The points made in this article are not new. Namely: 1. The government conceals the extent of its operating budget deficit by counting Social Security revenue. 2. The real liability for Social Security and Medicare is huge. Even official figures peg it at $33.7 trillion over the next 75 years. What is unusual is such strong language coming from a
Tyler Cowen wonders whether we are in a housing bubble . Housing can be lived in, most buyers have only one home, transaction costs are relatively high, and rarely are homes sold and resold in a matter of days. All those features militate against a housing bubble. Japan and Hong Kong have in common with the US that people live in their homes.
Not according to Casey Research , who read the plan. Instead: ...the Bush plan specifies that upon retirement, workers would be returned only the amount that exceeded inflation-adjusted gains over 3 percent. The SSA hopefully projects a return of 4.6% above inflation; the Congressional Budget Office, less sanguine, thinks a 3.3% return is more
Ron McKenzie has submitted the following question to the BLOG: I can understand how in a free market for justice, a variety of justice providers would emerge. However, I cannot see how they would be effective without the power to coerce. I can see how they would be able to resolve a dispute over a contract, as both parties could agree to the
We are shocked, shocked, to read that governments of the largest welfare state nations may be unable to service their debts over time as an increasing fraction of their populations stop working and start collecting. This story explodes the mainstream finance view, which forms the basis of all financial asset pricing theory, that government bonds
Why have long rates fallen as the Fed has raised short rates? The answer I believe is Peter Warburton’s theory of financial asset inflation . Structural changes in financial markets have succeeded in funelling inflation into financial assets rather than the CPI. As the Fed expands money supply, much of the money created goes into the long bond
Jim Walker (an Austrian economist with the bank CLSA is reportedly forecasting another Asian crisis (Note: the Sydney Morning Herald requires registration to read the article, registration is free). (See also this in-depth study by Walker and others , although it is about 1 year old). The New York Times pipes in with Investment Bubble Builds China
The massive credit expansion that Austrians have been calling attention to since the mid-90s has morphed from a stock market bubble into a housing bubble. Whether there was, or was not, a stock market bubble was much disputed among mainstream media analysts until fairly late into the stock bear market. Now the existence (or not) of a housing
Future Shock at the Fed ( New York Times , requires free registration) O Sage! O Confidence Man ( Forbes magazine, requires free registration)
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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.