Booms and Busts

 Milton Friedman attacks Austrian economics in Barron's, Two responses.

Two Austrian economists argue that the markets are overinflated. 

As the "experts" counsel Japan to gun the money supply, an Austrian has a better idea.

If the stock market crashes, will the Fed flood the economy with money?

When the IMF declares a country an "economic miracle," look out. A financial crisis cannot be far behind.

Franklin Roosevelt "did bring us out of the Depression," Newt Gingrich told a group of Republicans after the recent election, and that makes FDR "the greatest figure of the 20th century." As political rhetoric, the statement is likely to come from someone who does not support a market economy. The New Deal, after all, was the largest peacetime expansion of federal government power in this century. Moreover, Gingrich's view that FDR saved us from the Depression is indefensible; Roosevelt's policies prolonged and deepened it.

President Roosevelt ran against government spending and deficits, but once in office acted like a dictator.

Roosevelt overthrew the traditional limits on government's role and instituted central planning and welfarism in every sector of the economy.

In contrast to conventional wisdom, from Keynesian to monetarist to eclectic, Austrian theory has recently triumphed over its host of detractors in the following ways.