Booms and Busts

The Free Market 27, no. 7 (July 2009)

People are being told by governments, central bankers, and leading mainstream economists that money-base expansion is not inflationary — because th

Artificial credit created by a deceptively low rate of interest leads to speculative bubbles.

Remove all government impediments to effective entrepreneurial planning: avoid protectionist measures internationally; allow prices and wages to adjust as needed to restore market equilibrium. Not only cut tax rates, as was done in the incomplete reforms of the 1980s and early in this century, but, per Rothbard, drastically reduce the government budget, both taxes and expenditures.

Krugman. 2002. Calling for a housing bubble.

"All of this government intervention will only spawn new malinvestments and later depressions."

True prosperity did not return until "the federal government relinquished its stranglehold on the American economy."

Tom Woods discusses his blockbuster book Meltdown.

The wealth that strip-club patrons and strip-club moguls thought they had to throw around was but an illusion, and the reality is sobering for the entertainers, cabbies, politicians, and others who have been riding the strip-club boom.

"In a year or two, we just moved right from that stock-market bubble, almost seamlessly, into the real-estate bubble, and nobody could see that there was any similarities."