It appears that even economists are now being replaced by machines. At least it seems that way given a recent paint-by-numbers attack from the New York Times on James Grant's new book The Forgotten Depression.
Jeff Deist and Jim Ostrowski discuss how progressives managed to capture the 20th century.
James Grant proposes that the last time US government did not prescribe the now standard cure for economic slumps consisting of fiscal stimulus and easy money was the downturn of 1920–1921. Grant’s purpose is to test the efficacy of this medicine by checking what happened when it was not administered.
"In other words, you cannot accurately forecast a recession or financial panic by looking at either the announcement or the completion of the world’s tallest building"
So The Economist apparently does not think too "highly" of my skyscraper theory
Government will be so much better if we just adopt the latest fads in government reform, we’re told. Needless to say, modest reforms have a long record of total failure and the only answer is to make radical cuts to every government program.
Arguably the best single, currently available measure of the entire public's payoff from economic activity is real disposable income per capita.
In 2001, the Mises Institute published Reassessing the Presidency: The Rise of the Executive State and the Decline of Freedom, by John V Denson, which examines the role of the US presidency in warmaking, police powers, and a variety of attacks on private property and human rights.
Judge Napolitano has given us a comprehensive survey of the dangers to liberty we face today.
Now that the gross federal debt has surpassed $18 billion—six times the amount that troubled us back in 1990—we can clearly answer the two questions posed by the symposium's organizers: yes, a large and growing federal debt does matter; and no, we can do nothing about it.
