Mises Wire

The great James Grant appeared on CNBC yesterday to discuss the latest Fed statement that removed any mention of prospective dates for raising interest rates.

Japanese Prime Minister Shino Abe has been touring the US this week. Much of the week was spent apologizing for the War in the Pacific, but Abe's also on an economic mission. Japan continues to see lackluster growth thanks, no doubt, to its highly regulated and corporatist economy, and Abe's mega-Keynesian "Abenomics" plan. 

Mises Daily Wednesday by Mark Thornton:

Measuring aggregate prices through a consumer price index is inherently arbitrary because someone decides what to measure and how. There are better ways to do it, but "fixing" the measure will do nothing to fix the ills of the Fed's monetary policy.

Nevertheless, when we parse the data, we find the single women actually earn more than single mean, which reminds us that women, as a group "earn less" because married women or women with children tend to have larger gaps in their work histories, and thus tend to be less up-to-date in their fields, or have fewer years of experience.

Police justify killings like that of Freddy Gray's on the grounds that such aggressive tactics are necessary to protect lives and property. But when widespread destruction of property, and threats to life and limb appear, the police are breathtakingly inefficient. 

I visited Baltimore once, about 10 years ago, for an academic conference.  While I remember its colonial-era architecture, the historic cathedral that once housed the great Cardinal Gibbons, and fun, chowder-laden conversations with local and visiting economists in brew pubs—the image 

A recent report commissioned by the prime minister of Iceland calls for limits on the money supply through ending fractional reserve banking and deposit insurance. Unfortunately, the report also calls for nearly unlimited control of the money supply by the central bank.

Mises Daily Tuesday by Patrick Barron:

A recent report commissioned by the prime minister of Iceland calls for limits on the money supply through ending fractional reserve banking and deposit insurance. Unfortunately, the report also calls for nearly unlimited control of the money supply by the central bank.

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.