Mises Wire

The shift of money from one market to another market is not instantaneous there is a time lag from increases in money and its effect on the average price increases.

Alcohol sales in Ontario are stuck in a morass of price-fixing and other government controls. 

It's possible to buy fireworks in Wyoming that are illegal in Colorado. So Wyoming merchants have placed a number of huge fireworks shops about two minutes from the border. It's quite convenient for Coloradans planning to ignore local laws. 

We should be quite skeptical when states impose the opinion of minority groups on the majority through special programs in schools and elsewhere. Such programs likely involve “positive discrimination” against particular groups, consistent with state objectives.

Because of past easy-money binges, the pool of wealth may be declining just as prices are increasing. And we're likely to see upward pressure on interest rates. This is bad news, and shows the limits of the Fed's power. 

Niall Ferguson’s new book Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe is timely. But Ferguson may just be telling the reader what he wants to hear. 

The Fed says rate hikes are at least two years away. A lot can happen in two years, and since when is forecasting a couple rate bumps two years from now considered hawkish to the point of making the dollar pop and gold flop?

Fannie and Freddie were long quasi-government corporations that typified the corrupt union between the feds and corporate America. But now it looks like both companies are just full-on government corporations. 

Although it conjures up scary imagery, shadow banking is simply a term for banking operations that occur through financial intermediaries that are not traditional commercial banks.

It's already clear that after an initial sugar high caused by stimulus funds, there's now hardly any "bang for the buck" from stimulus funds. In fact, governments are spending millions for each job "created" by stimulus.