Mises Wire

Most of the United States west of the 100th meridian is very dry.

One of the great ironies of American politics is that most politicians who talk about helping the middle class support policies that, by expanding the welfare-warfare state, are harmful to middle-class Americans. Eliminating the welfare-warfare state would benefit middle-class Americans by freeing them from exorbitant federal taxes, including the Federal Reserve’s inflation tax.

On April 15, Walter Block joined host Phil Pepin (at 28:00) to discuss anarchism and the international system of states. [Mp3 download.]

Mark Thornton also joined Pepin on April 1 (at 2:00) to discuss his article "Transparency or Deception: What the Fed Was Saying in 2007."  [Mp3 download.]

In this lengthy interview, Walter Block talks to the Brazilian libertarian group "Liberball" about a wide variety of topics from revisionist history to business regulation to Murray Rothbard. 

The Economist declares there is no such thing as a Skyscraper Curse and they have the mainstream empirical evidence to support that declaration.

The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks.

The story of intervention is as old as governments and commerce, and even though the details change, the basic narrative stays the same.

Today on The Santelli Exchange on CNBC, Rick Santelli acknowledged CHASE Bank's war on cash using Joe Salerno's Mises Wire post from Monday: 

The war against cash has, up to now, been waged almost exclusively by national governments and official international organizations, although there are exceptions.  Now the war has acquired a powerful new ally in Chase, the largest bank in the U.S. and a subsidiary of JP Morgan Chase and Co., according to Forbes, the world's third largest public company.   Of course , it is hardly surprising that a crony capitalist fractional-reserve bank, which received $25 billion in bailout loans from the U.S. Treasury, should want to curry favor with its regulators and  political masters and, in the process, ensure its own stability by helping to stamp out the use of cash. 

If the Venezuelan example of socialism’s ultimate consequences baffles anybody, it is because of how little (economic) history people remember, and how quickly its lessons are forgotten.