Booms and Busts

Peter Schiff once joked that Obama should have appointed Bernie Madoff secretary of the Treasury. The government's easy money policies ultimately lead to Ponzi schemes.

Though Kuttner thinks the New Deal a great success, he himself lays out some of its many problems.

Economists have failed to explain the mechanism by which an inverted yield curve signals an impending recession. But the Misesian explanation of the business cycle quite easily explains the pattern we observe in interest rates.

Bob Murphy and Ross McKitrick discuss the government policies, Fed actions, and banking movements that lead up to the 2008 crisis, and why the current economic situation is different. 

The Federal Reserve is raising interest rates in hopes of reversing some of the inflationary damage it has done for more than a decade. Unfortunately, the Fed already has done incalculable damage to the economy.

The theory of real business cycles won a Nobel Prize, but it ultimately confuses cause with effect.

While supporters of the Biden administration fault Putin for shortages, Austrian economists know the answer lies in Washington's monetary and economic mismanagement.

After the 2008 housing bust, the government supposedly set up a fail-safe mortgage program aimed at preventing future bubbles. It failed.

Typical economic commentary claims that deflation is a Very Bad Thing. Think again.

It is easy to blame the covid-19 lockdowns for the weakening Chinese economy, but that would be a gross simplification.