New York City’s government has imposed draconian rent controls. The natural outcome, as economists note, has been massive shortages, as apartment owners no longer have an incentive to rent empty apartments.
The right to be able to enter into contracts with others is fundamental to free markets and a free society. That means people should be able to engage in discrimination.
The United States survived the first Great Depression, although it permanently changed the role of government. Will excessive government spending and money creation lead to Great Depression II?
Open-borders advocates often point to the alleged openness of borders between the individual states in the USA. However, a closer look shows there are many restrictions most Americans are unaware of.
As the Fed engages in rollercoaster monetary policies, the errors that build up during the Fed-induced boom turn into a veritable “circus of errors.”
David Gordon reviews Paul C. Graham’s Nonsense on Stilts: The Gettysburg Address and Lincoln’s Imaginary Nation, examining Lincoln's logic and finding it wanting.
Paul Krugman claims that the real factor determining inflation is the rate of unemployment, not increases in the supply of money. As usual, he is wrong.
It is not surprising that some US states are facing large deficits between budgeted spending and incoming revenues. However, state bankruptcies occur when states cannot meet their bond obligations, which have little to do with operating expenses.
The Fed-launched real estate bubble did not just create havoc in residential markets, but also has distorted the commercial real estate market, too. And it is getting worse.
Few economists—even the free-market advocates—understand what caused the Great Depression. No, the Fed didn’t cause the Depression by failing to inflate the currency. Instead, it was the Fed’s inflation that led to the disastrous early events.
