What Happens When You Feed Unicorns

03/18/2015 Mises Wire Christopher Westley

Last month, Fortune magazine’s cover story considered how we are now living in the age of unicorns, given that at least 80 start-ups have achieved this status. This is an increase from the 39 unicorns that existed as recently as November 2013. Note that Google never achieve unicorn status before it went public in 2004.

Fortune’s editor, Alan Murray, noted the irony of running a cover story about unicorns on its cover at the current stage of the business cycle, given that the magazine produced (but did not publish) a similar Fortune cover dated September 1929.

One man’s unicorn is simply another sign that seven-plus years of QE are beginning to leak into the economy, showing some of the full effects of a manipulated boom.

Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.

What Is The Mises Wire?

Mises Wire offers contemporary news and opinion through the lens of Austrian economics and libertarian political economy.

Submitting articles to Mises Wire

Reprints, Permissions and Copyrights

The views expressed on Mises Wire and mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.

Subscribe to the Mises Wire

Latest Articles

How the Government Created Exorbitant Insulin Prices

11/07/2024 Mises Wire Isaac Deak

The high price of insulin is increasingly present in American political discourse as presidential candidates boast of interventions; whereas, the Federal Trade Commission, states, and even counties...

Milei’s Political Caste

11/05/2024 Power & Market Oscar Grau

All government agencies intervene in people’s lives and liberty. The entire government bureaucracy exists precisely to do that. These agencies have an impact on social life and facilitate government...

Tax Cuts without Spending Cuts Won’t Reduce the Taxpayers’ Burden

11/06/2024 Mises Wire Ryan McMaken

As this election cycle has demonstrated yet again, Democrats are not shy about calling for tax increases. In every election cycle they call for more taxes, whether through corporate taxes or through...

Promises, Promises

11/06/2024 Power & Market Douglas French

Both presidential campaigns are making outlandish promises in the waning hours before election day. Kamala Harris claims she will stop corporate price gouging with government force. The legislative...

Entrepreneurial Profit Follows Good Decisions, Not Exploitation

11/06/2024 Mises Wire Michael Njoku

Within the social order, characterized by the division of labor and private ownership of the means of production, there exists instances of human action—purposeful behavior—whose origins consist in...

Meet the Writer

Christopher Westley

Christopher Westley a professor of economics in the Lutgert College Business at Florida Gulf Coast University and an...

Augusto, Milton, and Me: Reflections on a Trip to Chile

10/09/2018 Mises Wire Christopher Westley

On a recent jaunt to the end of the world, I found myself in one of those situations awkward for an Austrian economist, which is that of defending the Chicago school and Milton Friedman. As a result...

The Fed’s Plan for “Countercyclical Capital Buffers” Is Just More of the Same

09/14/2018 Mises Wire Christopher Westley

If you follow financial news related to Fed policy, you would have noticed a recent push for the use of “a new monetary tool,” called countercyclical capital buffers. Some prominent Fed officials and...

Subscribe to our Mailing Lists

What is the Mises Institute?

The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.

Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.

Become a Member