Mises Wire

The coronavirus demonstrates how crises become local.

How much must total mortality increase to justify a global suspension of commerce and the rule of law? One percent? Ten percent? And what if overall mortality doesn't even go up?

Modern central banks have already moved far beyond what was once considered the proper role for a central bank as a "lender of last resort." Now Keynesians and MMTers want to take things even further.

The Left conveniently ignores dozens of state-dominated and state-controlled medical systems and decides that the lack of preparedness for COVID-19 was all the fault of those small slivers of healthcare systems that are actually private.

What the economy needs now is more real savings and more real production. Creating more money will not help with either of these things.

Whatever happens with the virus, the real story, the real historical change, is probably economic. Abenomics—Japan's ultra-Keynesian experiment—seems to be dead.

Contrary to Fed assumptions, we are not presently facing a problem of liquidity vis-à-vis Great Recession; we are confronted, instead, with a serious shortage of quality collateral.

Some anticapitalists have tried to claim "good" entrepreneurs don't make profit the primary goal. Yet, without profit, an entrepreneur cannot serve the people who depend on him or her for goods and services.

Over eighty years ago, Keynes condemned the rentier and welcomed his future disappearance. Following in his footsteps, politicians and central bankers today are ever closer to effectively bringing this about.

The truth is that you and I need goods and services to live, not electronically printed dollars.