Mises Wire

The Fed is, in effect, a lawless economic government unto itself. It is the lender of first resort, a kind of reverse pawnshop that pays top dollar for rapidly declining assets.

State and local government budgets are in danger of collapsing. This will impel politicians to find ways to end the lockdowns. Politicians may not care whether you have a job. But they care deeply about their government budgets and jobs for their friends.

The coronavirus crisis has unleashed two types of bankruptcies that are very different, have different causes, and should require different solutions.

Africa is in no position to bring a halt to economic activity. Urban poverty and huge debts present an apparent choice between rampant disease and mass impoverishment.

From New York to London to Brussels to Tokyo, central banks in the last two weeks have embraced a wide variety of extraordinary inflationary measures to prop up insolvent banks and governments.

It is thanks to global trade that we now have access to many more resources for treatment and prevention of disease, including COVID-19.

Current global bailouts may put off global busts for quite some time. But they will weaken output and employment gains. People's standard of living will stagnate or even fall, even in the short term. With this comes impoverishment and perhaps even social unrest.

The Danish state believes that the nation can avoid economic collapse if the state pays private sector workers' salaries. This, it is thought, will allow private companies to avoid layoffs. But there's a downside.

The Fed's portfolio is now 35 percent larger from the time the Fed promised to "taper" back its portfolio and "normalize." It is increasingly clear that there will not be any normalization. Ever.

This year, as in 2006, the real estate industry is in denial about the state of the economy.