Booms and Busts

What causes an economic downturn? The business press keeps getting it painfully wrong, writes Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

Real "credit crunch" is threatening on the horizon, writes Hans Sennholz, and it could gravely encumber the American economy.

Cheer up. A drop in stock prices doesn't destroy wealth, say Robert Murphy and Gene Callahan. It only reveals a change in the marketability of one line of production against another.

The slip in stock prices has unleashed hysterical calls for massive goverment intervention. William Anderson suggests a better solution: laissez-faire.

The eminent position of the American dollar in world trade and finance undoubtedly justifies a modest trade deficit, writes Hans Sennholz. But not one this large.

The dot-com shakeup reminds us that both profit and loss have social and economic merit and should be allowed to take their market-driven course, says Lew Rockwell.

The Austrian Theory has come under fire; Gene Callahan responds in defense.

The National Labor Relations Board is the Supreme Soviet of organized labor, and now it wants to wreck a thriving segment of the labor market, says Chris Westley. 

By Gene Callahan, the clearest explanation you may ever read of the Austrian Business Cycle Theory.
 

The president of the United States was ecstatic. Never had economic prospects in this country looked better. Unemployment was at its lowest level in years, the rate of inflation was relatively low, and the economy had grown continuously for almost eight years. No doubt, said the experts, this country was in the midst of a New Economy.