Booms and Busts

We are once again in a situation where the public and the economics profession have rushed to judge capitalism as the source of periodic and severe crises.

Jobs cannot be created by government fiat.

The original Misesian insight has withstood the test: it still seems that the Fed was a necessary condition for the worst speculative bubble in world history.

We can thus conclude that the gold standard, if not abused, is not conducive to boom-bust cycles.

"There are so many problems with Krugman's thinking that it's hard to know where to begin."

But even "free market" media such as the Wall Street Journal cling to Keynesian pump-priming, which — by the media's own admission — didn't help Japan and in fact caused the housing boom.

Jeffrey Tucker offers insights into Greenspan's role in the 2008 economic crash.

Recorded at the Mises Institute Supporters Summit, 1 November 2008; Auburn, Alabama. 

John Steele Gordon’s “short history” of banking is filled with falsehoods.

There is, after all, a very keen similarity between Hamiltonian mercantilism — or an economy directed and controlled by government, supposedly "in the public interest" but in reality for the benefit of a privileged few — and the economic fascism of Italy (and Germany) of the 1920s and '30s.