The original Mises Kreis , made up of members of Mises’s private seminar, met regularly in Vienna from 1919 to 1934. Today the Mises Institute unites Austrian scholars in this same city, allowing it to once again act as the heartbeat of the Austrian School — for a few days. As almost a century ago, perhaps the most important reason for adhering to
On Thursday, October 28, 2011, prices of European stocks soared. Big banks like Société Générale (+22.54%), BNP Paribas (+19.92%), Commerzbank (+16.49%) or Deutsche Bank (+15.35%) experienced fantastic one-day gains. What happened? Today’s banks are not free-market institutions. They live in a symbiosis with governments that they are financing .
The problems of the eurozone are ultimately malinvestments. In Greece these days the struggle continues about who will ultimately foot the bill for these investments. During the early 2000s an expansionary monetary policy lowered interest rates artificially. Entrepreneurs financed investment projects that only looked profitable due to the low
On Tuesday, March 26, 2012, I was invited by Ron Paul and his staff to assist a meeting of the Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology Subcommittee of the House Committee on Financial Services . The title of the hearing was “Federal Reserve Aid to the Eurozone: Its Impact on the U.S. and the Dollar.” Unfortunately, Ben Bernanke had not come to the
European politicians are still trying to save the project of the euro. They design ever-greater bailout packages. Along with the bailouts, an economic government may be forthcoming. Countries may give up parts of their sovereignty. The character of the European Monetary Union (EMU), and even the European Union (EU), may change forever. While it is
As I discussed recently , the costs and risks of maintaining the eurozone system are already immense and rising. So is an exit possible? Intuitively, the exit from the euro should be as easy as the entrance. Joining and leaving the club should be equally simple. Leaving is just undoing what was done before. Indeed, many popular articles discuss
Economists and journalists often point to the danger of external public debts — in contrast to internal debts, which are regarded as less troublesome. Japan is a case in point. Japan has an enormous public-debt-to-GDP ratio of more than 200 percent . It is argued that the high ratio is not a problem, because the Japanese save a lot and government
Recently, there has been an intense debate in Europe on the TARGET2 system ( T rans-European A utomated R eal-time G ross Settlement E xpress T ransfer System 2 ), which is the joint gross clearing system of the eurozone. The interpretation of this system and its balances has provoked divergent opinions. Some economists, most prominently
[ Los Errores de la Vieja Economía • Juan Ramón Rallo • UNIÓN EDITORIAL, S.A.; 1st edition] The Austrian School of economics has provided the world with devastating critics of Keynes’s magnum opus The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money ( TGT ) for a long time. Friedrich A. von Hayek, Jacques Rueff, Henry Hazlitt, Murray Rothbard,
Still unnoticed by a large part of the population is that we have been living through a period of relative impoverishment. Money has been squandered in welfare spending, bailing out banks or even — as in Europe — of fellow governments. But many people still do not feel the pain. However, malinvestments have destroyed an immense amount of real
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.
