Booms and Busts

Where do the government-bond-investing gurus think government gets the money to run up astronomical deficits?

In the standard Austrian theory of the business cycle, the question is not "How do we get out of a recession?" Rather, the question is "How do we avoid the boom?" According to the Mises-Hayek theory, the preceding boom makes the corrective bust <i>inevitable</i>.

The Mises Circle in Indianapolis. Sponsored by Weaver Popcorn Company. Recorded 14 May 2011.

Governments and bankers hate gold because its supply cannot be inflated on command.

A recorded mini lecture and video display purported to explain this mysterious phenomenon (mysterious to the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street, anyway). I knew that I was going to hear either a self-critical explanation or, more likely, some hogwash. Hogwash won, hands down!

We cannot eat money. We cannot wear money. We cannot live in money. Money can't buy you love.

The balanced budget passed away definitely in 1911, not to return again until a revolution had swept from the people of Italy their freedom, writes

All of the industrial world's central banks and public treasuries currently are engaged in an impossible exercise.

Home prices peaked five years ago, but a mountain of foreclosures still looms.

Political upheaval has hit Finland, and it's merely a foreshadowing of bigger changes ahead.