Mises Wire

Mises Daily Wednesday: Ferghane

The Trans Pacific Partnership is just the latest assault on free trade, although, like previous assaults before it, such as the North American Free

Everywhere we look, governments are trying to enhance and extend their own power. So why are so many of those same governments eager to sign on to "free trade" agreements. It's because such agreements have nothing to do with free trade.

A real free trade agreement should be short and unilateral. It would then truly allow the market to bring about a pattern of international trade in line with the scarcity of resources and with entrepreneurial judgment about their most efficient international allocation. The TPP, on the other hand, was created to interfere with this pattern: to distort it for more political power or for more economic gain for some groups or others. It was created to take trade flows from the course prescribed by voluntary agreements and divert them into that prescribed by political agreements. 

Mises Daily Tuesday: Transcribed from his appearance at

Thanks to centuries of government interventionism, Brazil remains mired in a sluggish boom-bust economy, and the government has now squandered the benefits of decades of growth. Fortunately, free-market ideas are growing more popular in Brazil and may someday offer a way out.

Whether its drug prices, crushing debt, or unemployment, government can always come up with someone else to blame. Fortunately though, in spite of the lackluster economy the Fed and the government seem committed to giving us, there's hope for a much better future.

Should colleges offer specially-tailored easy majors for athletes? We shouldn't even have to ask the question since the concept of the "sham major" only exists thanks to the distortions in the higher education market caused by taxpayer-funded institutions.

The media today is reporting that markets are volatile today because new employment data from t

Earlier today, I reported on the latest job num