Click and read this 1956 Freeman essay by a 30-year-old Murray Rothbard, recently provided on the Foundation for Economic Education’s web site. One can see many themes here that would later be expanded upon in For a New Liberty
A colleague of mine recently e-mailed me about Exxon’s profits: There are over 6 billion shares of Exxon stock, so its earnings were only $1.37 per share...on a $61 stock! The Exxon earnings are actually a disappointment. The only reason the number is so huge is that the company is huge after all the mergers (many many many stockholders). Why not
“Dad Dean” considers university tenure systems at insidehighered.com . Tenure certainly meets the needs for security and predictability, but it does so by granting impunity and saddling a college with immovable costs for the life of the employee. (It used to expire at 70, which struck me as more than fair, but now it expires at death.) As any
The spirit of speculation and adventure pervaded the entire community ... and crowds of individuals of every description—the credulous and the suspicious—the crafty and the bold—the raw and the inexperienced—the intelligent and the ignorant—politicians, lawyers, physicians, and divines, hastened to venture some portion of their property in schemes
This morning’s New York Times business page reports that Toyota is expected to replace Ford as the second-best selling automobile manufacturer in the United States next month. This is a significant event in the auto industry. Ford has held the No. 2 spot since the 1920s. The story is rich with information. Several Ford models that sold well six
Rising oil prices now cause low long-term interest rates. Some convoluted economic thinking from the New York Times : Yet this time prices are not soaring. Overall consumer prices in July were only 3 percent higher than a year earlier, and prices excluding energy and food rose only 1.8 percent. This has allowed long-term interest rates to decline,
A pithy explanation of Austrian Business Cycle Theory, from Chris Lingle at TechCentralStation: This fractional reserve banking system allows banks to engage in credit creation by issuing notes and bank balances unsupported by any new wealth. Since money substitutes are created out of thin air, the whole process is a risky venture. On its face,
Here is a beatification web site devoted to Karl of Austria, the last Habsburg emperor. Karl was named blessed last Sunday in Rome by Pope John Paul II. See especially, in the photo section, the pictures of Karl’s son Otto as a young boy (and Crown Prince). Otto, who visited the Mises Institute in 1997, was a close friend of Ludwig von Mises. His
This morning’s news brings reports on the bedeviled Frank Quattrone, formerly of Credit Suisse First Boston, who was sentenced to 18 months in prison for obstructing a federal investigation. He did this, argued the feds, by sending out a routine 22-word e-mail that reminded his subordinates to clean up their e-mail files. The New York Times noted
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.
