It should come as no surprise that the German government has finally succumbed to the pressure to join the global War on Cash . It is now considering the imposition of a limit of 5,000 euros ($5,450) on cash transactions. The official reason involves the usual statist malarkey that cash facilitates terrorism and criminality. Thus, according
Former baseball player José Canseco, who wrote a tell-all book on steroid use in baseball, is no fan of negative interest rates, recently tweeting : Who is advising Japan? Forcing banks to lend all ¥ will not get 2% inflation. It creates loanees market with even lower rates. Dumb
On January 20, 2016, 18-year old Laura Hillier slipped away surrounded by her family while waiting for a stem cell transplant to treat her acute myeloid leukemia. But Laura did not die because of a lack of bone marrow donors since multiple matching donors had been identified six months earlier. Rather Laura was on the waiting list for a hospital
I was deeply honored — and completely surprised — to have this handsomely produced Festschrift presented to me at the Austrian Economics Research Conference yesterday. I was ecstatic to see that the chapters were not fluff pieces but substantive contributions to Austrian economic theory and political economy inspired by my work. Thanks to my Mises
“So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.” (Bob Dylan, All Along the Watchtower, 1967) In his first interview in almost three years , a contemplative, septuagenarian Bob Dylan expresses, among other things, an appreciation for entrepreneurs as virtuous job creators and for voluntarism as the organizing principle of a prosperous
It was just a matter of time before Western governments used the trumped up “War on Terror” as an excuse to drastically ratchet up the very real war on the use of cash and personal privacy that they are waging against their own citizens Taking advantage of public anxiety in the wake of the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket,
Like a good guy in an old Western determined to put things aright, George Selgin has once again arrived on the scene shooting from the hip--and displaying remarkably bad aim. There are a number of substantive issues to criticize in Selgin’s typically intemperate and ill-tempered piece attacking Tom Woods and me . Bob Wenzel has done a good
With the passage of House Bill 195 into law, the State of Louisiana has banned the use of cash in all transactions involving secondhand goods . State representative Ricky Hardy, a co-author of the bill, claims that the bill targets criminals who traffic in stolen goods. According to Hardy, “It’s a mechanism to be used so the police department
A couple of careful readers wrote to inform me that the Louisiana law banning secondhand dealers from engaging in cash transactions, which I implied in my post yesterday was passed recently, was actually passed in July, 2011. The article that served as the basis for my post did not give the date the law was enacted. Interestingly, James Corbett
In thinking about strategies for abolishing or radically diminishing government, many libertarians are led astray by using a false dichotomy. The State, they say, can either be smashed in one swift, fell blow or it can be rolled back gradually according to a predetermined plan. These are, they say, the only two alternatives. There are a number of
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.
