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It is no secret that secret Swiss bank accounts are not so secret anymore, as political elites throughout the world led by the U.S. government wage an all-out war against financial privacy, even to the point of scheming to stamp out cash.   But Swiss financial innovation knows no bounds.  To meet the intensifying demand for financial privacy and

With neither major party able to secure a majority of seats in the national legislature and the two parties unable to agree on a coalition government, for the last 10 months  Spain has had a do-nothing caretaker government for the first time in its history . While basic government services continue, no new legislation is being proposed, foreign

Donald Trump has announced his economic advisory team and unveiled a preliminary broad brush economic program that his prospective administration would implement. He has promised to fill in the details of his America First Economic Plan as the election approaches. So how should we grade his choice of advisers and his economic plan at this point?

For the past thirty or so years I have made a small annual donation to my alma mater, Boston College. I usually earmark a part or all of the donation for BC’s athletic programs, which, outside of hockey — and football for a few glorious years in the early 1980s when Doug Flutie played — have been decidedly mediocre. In recognition of my modest

YIPPEE! Iceland’s populist left-anarchist/libertarian/hacker Pirate party just shook up the corrupt political establishment in Iceland by winning 10 seats in the oldest parliament in the world. The fact that the party did not even exist 5 years ago shows the power of populist movements to rapidly effect radical political change. We can only hope

Last week, Austria issued a 70-year bond , the longest dated sovereign in the Eurozone . (Italy had issued a 50-year bond on October 4.) Austria’s bond issue was a “dual tranche transaction,” involving around 3 billion euros worth of 7-year debt and 2 billion of 70-year debt. The July 2023 bond yielded -0.191% while the yield on the November 2086

Starting today, the Royal Bank of Scotland will become the first bank in the U.K. to impose a negative interest rate on depositors. The negative rate will apply only to corporate customers, including mutual fund managers and pension funds, holding deposits of certain foreign currencies including euros. This means that RBS—in which the U.K.

The global war on cash is remarkably well coordinated. Less than a week after the Indian government announced it was withdrawing its two highest denomination currency notes (equivalent to about $15.00 and $7.50, respectively) from circulation, the Anti-Cash Axis, which comprises a witch’s brew of national governments, establishment media outlets,

Allan H. Meltzer, a distinguished monetary economist and historian and a longtime professor of economics at Carnegie-Mellon Institute, died on Monday at the age of 89.  Details of his life and career can be found in his obituaries ( here , here , and here ).  At the time of his death Meltzer was particularly renowned for his widely acclaimed work,

Austrians realize that empirical reality is unique, particularly raw statistical data.  Let that data be massaged, averaged, seasonals taken out, etc. and then the data necessarily falsify reality. —  Murray Rothbard, Making Economic Sense , p. 246)   For many years I—and other Austrians—have had to endure charges by monetarists that Murray