It looks like we have an asset bust for the record books in the making. The cryptocurrency crash now under way today surpassed the dot-com bust that occurred at the beginning of the millennium,. While the NASDAQ Composite Index suffered a decline of 78% from its peak in March 2000 to its trough in October 2002, the MVIS CryptoCompare Digital
Bradford DeLong posted a vicious rant on his blog recently accusing the signatories of a letter in support of President Trump’s economic policies of being “both 100% cynical and 100% deluded” as well as “moronic and easily grifted.” However, it turns out that Delong himself suffers from the delusion that a president gets to write and pass
Zero Hedge has reprinted my recent Mises Wire post discussing the historical movements of the Rothbard-Salerno True Money Supply aggregate and what they portend for the future of the current boom in the U.S.
There are profound methodological differences between the Austrian and Chicago schools that lead to very different characterizations of the nature and function of the market economy. I was recently reminded of this by an article entitled “ The Racist Premium Is Just One Way the Market Punishes Racism ” by Andrew Moran. The point that Moran makes
EcPoFi recaps last year’s development of the True Money Supply (TMS), a monetary aggregate developed by Murray Rothbard and myself in the 1980s. The author of the post points out that in 2014, “the money supply increased by a total of $731 billion, the fourth biggest expansion ever recorded,” although its rate of growth was 7.4%,
The Mercatus Center at George Mason University has just launched the Program on Monetary Policy under the direction of Scott Sumner, Professor of Economics at Bentley University and editor of the influential blog The Money Illusion . Sumner is a leading proponent of the old Friedmanite ”rules-based approach to monetary policy,” wherein
Bruce Caldwell has disputed a number of points in Salerno’s earlier account of the development of the Austrian school of economics from Carl Menger to Ludwig von Mises and F.A. Hayek. The issues in contention regard Friedrich von Wieser’s intellectual affiliation with Hayek and his influence on the formation of Hayeks economic thought; Wieser’s
Almost all contemporary economists, except for Austrian economists, persist in analyzing the performance of the market economy using the model of “perfect competition.” Many of these economists go even further and use this hypothetical fictional construct as a normative standard for judging the performance of real-world market economies. They
It appears technology has moved the world one small step closer to a sound money. On Wednesday, a hotel in Abu Dhabi unveiled the GOLD To Go ATM, a gold dispensing vending machine created by a German firm. The machine dispenses 24-carat gold bars in 1, 5, and 10 gram sizes as well as gold coins. A computer inside the machine keeps track of the
As I reported recently, banks are beginning to collaborate in the campaign by governments to stamp out the use of cash among the public. Chase, for example, rolled out a new program in several markets in March that restricts borrowers from using cash for making payments on credit cards, equity lines, mortgages and auto loans. Even more troubling
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.
