Mises Wire

The influence of the Mises Institute is growing, but we still have a long way to go. With an election year looming, our mission of winning hearts and minds becomes increasingly urgent.

Even when a boom is obvious, it is still in the interests of individual owners and consumers to keep it going.

It's no news to Austrians that the world is suffering from a lack of economic understanding. Yet, whether or not people wish it, economic truths remain true — and they affect our everyday lives.

This week, the Federal Reserve raised the target Federal Funds Rate ever so slightly. The Fed perhaps felt it had to raise rates to protect its credibility, as credibility problems seem to be plaguing similar institutions worldwide.

Statistics can only go so far in telling us about patients, so doctors must deal with uncertainty every day while applying the skills of entrepreneurs. In a way, the best doctors are often the best entrepreneurs.

As you've likely heard already, the Republican Party in Congress has joined forces with the Democratic Party to make sure that no government program, no matter how pointless, does not have to suffer the indignity of even the tiniest spending cut.

Whatever the Fed imagines they can control and whatever their real intentions are, a central authority cannot optimally set prices that are in line with people’s preferences. This is especially important for interest rates, which have far-reaching influence throughout the economy.

One of the ways in which the IMF does that is by providing loans to member countries that are experiencing momentary difficulties. One of the IMF's lending rules had been that the Fund would not continue to support countries that failed to repay official creditors (i.e. other governments). Recently the IMF changed those rules so that it may continue to support a country that defaults on a payment to one of its official creditors. The beneficiary of that rule change? Ukraine.