Booms and Busts

These famed "tools" of the central bank are nothing but cunning and arcane techniques for conjuring additional trillions of dollars out of thin air and pumping them into the global economy.

Although shocks can disrupt the pace of economic activity, they have nothing to do with the phenomenon of recurrent boom-bust cycles. The cycle requires something more. A central bank, for instance.

Lower interest rates won't make an economy grow. What matters is real savings.

What we observe today is a desperate fight against deflation. We know that this situation is unsustainable, but we do not know to which side the balloon will fall.

Brazilian journalist André de Godoy interviews economist and Mises Institute scholar Antony Mueller on the nature of money, banking, and prices.

Central banks are driving asset price inflation in stocks and real estate. That means people holding those assets get richer. But everyone else just gets higher prices.

Harry Dent believes that a major crash is coming, which will probably begin this year.

Central banks have done nothing to end the boom-and-bust cycle. Instead, their unscrupulous interventions in credit markets just prolong the boom. But it's a huge mistake to assume that bringing market interest rates to zero will create a perpetual boom.

It is not money that funds economic activity, but the saved pool of consumer goods. The existence of money only facilitates the flow of savings. Any attempt to replace savings with money ends in economic disaster.

Our flawed economic measure called GDP leads to a flawed and skewed view of the economy in which consumer spending is the most important metric.