Booms and Busts

Recorded at the Austrian Economics and Financial Markets conference at The Venetian Hotel Resort Casino, Las Vegas, 02-18-2005

Antony Mueller asks: Are central banks up to their job by now? 

To paraphrase Mark Twain, it's a difference of opinion that makes a horse race. And for most people the most critical race of all is to amass sufficient assets to live a comfortable retirement.

Sean Corrigan asks the crucial question: if the causes of the business cycle are that well known and understood, why can't business wise up and avoid the trap of making clusters of investment errors?

Ultimately, the power of the Austrian Theory of the business cycle is not whether some economists of the Austrian School rolled the dice on some day trades and made money, writes William Anderson.

Business cycles are usually treated as though they were unavoidable natural phenomena, writes William Anderson, when they are actually the result of government manipulation.

There are some bright spots in the American economy, but look beneath the surface. Stefan Karlsson warns that the downside of bad policy may have been merely postponed. 

It was capitalism that finally ended the Great Depression, not FDR’s harebrained cartel, wage-increasing, unionizing, and welfare state expanding policies.

The Las Vegas housing market is far from dead. But will it roar ahead after this brief hiccup as Stephen Bottfeld predicts? Is demographics Vegas's destiny? Who knows? But, one may recall that Harry Dent, Jr. used demographic studies to predict that the Dow Jones Industrial Average would reach 40,000 by 2007.

This year's Nobel laureates in economics, writes Frank Shostak, have contributed to further obscuring our understanding of the business cycle.