Police have long shown a preference for enforcing petty laws against petty offenders. After all, real violent criminals fight back. The current COVID-19-induced crackdown on business owners has made things even worse.
The oil industry became one of the main areas of malinvestment in the years of massive liquidity and low yields. This perpetuated excess capacity and kept inefficient companies unnecessarily alive.
France faces a future of spiraling debt and declining economic growth. So Emmanuel Macron has now embraced economic nationalism as a way out. It's not likely to work.
When it comes to understanding business cycles, Austrian school scholars stand on firm ground while critic John Tamny is all at sea.
Landlords invest their stored labor—savings—at a risk and with the knowledge that they won't recoup it for some time. In creating or renovating rental properties, they aid those who can't store their labor yet—tenants and laborers.
Those who really want to help people in poor countries should turn to free trade, not to yet another welfare program.
Austrian economists do not have crystal balls, but Austrian business cycle theory provides a sure foundation for identifying looming economic crises and exacerbating factors, even if the precise timing of a downturn cannot be known.
With oil prices in likely long-term tailspin, corrupt governments can't count on oil sales to bail them out anymore. But Mexico's government didn't get the memo and still clings to the state oil monopoly.
The current bust has been made worse by previous periods of easy money, which destroyed the wealth creation that is critical to sustaining a growing economy.
Politicians and media have combined with an obedient and frightened electorate to abolish civil liberties and destroy the markets that are so key to fighting poverty.
