Everyone is singing the praises of the Federal Reserve’s next round of “Quantitative Easing” to the tune of nearly $1 trillion. Those in favor extol the virtues of the magical printing presses as if we all had been given a free cruise on the ship Queen Elizabeth 2. The truth for most of us is closer to 3rd class tickets on the Titanic.
Austrian Bailout Package—Part A Suspend Basil II regulations (to at least 4/2/09) Cancel FDIC insurance on all demand deposits after 1/1/09. Increase FDIC premiums on short term time deposits of less than one year. Make interest earned (starting 1/1/09) on bank time deposits and non-governmental, non-agency, and non-authority bonds tax free (not
Austrian Bailout Package—Part A Revised The idea of my initial proposal was to “throw something onto the table” and see what the reaction would be. This revision throws out a couple of items, revises others, and tries to provide a brief explanation for the eight points of the plan. I would like to thank everyone for all their comments and
Ben Bernanke reveals more about his own views when he comments on the $10 bill controversy to replace Alexander Hamilton. Bernanke attacked Secretary Jack Lew’ s idea to replace Hamilton with a women: I must admit I was appalled to hear of Treasury Secretary Jack Lew’s decision last week to demote Alexander Hamilton from his featured position
This article in the Independent by Brendan Keenan addresses the issue of blame for the economic crisis. He just about gets it right. The Invisible Hand of government (aka Central Banks) was acting to deceive the Invisible Hand of the marketplace. This is the topic for my lecture for tomorrow’s conference at the Mises Institute. He also draws the
A new study by the Phoenix Center for the Advanced Study for Legal and Economic Policy Studies found that federal regulators cost taxpayers more than $200,000 each, but cost the economy over $6 million in jobs and productivity. “In particular,” the group says, “even a small 5 percent reduction in the regulatory budget (about $2.8 billion) would
Economists Fryer and Sacerdote estimate that each additional job cost as much as $400,000 “Did the Stimulus Stimulate? Real Time Estimates of the Effects of the American Readjustment and Recovery Act” NBER Working Paper No. w16759 JAMES FEYRER, Dartmouth College BRUCE SACERDOTE, Dartmouth College We use state and county level variation to examine
Current Austrian economists are the true heirs to the neoclassical economics that thrived up through the 1930s. It was in the spirit of Carl Menger and stressed the discovery of true causal laws that explained real economic phenomena such as business cycles. By the 1950s this Mengerian-neoclassical mainstream had been hijacked by positivists,
Inequality is a top news items for 2015 driven largely by the Baltimore riots, the minimum wage debate, Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century , and now the entry of socialist Bernie Sanders into the race for US president. The Left wants more welfare, better schools, free college, enhanced job training, and more. The Right, in
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.
