Booms and Busts

Bob uses U.S. economic history, centering on the greenback era, to work through some subtle but important distinctions in Austrian monetary theory.

In the wake of Alan Greenspan's recent passing, Bob revisits two contested claims about his legacy: did the Fed under Greenspan fuel the housing bubble, and did that bubble cause the 2008 financial crisis? 

Economics’ greatest unsolved mystery, finally explained.

Mark Thornton argues modern politics is a power struggle run by elites—and that Austrian economics explains both the rigged system and the way out.

Mark Thornton reviews John Mearsheimer’s Why Do Politicians Lie? and connects political deception abroad to the Fed-driven distortions now warping markets, money, and the working class.

Does a recession loom in our future? Given the irresponsibility of the government’s economic policies, the short answer has to be “yes.”

Mainstream economists believe that if government increases spending and injects new money into the economy, then productive wealth will follow. Austrian economists would like to differ.

This week, Bob walks through three thought experiments to show how expectations of future supply changes ripple into present prices and production decisions in ways that purely mechanical monetary frameworks like MV=PQ can't capture.

RMP is not QE, nor is it QT. It is an unprecedented, interventionist, unsound policy. The Fed is no longer backstopping the long end, forcing twenty years of interest rate suppression to finally unravel. Welcome to the Austrian nightmare.

Washington is pursuing industrial policy again, this time being an attempt to form a minerals consortium with other countries to secure minerals vital to US manufacturing. No doubt, this initiative will end up on the ash heap of bad policy.