In deciding whether to wage war against yet another regime that has fallen into disfavor with DC, the United States must make some hard choices. Will we follow the traditions of George Washington or those of Woodrow Wilson? As Americans grapple with the hard choices involved in a possible war against Iraq, a larger set of principles is implied in
A review of A History of the Federal Reserve. Volume 1: 1913–1951 by Allan H. Meltzer, foreword by Alan Greenspan Thomas Jefferson, an opponent of our first national bank, is reputed to have said that a national bank is a greater threat to liberty than a standing army. Here, in this interesting book about the history of the first few generations
I am not dead, and that’s even though a part of our magnificent leviathan recently killed me. Our wonderful U.S. Postal Service—which as long as I have been living in this part of Queens has insisted that I live in another section of Queens—recently started stamping all my mail “deceased.” And yes it’s true that lots of people thought I was
Every once in a while, the truth somehow leaks out in Washington. For example, earlier this year Bush administration economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey got the boot. His political crime: He dared to suggest that the occupation of Iraq will cost upwards of $100 billion. In retrospect, it now seems his estimate was, if anything, on the conservative
It’s a huge tax that most Americans don’t understand. And most of those who support leviathan government want to keep it that way. They’re betting on the apathy and ignorance of the average American when this tax is discussed. So they hope you’ll just forget about this burdensome tax, which has been raised dozens of times over the last 40 years,
Will the regulators ever get it right? Are the regulators ever capable of getting it right? This constant infernal tinkering with our lives and businesses never seems to end like the ever expanding bureaucracies that rule us. Regulators, in the midst of various securities industry scandals over mutual finds, are under pressure to come up with a
I’ve just returned from the Security Traders Association’s Washington conference, which had as its featured speaker Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman William Donaldson. My editor and I were naturally looking for exciting stories to fill the pages of Traders Magazine. In a sense, we obtained plenty of news. Donaldson gave us tons of
The circus is coming to your town soon. Maybe, I’m getting old, but I just can’t get very excited about the clowns anymore. Yup, it’s political season again and those bothersome polls, still lusting for the votes that put or keep themselves and their pals in office, will be in our faces until the nonsense is over. Time for the same tired two
Lenin once dismissed the question of how socialism would work by pointing to the workings of the post office. Socialism, he said , means only to “To organize the whole economy on the lines of the postal service.” Well, I tried my best to avoid this pocket of socialism, but it was just unavoidable. I trained for it as though I would be in a life or
Rome was a republic that once knew the rule of law. It acquired an empire by accident. It became an empire in which one man reigned and wars were endless as they were in almost every empire. The Roman Senate ended up losing most of its powers. The United States was born a republic. Yet our nation, ignoring the warnings of the founding fathers and
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.
