The recent sale of an invisible statue for £13,000 is symptomatic of the thoroughgoing financialization of our economy. Investors have become ever more obsessed with the symbols of economic reality and less concerned with underlying economic facts.
Two things should concern us. First, the weakness of the recovery in the middle of the largest fiscal and monetary stimulus seen in decades, and second, the short and diminishing effect of these programs.
Mises argues that the nation has a fundamental and relatively permanent being independent of the transient state (or states) which may govern it at any given time. Thus he refers to the nation as “an organic entity [which] can be neither increased nor reduced by changes in states.”
Today’s calls for a plethora of new government stimulus polices to usher in a "recovery" will only cripple efforts by investors and entrepreneurs to get the global economy back on track.
During March 2021, year-over-year (YOY) growth in the money supply was at 34.1 percent. That's down slightly from February's rate of 39.1 percent, and up from the March 2020 rate of 11.3 percent.
A loose monetary policy that is aimed at boosting use of idle resources won't work. Idle resources only become profitable and efficient when we have enough real savings. Unfortunately, easy money policies destroy real savings.
Key methodological differences between Austrians were highlighted in Milton Friedman's "The Methodology of Positive Economics." A key piece of conflict: Friedman's focus on prediction rather than explanation.
What matters for real economics is real savings, not increases in consumer spending driven by money printing. The best way to get an increase in savings is to decrease both money pumping and government spending.
