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Robert Frank is a Cornell University economist who has written a series of books and articles kvetching about the enormous social damage allegedly wrought by competition in American life. One of Frank’s more remarkable arguments is that “expenditure cascades” initiated by the rich have “caused undue harm to others.” An example of such harm occurs

I highly recommend Robert Murphy’s insightful evaluation of Murray Rothbard’s Man, Economy, and State ( MES ) on the 50th anniversary of its publication. Murphy is one of the few commentators to recognize that one of Rothbard’s central contributions in MES was the complete reconstruction of neoclassical production theory. Indeed 5 of the 12

Based on his book sales, John Kenneth Galbraith was probably the most read economist of the 20th century. From the publication of his first bestselling book The Great Crash in 1954 through the 1980s, the American left-liberal intelligentsia and media breathlessly anticipated and wildly celebrated the publication of each new book. Nonetheless, most

As outlandish as the idea of the $1 trillion platinum coin at first appears, it gives us a glimpse of a monetary arrangement that, although far from ideal, is superior to the current system. Now that the Obama Treasury has definitely ruled out the scheme to mint the coin to circumvent the gimmicky debt ceiling, it is instructive to take a closer

Using Legal Tender Laws Against the State? Posted on Circle Bastiat , Sunday, October 21st, 2012 The relentless war against cash payments waged by governments worldwide has perhaps gone furthest in Scandinavia. The ostensible reason given by our rulers for suppressing cash is to keep society safe from terrorists, tax evaders, money launderers,

Helicopter Ben Runs Out of Ideas for Creating Money Circle Bastiat , January 15, 2013 Ben Bernanke confided on January 14 that he is unaware of any new method of stimulating economic growth. Bernanke said: “As far as I’m aware, there’s no completely new method that we haven’t [already tapped].” So Helicopter Ben has run out of innovative and

[Originally posted on Circle Bastiat , the faculty blog of the Mises Institute. Read Circle Bastiat for Austrian analysis of current economic events from today’s top Misesian and Rothbardian economists.]   The “Cyprus deal” as it has been widely referred to in the media may mark the next to last act in the the slow motion collapse of

The gold “price rule” denotes the monetary reform proposal put forth in various forms by a number of supply-siders, including Arthur Laffer, Robert Mundell, and Jude Wanniski. Laffer’s detailed formulation of the proposal also served as the basis of the Gold Reserve bill, introduced in the Senate by Jesse Helms in January 1981. The scheme has

In this selection from chapter 19 of Reassessing the Presidency (newly available as an ebook from the Mises Store), Joseph Salerno examines one example of how the Federal Reserve and U.S. presidents work together to expand the size and scope of government. ... It was not ultimately budget deficits that allowed Kennedy to initiate the corporatist

On Monday, former Fed official Andrew Huszar publicly apologized to the American public for his seminal role in executing the Quantitative Easing (QE) program, a program he characterizes as “the greatest backdoor Wall Street bailout of all time,” and “the largest financial-markets intervention by any government in world history.” While this is a