Booms and Busts

Unemployment remains low but for the wrong reasons. Low unemployment rates are not a sign that the economy is doing well.

For nearly two decades, business, academic, and political elites have spread the fiction that central banks can engineer prosperity by printing more money. Markets now are discrediting that fairy tale.

By all measures, the economic downturn that began in 1920 was worse than what occurred in 1930, yet the economy recovered quickly in 1921. Why the difference?

For nearly two decades, business, academic, and political elites have spread the fiction that central banks can engineer prosperity by printing more money. Markets now are discrediting that fairy tale.

An upcoming recession likely will lead to falling asset prices. But these price decreases do not cause recessions, but rather are a result of them.

Cheap money in the last decade has meant good times for companies that barely make money and hire employees who barely work. But those times are now ending. 

Jeff and Bob record a special Thanksgiving on what it really takes to fix the US economy. 

Ryan and Tho look at conman Sam Bankman-Fried, the scam of FTX, and how regime legitimacy fuels fraudulent companies with unprofitable business practices.

The 2004 Nobel Prize in economics was awarded to two economists for their claim that "technology shocks" cause boom-bust cycles. They have it wrong.

While an increase in the supply of gold money would lead to higher consumer prices, such increases in the gold supply do not lead to boom-bust cycles.