Booms and Busts

Bob comments on the key disputes from his recent debate with Dean Baker, underlying the differences between the Austrian and Keynesian frameworks.

Thanks to Federal Reserve intervention, apartments and apartment buildings have turned into giant malinvestments. Once again, a federal entity intervenes in markets presumably to make them work better, but things end in a crisis.

The Post-Keynesian School of Economics claims that business and personal debt create instability that sinks the U.S. economy. Private debt, however, is not the cause of boom-and-bust cycles.

While some of Tucker Carlson's recent broadside on free-market economics is mistaken, too many so-called Beltway Libertarians have endorsed interventionist policies that have had severe consequences.

One of the biggest and most pervasive myths in modern-day economics is the myth of the omnipotence of the Federal Reserve.

Thanks to Federal Reserve intervention, apartments and apartment buildings have turned into giant malinvestments. Once again, a federal entity intervenes in markets presumably to make them work better, but things end in a crisis.

A bedrock of Austrian economic thinking is the notion of causality. A libertarian worldview also requires the understanding of causality.

The common belief is that increases in the stock market drive overall economic growth. Expansionary monetary policies, however, are responsible for driving up stock prices even as they simultaneously damage the economy.

Paul Krugman has an easy answer for those that ask why people are pessimistic about the economy: the dastardly Republicans have fooled everyone. There are good reasons for the pessimism that we shouldn’t ignore, however.

While the Fed tries to engineer the mythical “soft landing” for the economy, Austrian economists know that this is an exercise in futility. Once the credit-fueled boom occurs, the bust logically follows.