Fighting Inflation Really Means Fighting the Federal Reserve
These days, the Fed and Chairman Jerome Powell are claiming the title of "inflation fighters." The more appropriate moniker should be "inflationists."
These days, the Fed and Chairman Jerome Powell are claiming the title of "inflation fighters." The more appropriate moniker should be "inflationists."
As Murray Rothbard wrote, inflation is not an increase in prices. It is, instead, an increase in the supply of money in circulation. The distinction is important.
How do societies determine who their heroes are? We know that often those seen as heroes actually made a country worse off.
Monetary authorities have come up with numerous clever ways of measuring money. However, they are unable even to define money, much less measure it.
Progressives like to claim that "America" has a "gun violence problem." However, the "gun violence problem" happens to exist in places where progressives dominate the government.
Americans often have defended the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as regrettable but necessary for ending World War II. The actual record tells us a much different story.
When consumer prices shot up after the massive monetary injections undertaken to counteract the job-killing Covid lockdowns, the political classes called it "price gouging." Indeed, when government inflates, we need all the price gouging we can get.
William Röpke, who fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s, has made important contributions to Austrian economic analysis. Not surprisingly, he rejected collectivism as a way to organize an economy.
Yuri Maltsev, a Mises Senior Fellow who once was an advisor to Mikhail Gorbachev when he was an economist in the USSR, has passed away. Rest in peace.
As life expectancy has risen, so have runaway costs. Raising the age won't make Social Security just, prudent, or wise. But cutting federal spending is always the right thing to do.