U.S. Economy

Jeff Deist and Bill Bonner consider various ugly endgames for the US dollar.

In spite of past assurances to the contrary, our central planners at the Federal Reserve emerged this week to announce that their zero-interest-rate policy will continue. Is the world coming to realize that the emperors have no clothes?

When we adjust for the cost of living, we find that more economically free states in the US are richer, happier, and endure less poverty than the high-tax highly regulated states. Consequently, many people continue to move from less-free states to more-free states.

It was another volatile week for stocks, Canada slipped into recession, and we’re left wondering if central banks will let interest rates rise in the face of a weakened global economy.

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.

The Japanese government has been working to increase both military spending and the military’s role beyond Japan’s borders. This has little to do with Japan asserting independence from Washington, and is more about a cash-strapped US wanting more money from Japanese taxpayers.

Bernie Sanders says immigrants are "taking our jobs" and that the state must act to "help [American] poor people." Predictably, Sanders's "solution" is to give more power to the same government that has created the very problems Sanders identifies with too much immigration.

For decades, American military strategy has amounted to little more than outspending all adversaries. Vietnam and Korea showed this strategy sometimes fails, although it often works as long as the money keeps flowing. But the financial good times won’t last forever.

Many commentators focus on immigrants when declaring that people who live off government spending should not be able to vote. However, there is no lack of longtime citizens who also have an incentive to keep the tax money flowing as long as possible.

Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on 23 July 2015.