underwrites them and
Alexei Bayer and Kenneth Silber, writing in the WSJ , say that failure of price indexes to rise more substantially discredits the economics profession (why the spate [or is it slew?] of such pieces?). Two questions before quoting from the piece below: first, is it really low inflation when the CPI itself shows a 50% theft of dollar purcashing
Richard Duncan, author of The Dollar Crisis (reviewed: here ) writes today in The Financial Times of London (paid subscriber section), Japan’s monetary alchemy may not yield gold The most aggressive experiment in monetary policy ever conducted is now under way. Japan is printing yen in order to buy dollars in such extraordinary amounts that global
Jim Puplava on the explosion of global liquidity that central banks are undertaking: The world is awash in liquidity with helicopter money that is printed out of thin air and dumped on to the financial system. Central banks everywhere are injecting vast amounts of credit and money into the financial system. Fiscal and monetary policy is focused on
Economist Paul Kasriel looks at the GDP measured not in dollars but in gold and finds that it peaked in 2001 has been declining since. Kasriel says: “ ‘real’ GDP peaked in 2001, and has declined for two successive years since. Of course, this is consistent with the notion that a nation’s standard of living
The fascinating Australian web site of Leithner & Co., Pty. Ltd. contains a wealth of material combining economic theory, financial economics, and Benjamin Graham’s views on investing. Some interesting places to start: Why Have They All Been Fooled? (on fallacies of consumption versus savings) A Tale of Two Islands (on savings and investment) GDP
The investing public’s disdain for dividends and fascination with capital growth has a precedent. In our last great bubble, the 1920s, the same thing happened. Why should companies pay out dividends? It is a way for the management to prove that they are really earning the cash that they claim to be. It is one way of overcoming the “agency problem”
Gerard Jackson takes on Greenspan’s insane policy of encouraging debt-funded consumption instead of allowing a liquidation of mal-investments: http://www.brookesnews.com/041201usrecession.html
The current issue of City Journal features an article The ADA Shakedown Racket . This article describes a trend of entrepreneurial lawyers filing multiple lawsuits against business for violionts of ADA regulations. The lawsuits are filed on behalf of disabled people who are recruited for this purpose, because such a lawsuit requires a plaintoff,
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.