Mises Wire

Central banks are absolutely committed to low rates because higher interest rates would turn the boom into bust, and would collapse our production and employment structure now based on a system of ultra-low rates.

In the words of Henry Hazlitt, "ideas which now pass for brilliant innovations and advances are in fact mere revivals of ancient errors."

France has a lower income than 49 US states, which may shed some light on why protests continue all these weeks later.

If Social Security was efficient, equitable, reliable and sustainable, defending the status quo might be sensible. But it is none of those things.

The key to a high quality of life is a free economy devoted to trade and entrepreneurship. Contrary to what we're told about Europe's welfare states, more government social spending doesn't cause economic prosperity.

Despite spending nearly $2 trillion, or 45% of the federal budget, every year on Social Security and Medicare, the feds are headed toward insolvency, and there is no relief in sight.

America's "defense" budget is really more than $1.2 trillion, more than double the Pentagon's official "base budget," once we include all the other related spending like that on "homeland security" and veterans affairs.

The EU retreated from the ideas of free trade, free markets, and competition and turned its attention, resources and intentions towards developing a bureaucratic, regulatory, planning economy approach.

The "subsistence fund" — created by real savings — is the foundation of true economic growth. But it can be eroded and destroyed by creating money "out of thin air."

Just as unilateral free trade results in a more solid economy for the countries that adopt it — even within an international economy of protectionism in other countries — so would a commodity-money based economy surrounded by fiat-money economies.