Mises Search

A quick update to my SWF piece today. As it was written a month ago the numbers have unsurprisingly not changed at all in favor of their ability to profitably perform (though, not that a good performance would change their ethical existence: they are still living off the backs of the taxpayer and private enterprise). Paul Kedrosky recently put

Maybe it thought so, when it was taking on too many risky assets over the last few years, encouraged by previous episodes of inflationary policy. The Fed wants to give that impression too, to reassure investors--and middle class pension-holders especially--spooked by the prospect of a massive sell-off of assets, and what that would mean to the

I used to think that Reagan was fiscally irresponsible as president, compared to his predecessor.  But then I thought the same thing about Bush I, then Clinton, and now Bush II.  But surely, after the record-setting budget deficits and the massive increases in government spending, debt, and inflation of the last seven years, whoever is elected

Thanks in part to Sarbanes-Oxley and the public education system, the US is facing a shortage of bean counters . Much has been said on this topic in recent times, and indeed, it is true. There are several explanations for this. While government has diverted resources from a variety of bean-countering activities to SOX and internal controls

Imagine my surprise yesterday when I flicked on a kitchen radio with the hope of catching some Mozart to accompany my doing the dishes, only to hear a fey British voice saying the following: I have one plea. Could you please do what is necessary to restore our faith in the corporations of business, a faith that has been so damaged in recent years?

Amazon’s new Fire phone is generating much buzz since being announce this week, and for good reason because it appears to be simply the latest impressive product a very impressive company has offered to consumers seeking to “alleviate the felt uneasiness” in their lives (to borrow a phrase from Mises). Will the Fire phone become as ubiquitous as

Der Spiegel reports on the Mars One project to colonize Mars with funding coming from an expected $6 billion in broadcasting rights in what would be a sort of interplanetary Truman Show .  Over 700 people are competing for four slots to make the trip 10 years from now, even though “a return ticket is not part of the deal.” I don’t know who these

Regarding Nicolás Cachanosky’s insightful article this morning on Argentina’s coming default, I would just add that it can’t come soon enough.  Although one can only imagine what kinds of behind-the-scenes pressure Argentine President Cristina Kirchner and central bank head Juan Carlos Fábrega are under right now to pay these bonds, Argentina

Volume 17, No. 3 (Fall 2014) ABSTRACT : The Google Ngram Viewer is used to highlight some of the ideas, nomenclature, individuals, and events that have come to comprise the Austrian tradition. Key terms and literature are also examined primarily using the English corpus, with occasional examinations using German and French corpus as well. The

Writing in Time magazine this week (and  linked to in Drudge ), Darlena Cunha compares the Ferguson riots of today, as well as the Los Angeles riots of 1992, to the Boston Tea Party, arguing that such events are similar, well within the American tradition of social change, and should be viewed as such.  In this case, Al Sharpton is simply a modern