I am working on a couple of articles about the Skyscraper Curse when a curious notion popped into my head: “Many of the South American economies are in great economic distress so I wonder if the Curse could be at work south of the border?” The Skyscraper Curse is the eerie correlation between record-breaking skyscrapers and significant economic
The United States government has just crossed the magic line where its total national debt now exceeds (more than 100%) of GDP. See here that the U.S. national debt of $15.033 trillion is now higher than the $15.032 trillion gross domestic product. The magic line usually means that a country is plunging into a long term malaise. There are other
In an act of frustration and desperation, the port city of Gloucester Massachusetts Chief of Police announced on his Facebook page that he was no longer going to arrest hard drug addicts and that indeed his police force would now work to help drug addicts get help. According to this article : Frustrated, and without any forethought, Campanello
CBS Reports: A U.S. Coast Guard crew from Alameda stopped a semi-submersible vessel carrying more than 16,000 pounds of cocaine in the Eastern Pacific Ocean last month — the largest bust of its kind in Coast Guard history. On July 18, the crew apprehended four suspected smugglers and captured 275 bales of cocaine worth more than $181 million
The market has been working for the last three years to correct for the housing bubble caused by the Federal Reserve. Government intervention over the last year has been an impediment to the correction process. In the absence of these interventions and the promise of even more, the correction process would be much further along and more resources
Legal recreational marijuana use in the state of Washington is now two-and-a-half-years old and retail sales of marijuana have been legal for one year. What are the results of this experiment? Who was wrong and who was right on legalization? A new study has been released by the Drug Policy Alliance, a group that openly promotes “harm reduction
Tech, Biotech, and Social Media stocks have been seeing much higher stock prices while the overall stock market attempts to set a new high. Companies like Facebook and Apple are building lavish new corporate headquarters, while Google’s plans have been denied by the Mountain View city council. Such building behavior is often associated with “tops”
The Chinese government has done the following to prop up its stock markets: 1. Cut interest rates several times 2. Cut reserve requirements 3. Prevents large stock owners of a company from selling their share for 6 months 4. Induced stock brokers to buy $19 billion of shares 5. Imposed restrictions of short selling 6. Stopped new
Here is a good example of a malinvestment. Its the Sathorn Unique skyscraper from Thailand which was to be one of the biggest building in the country until the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis hit. Regulations in most countries require that the contractor finish the structure or at least make it look like it is finished. Not here in Thailand. I guess
Dateline: Auburn, Alabama: The Economist tries here to summarize the battle that is going on in modern macroeconomics including Ron Paul, the Austrians, the Free Bankers, Paul Krugman, Keynes and one of my undergraduate professors Scott Sumner. It needs some extensive Austrian analysis and
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.
