Booms and Busts

John Steele Gordon’s “short history” of banking is filled with falsehoods.

There is, after all, a very keen similarity between Hamiltonian mercantilism — or an economy directed and controlled by government, supposedly "in the public interest" but in reality for the benefit of a privileged few — and the economic fascism of Italy (and Germany) of the 1920s and '30s.

Contrary to what Weisberg claims, the philosophy of freedom has, once again, been proven right.

Bankruptcy is a normal part of economic life, covered by laws that guarantee stockholders will be compensated as much as possible.

"The enemies of capitalism and economic freedom … use the accusation of 'laissez faire' as a kind of ratchet for increasing the government's power."

Austrian school capital theory and business-cycle theory are the best I have found.

We suggest that decades of reckless monetary policies by the Fed have severely depleted the pool of real savings.

Presented to the Auburn University Economics Club, Auburn, Alabama, on 14 October 2008.

Interviewed on American Vigilance Coast to Coast with Blake and Mike, 12 October 2008.

Many laboring in the thriving cottage industry of Hayek biographers, critics and interpreters have commented on the transition from a "Hayek I" to a "Hayek II" that began in the late 1930s, portraying it as almost wholly an intellectual re-orientation and change in research interests. Few, if any, have recognized the radical alteration in analytical procedure and rhetorical style that characterized this transformation.