Booms and Busts

It is the inevitable consequence of Fed interest-rate manipulations to disturb, disrupt, and disarrange economic activity, writes Hans Sennholz.

Everyone seems to agree that the printing press will forestall recession—everyone, that is, except the Austrians. Sean Corrigan explains why new money confers no social benefit.

It is sad that, even though Keynesian economics has been discredited time and again, we still hear the pundits declare that consumers cause recessions- and prosperity- simply by choosing to spend or not to spend. The "heroic consumer" who spends and spends in the face of adversity needs to be put to rest.

Roger Garrison’s long-awaited book compares and contrasts Austrian business cycle theory with a number of other approaches, 

The media’s favorite phony solution to the economic downturn is for the Fed to drop interest rates lower and lower until the economy registers an upturn. What is wrong with this approach?

Next to government debt in terms of liquidity is the swollen market for residential mortgages. As author Charles Morris observed in his book, Money, Greed, and Risk, "Measured by volume, the second most important American financial instrument over the past half century, by a wide margin, has been the lowly residential mortgage.

For a decade, calls for easy money and cheap credit were subdued. But now that hard times are upon us again, guess what? Martin Masse explains.

Pundits often blame tight money for economic downturns. But what about the loose money policies that created the unsustainable boom in the first place? John Cochran explains.

President Bush stands accused of using his supposedly superhuman powers to drive us into recession. William Anderson wonders whether he will also be accused of casting spells to bring down the Dow.

There is no “new economy” any more than the “New Economics” of the 1960s had solved the problems of the business cycle, as its promoters had claimed. Bill Anderson explains why.