Mises Search

I was on the road yesterday for a visit to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. The Atlanta Economic Club had invited me to speak to them at their weekly luncheon meeting which is held inside the Fed. The topic of my talk was “How I Got the Skyscraper Curse Wrong.” The first thing I was aware of after turning into the parking lot is the high level

The “Skyscraper Curse” describes the eerie connection between record-breaking skyscrapers and global economic crises. There are no true skyscrapers being built in Auburn, Alabama, home of Auburn University. But, there has been a great deal of building big and tall. Luxury student apartment building leads the way, followed by high-end restaurants,

With the tech industry awash in cash and 100 “unicorn” start-ups now valued at $1 billion or more, Silicon Valley can’t escape Nick  Bilton   reports . HT: JO’D Note below that “Vikram   Mansharamani , a Yale lecturer and author of the book  Boombustology,  has argued that virtually every great bubble bursting has been preceded by an attempt to

Not sure what to make of this.  The “junk silver” (90% used US silver coins) seems to have disappeared. After checking several websites that deal in such coins almost all  categories (e.g. dimes, quarters, half dollars)  have no inventory to sell. You can still buy bright and shiny versions of the coins at around a 20% premium over the silver

A report from the Financial Post shows that Calgary in Alberta Canada now has 1.7 million square feet of empty office space, the most in North America with another 5.2 million under construction! After years of booming construction, the natural resource rich country is starting to feel the pinch. CALGARY – The number of half-empty office buildings

So many skyscrapers are being built right now that there has emerged a shortage in the special glass panels that forms the exterior of most modern skyscrapers.There are more than 100 skyscrapers currently under construction that are designed to be over 1000 feet tall with the tallest one designed to be 1000 meters tall. With all this construction

As expected the oil boom bust is hitting the real estate market in North Dakota very hard. Bloomberg reports : “We are overbuilt,” said Dan Kalil, a commissioner in Williams County in the heart of the Bakken, a 360-million-year-old shale bed, during a break from cutting flax on his farm. “I am concerned about having hundreds of $200-a-month

CNN is reporting on the skyscraper curse in Dubai today . (CNN) -- When the Burj Khalifa officially opened in Dubai on Monday, much of the world press noted the irony of the world’s tallest building unveiled just weeks after the emirate’s debt crash. But a look at the history of record-breaking skyscrapers and business cycles suggests otherwise --

There are so many skyscrapers being built in China that I have not been able to keep track of them all. The “Walking Stick” building has just become the second tallest skyscraper in the world. This does not qualify as a genuine worldwide “skyscraper signal,” but it does represent a signal for China. This provide another giant hint that the

The Economist recently reported on the Iron Law of Convergence in the US economy. Economists have observed the tendency of poor areas to catch up with rich areas in the US throughout much of US history. In recent decades convergence has slowed and in recent years there has been signs of divergence in recent years. For example: A recent  paper  by