Booms and Busts

Thirteen powerpoint slides lead you through Dr. Thornton's presentation. There exist strong correlations between either the announcement or the completion of the world's tallest building and GDP, but it is not held that you can accurately forecast a recession or financial panic by this measurement. Thornton suggests the common cause is artificially low interest rates.

Our method of calculating GDP growth is hopelessly flawed, and is more likely determined largely by the growth of the money supply in the economy. So as the Fed pumps more, the economy appears to grow also.

Jim Rickards and Jeff Deist discuss the unfolding drama at the Fed.

Economics is not a popular topic among the general population. When economics is discussed at all, it’s in the context of politics — and politics gives us only the blandest, safest, most meaningless platitudes about economic affairs. The 2016 campaigns will be no different.

College towns like Auburn, Alabama are booming with more luxury apartments and seemingly more of everything else, too. But the story really began far away in Washington, DC where the Federal Reserve targets interest rates.

Joe Salerno make sense of market crashes.

The crash of 1929 came after a decade of interventionist politics following world War I. "Free markets" were blamed anyway. Decades later, we pursue even more interventionism, and when it fails, we blame "free markets" all over again.

Consumer prices have been stable, but we should pay attention to 2014's decline in the money supply which mirrors a similar decline from 1927 and 1928, which was followed by a collapse in industrial production.