Mises Wire

Why did Europe go from a poor backwater to an economic and technological powerhouse? A major factor was its lack of any centralized government, and a large number of small competing states.

The coronavirus impact adds to an already weak and bloated global economy that was showing poor growth, high debt, and an evidently disappointing earnings season before any epidemic was included in estimates.

There are echoes of the 1973 oil shock in the current virus scare and resulting economic seize-up. Central banks are likely to respond similarly: with "stimulus" and inflation.

Mayor Bloomberg is an antipopulist, and is thus, unlike Trump, a very polite and subtle authoritarian with alarming indifference to civil liberties and legal limits on his own power.

Today's rate cut of 50 basis points is the largest rate cut since December 2008, in the midst of the aftermath of the financial crisis. But Chairman Powell insists the US economy is "strong."

By being so dovish for so long, the Fed has greatly limited what it can do in case of recession without resorting to untried and radical solutions like negative rates.

Trump is spinning a narrative in which ever larger government budgets—and ever larger piles of deficit spending—create jobs and make America "safe."

Government spending overall—not just deficits—is the real problem. Government spending diverts wealth away from truly productive people and toward the government and its favored groups.

Ludwig von Mises discusses inflation, labor unions, and issues of the adoption of improper terminology and widespread public misinformation at the Mont Pèlerin Society meeting at Princeton, New Jersey, on September 11, 1958.

To effectively counter this brand of American socialism, it is important to properly identify the problem, and to attack with precision.