The Venezuelan government recently lopped off six zeros from its hyperinflating currency, the bolivar. The highest denomination currency note of 1 million bolivars, worth less than $0.25 , was replaced by a one-bolivar note. At the same time, a hundred-bolivar note, worth about $25.00, was introduced as the new highest denomination of the
On March 2, 1966, Murray N. Rothbard, the founder and twenty-year editor of the Journal of Libertarian Studies , would have celebrated his seventieth birthday. This issue of the JLS , as well as a simultaneously appearing special issue of its sister publication, the Review of Austrian Economics , likewise founded and edited by Rothbard, is a
The outstanding merit of Brian Doherty’s book is that it contains a treasure trove of valuable information regarding the events, personalities, periodicals and organizations whose complex interplay influenced the intellectual and institutional development of the modern American libertarian movement. But its merit also becomes its defect in the
(This past Saturday, February 12, marked the 171th anniversary of the birth of Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk [1851-1914].) In a talk I gave at a conference celebrating Murray Rothbard’s sixtieth birthday, I opined that, as an economic theorist, Murray N. Rothbard was more Böhm-Bawerkian than his mentor, Ludwig von Mises. My incidental remark evidently
Last week, I went to a vision center to get my new eyeglass prescription filled. Because I wear progressive lenses with antireflective coating and do not have vision insurance, I anticipated that the out-of-pocket cost of the glasses would be quite high. When I entered the shop and stated my business, the manager immediately asked if I had vision
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and the media reported the inflation rate—that is, the Consumer Price Index ‘s rate of increase—to be 1.3 percent for June 2022 and 9.1 percent year over year (for the last twelve months). This shocked markets and investors because economists’ median forecast had been 1.1 percent for June and 8.8 percent
Our main text for the Rothbard Graduate Seminar this week is Murray Rothbard’s Power and Market: Government and the Economy , which contains a systematic treatment of one area of economic theory, interventionism. This represents a departure from past seminars in an important respect. Earlier seminars focused on texts by Mises or Rothbard that
Monetary Policy as Inflationism Today all governments and central banks operate under the ideology of inflationism. The underlying principle of inflationism is that the quantity and purchasing power of money determined by the free market leads to deflation, recession, and unemployment in the economy. The inflationist ideology is therefore embedded
The crash of the Argentine peso last month brings to a close yet another foredoomed experiment in South American left-wing populism. The precipitous “devaluation” of the peso by 15 percent against the U.S. dollar in January represents its steepest decline since the devaluation of 2001 when Argentina defaulted on its foreign debt. From January 21
[Editor’s Note: This article is adapted from Joseph Salerno’s foreword to the new third edition of Brendan Brown’s book Euro Crash: How Asset Price Inflation Destroys the Wealth of Nations .] Brendan Brown is a rara avis — a practicing financial economist and shrewd observer of financial markets, players, and policies, whose prolific writings are
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.
