Government Intervention and Market Volatility
Creating programs outside of the markets to try to support illiquid assets undermines the objective signals of markets in which value is measured by the market price.
Creating programs outside of the markets to try to support illiquid assets undermines the objective signals of markets in which value is measured by the market price.
Speculative bubbles are financial events that do great damage not only to pocketbooks and balance sheets but to people's perspectives and values.
There is something government can do in the Austrian cure for a recession: radically remove itself from the economy.
Efforts to avoid the agony of recession—policies that seek to prop up insolvent firms and maintain employment—will only ensure that more resources are squandered in unsustainable lines.
We are once again in a situation where the public and the economics profession have rushed to judge capitalism as the source of periodic and severe crises.
The original Misesian insight has withstood the test: it still seems that the Fed was a necessary condition for the worst speculative bubble in world history.
We can thus conclude that the gold standard, if not abused, is not conducive to boom-bust cycles.
"There are so many problems with Krugman's thinking that it's hard to know where to begin."
But even "free market" media such as the Wall Street Journal cling to Keynesian pump-priming, which — by the media's own admission — didn't help Japan and in fact caused the housing boom.