Federal Reserve Economist Wayne Passmore has authored a new study on the housing GSEs , which finds that: (1) the federal government’s implicit subsidy of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has resulted in a funding advantage for the GSEs over private sector institutions, (2) the actions of GSEs result in slightly lower mortgage rates for some
A wonderful talk by Robert Landis to the Association of Mining Analysts has been posted on-line . Landis gives a comparison between the “commodity paradigm” which holds that gold has been demonetized simply because governments decided that it is not money and is now a commodity like soy beans or wheat. As governments figure out how to get rid
One of the most respected and longest-tenured asset managers in the world of finance, Jeremy Grantham, has penned a thoughtful critique of Alan Greenspan in ( The Bubble Deflates - Part 7: The Easy Part Ends (10/02) — starts on page 4 of the PDF file). Grantham’s thoughts run along the following lines. Greenspan showed through public
A new piece in City Journal explains in part how blogs are changing the terms of political debate by exposing mainstream media distortions and providing an alternative analysis of events.
Financial writer Jim Puplava presents a three-part series on the state of the economy: The OK [unless something happens] Economy The OK [but fictional] Economy The OK [unbalanced and at risk] Economy I recommend Puplava’s writing to the Austrian community because he uses a lot of Austrian principles and is very good at drawing from statistics and
James Grant, one of the most perceptive financial writers and publisher of Interest Rate Observer , is the subject of a story on MiningWeb: Go Long Silver, Short Fed Arrogance . Grant has long been a critic of the Fed’s policy of debasement of the dollar and an advocate for the monetary properties of gold. Quoting the article, “’Once a central
The San Francisco Chronicle recently ran this article: Make it a super size, then call your lawyer Battle of the bulge targets restaurants about the plans of some of the same lawyers who sued the tobacco industry for selling unhealthy products to go after the food industry and individual restaruants for selling rich, high-fat foods. “We’re going
The New York Times features a review of Gillian Tett’s new book Saving the Sun: A Wall Street Gamble to Rescue Japan from its Trillion-Dollar Meltdown . In a market economy, entrepreneurs and managers make decisions about how to best use their capital goods and available savings toward future production possibilities. Their goal is to arrange
The PBS Series Commanding Heights is now out on DVD . This three-part series is a historical and intellectual survey of the battle of ideas between socialism and the market economy that has taken place over the last 70 years. The series chronicles the rise of socialist thinking in the academy and of socialist and communist forms of government
Asia Times writes about the Impact of Declining US Capital Inflows . Due to the status of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, Americans have enjoyed decades of consumption at the expense of the rest of the world. They export, we import. They save, we spend. In return, we send them dollars that Al and his cronies at the Fed create with
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.