Unless Hugo Chavez's government suddenly ends spending and returns to a free market, the most likely conclusion to current events in Venezuela is a crisis of interventionism, as the bolívar collapses and the government finds it more and more difficult to fund itself.
Recorded at The Mises Circle in Manhattan, on May 22nd, 2010. PPT
"It's hard to be a contrarian. With the bubble in full bloom, the last thing you want to tell the boys at the club is that you have your money in cash or gold."
"There is a definite sense in which the government plays by a different rulebook, because the central bank waits in the wings to monetize its debts."
"Without the capital accumulation of modern capitalism, people would not be living from paycheck to paycheck as workers, but from harvest to harvest as peasants."
An ever-growing diversion of real wealth toward government nonproductive programs runs the risk of further weakening the ability of the United States to generate real wealth.
The inherent risk of the marketplace does not establish the marketplace as something that needs to be regulated and harnessed. On the contrary, inherent risk defines the market.
"The Keynesian model can't capture the fact that during the boom period, society 'eats the seed corn' through malinvestment."
"These guys weren't just taking a position and keeping their fingers crossed, they had to keep feeding their bets, even when the financial world (and their investors) thought they were nuts."
