Donald Trump addressed his first joint session of Congress this week. During the speech, one subject was almost entirely ignored: the national debt. Though Trump did take a moment to bash the spending of Obama’s administration — ignoring his own political party’s legacy on the subject — he did little to address the very real threat posed by the nation’s current debt levels. Further, there seems to be no end in sight. Between the president’s continued calls for dramatic increases in defense spending, politicians constant demand for more disastrous government projects, and a bipartisan refusal to get serious about entitlement spending — Washington has made it clear that it remains blind to the mess it has created.
Even worse, the Federal Reserve seems dependent on consumers who themselves are already loaded down with their own debt issues. Given this toxic cocktail, perhaps it’s not a surprise that even the Fed’s own economics forecasts are starting to turn sour.
Mises Weekends features Overstock.com’s Patrick Byrne, who spoke at our event last weekend in San Diego. Byrne, the rare philosopher-capitalist, discusses the historical origins of liberty and the greatest threats to it that exist today.
Next week is our Austrian Economics Research Conference, where Austrian scholars from around the world, including Peter Klein, Walter Block, Thomas DiLorenzo, Jeffrey Herbener, Joseph T. Salerno, Paul Gottfried, and Hunt Tooley, to name only a few, will gather to show off their most recent research. Our keynote speakers, featuring Per Bylund, David Hart, Glenn Fox, Paul Rubin, and Yousif Almoayyed will be streamed live at mises.org/live.
And in case you missed any of them, here are this week’s articles from Mises Wire:
- When Government Acts, Unintended Consequences Follow by Jp Cortez
- Why the Feds Should Legalize Interstate Commerce in Healthcare by Richard Kocur
- Economic Globalization Is Not Political Globalization by Thorsten Polleit
- With Its Leftist President Gone, Can Brazil Set the Economy Free? by João Pedro Bastos
- The Unrevolutionary Revolution by Carmen Elena Dorobăț
- On Military and Spending, It’s Trump Versus Trump by Ron Paul
- Broke and in Debt? Join the Club by Christopher Westley
- What Harry Browne Taught Us by Jeff Deist
- The Fed’s Dependence on the Consumer Will Backfire by C. Jay Engel
- Florida’s Government Built a Train — And It Didn’t Go Well by Tho Bishop
- High Prices Don’t Cause Economic Bubbles by Frank Shostak
- Libertarian, Heal Thyself by Jeff Deist
- Prospering in the Age of Artisanal Money by Nomi Prins
- Report: Arrested Mises Cuba Member Charged with “Distributing Enemy Propaganda” by Tho Bishop
- Consumers — not Uber’s CEO — Are Responsible for Uber Drivers’ Falling Income by Ryan McMaken
- “Surprisingly Strong Economy”: Atlanta GDP Forecast Dives by C. Jay Engel
- Lew Rockwell on War and Our Upcoming Foreign-Policy Symposium by Ryan McMaken
- Education and the New Left: A Libertarian Appreciation by Ralph Raico
- The Political Importance of Murray Rothbard by Ron Paul
- What Trump Means: A European Perspective by Karl-Friedrich Israel
- Panel: Survive and Thrive Financially with Chris Casey, Albert Lu, and Nomi Prins
- Why Emmanuel Macron’s Surge Is Unlikely to Change Anything by Bill Wirtz
- Herbert Spencer: Protectionism Is “Aggressionism” by Gary Galles
- How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World by Tom Woods
- Hayek on Fake News by Peter Klein
- Murray Rothbard’s Birthday by David Gordon
