Mises Wire

With each passing recession, the Fed finds it harder to refuel the last bubble, but the market moves on to the new bubble as the Fed keeps interest rates artificially low.

Egalitarians think that equality has intrinsic value: they advocate it for its own sake, not just to forestall bad consequences. But why is a situation in which some in it have been made better off, and none worse off, worse than one of equality?

Real higher wages can't be created with a government fiat. Worker productivity must first be increased through greater investment.

The popular narrative is that demographics are driving Japan's declining worker productivity. But the real culprit is government regulations and a lack of entrepreneurship.

Over the years a chorus of critics has alleged that the textbook view of how a central banks buys government debt in "open market operations" is backwards. They argue that in reality commercial banks take the lead in making loans without regard to their reserves.

Despite many attempts at doing so, governments have never been able to conjure up more goods and services through price controls and other regulations.

The shortages and lack of flexibility caused by government red tape during the COVID-19 crisis has forced many governments to rethink their many arbitrary and unnecessary regulations.

Central banks have created a brittle economy without real savings and without much room to maneuver. Central banks now want more of the same in a bid to fix what they broke.

Bureaucrats cannot conjure wealth from nothing. They only have what they extract from the private sector. Unfortunately, the bureaucrats are now starving the private sector of funding while making government budgets ever larger.

It is precisely during a crisis that private property, the price mechanism, and the profit and loss system are most important, and when the government can do the most damage.