Mises Search

Central banks should know by now that you cannot have negative interest rates with low bond yields and strong growth. One or the other. Central banks have chosen low bond yields at any cost, despite all the evidence of stagnation ahead. This creates enormous problems and perverse incentives. It is not a surprise that markets have bounced

Cuba is a dictatorship that uses terror and propaganda to repress its people. It locks citizens up, strips them of the most basic human rights, silences them, and confronts families using extortion and threats. The regime’s constant practices of illegal detention, the personal ruin of political dissidents, and limitation of fundamental rights have

The United States economy recovered at a 6.5 percent annualized rate in the second quarter of 2021, and gross domestic product (GDP) is now above the prepandemic level. This should be viewed as good news until we put it in the context of the largest fiscal and monetary stimulus in recent history. With the Federal Reserve purchasing $40 billion of

Despite high domestic economic growth and solid global recovery, the  Chinese market is down  on the year. At the close of this article, the Shanghai CSI 300 is down 5 percent versus the S&P 500’s +18 percent. In the past five years, it has risen 51 percent, a decent but modest figure compared to the S&P 500’s +103 percent. Additionally, the

This year marks the fiftieth anniversary since Nixon suspended the convertibility of the US dollar into gold. This began the era of a global fiat money, debt-fueled economy. Since then, crises are more frequent but also shorter and always “solved” by adding more debt and more money printing. The suspension of the gold standard was a catalyst for

Recent macroeconomic data from the  United States  should worry us. Amid the reopening and the biggest fiscal and monetary stimulus in recent history, and with all the possible tailwinds from policy decisions, consumer confidence has plummeted to the lowest level since 2016. Retail sales have fallen sharply again in July, and the employment or

Investor sentiment is clearly bullish. The CNN Fear and Greed Index for June 18th, 2023, stood at 82, which signals “extreme greed”. This is a drastic optimistic move after closing at “greed” (56 over 100) a month before and “extreme fear” (17 over 100) only one year ago. However, in the same period, the Citi global economic surprise index has

Allow me to explain why we have not seen a recession yet despite the collapse in base money supply. We are witnessing the stealth nationalization of the economy. What does this mean? The entire burden of the monetary collapse and rate hikes is falling on the shoulders of families and small businesses, while large corporations and governments are

Estimates of United States growth have improved but remain massively below the Federal Reserve projections. After the largest monetary and fiscal stimulus in recent years, growth remains well below trend, and debt is significantly higher. It is interesting to hear Janet Yellen say that “trickle-down economics did not work” when this is the failed

The Federal Reserve’s balance sheet reached its all-time high in May 2022. Since then, it was supposed to drop at a steady pace and shed three trillion US dollars by 2024. The normalization of monetary policy was built on the idea of a soft landing for the economy. However, the Fed may be killing the private sector to save the government. Curbing