Mises Search

Ever since someone in grad school deviously introduced me to the concept of “irrational” debt aversion, I have been carrying credit-card balances that are far too high. Believe me, I understand the tricks these companies pull, like the clause in fine print where you unwittingly pledged away your firstborn. I have had credit-card employees explain

Whenever a natural disaster or violent insurrection causes the downfall of a corrupt government, various commentators cannot resist labeling the result “anarchy” and then citing the chaotic situation as an apparently obvious refutation of the ideas of Murray Rothbard. Critics of Rothbardian anarchocapitalism often point to mafia-infested Sicily,

The most destructive ideas in academia are those that are technically defensible but nonetheless encourage erroneous intuitions. In economic science, a prime example of such a destructive idea is GDP accounting. As the recent punditry on the “inventory blip” of the fourth-quarter growth figures perfectly illustrates, the mainstream macro framework

[ Originally published March, 2010. ] There is a connection between fiat currencies and trade deficits, and many cynics have argued that the US dollar’s status as global reserve currency allowed Americans to consume more than they produced for decades. However, this “deficit without tears” argument is sometimes overstated. To gain a deeper

Free-market economists are quick to argue that government “services” are actually not helpful at all, or at least not as useful as services provided voluntarily in the private sector. Ironically, the standard economic critiques of drug prohibition and typical trade unions both rely on the assumption that government courts and police provide a net

At his popular New York Times blog, Paul Krugman is at it again, offering a very misleading analysis of deficit spending. Without technically lying, Krugman perpetuates the myth that Herbert Hoover insisted on budget austerity in the midst of the Great Depression. Then Krugman interprets a chart with adjectives that show his eyes can only see what

In the wake of Ron Paul’s straw-poll victory at the CPAC convention, neoconservative author David Frum told CNN’s readers that a return to the gold standard was both undesirable and impossible. Frum and I have gone back and forth on the gold standard in the past, and I don’t want to repeat those arguments. In the present article I’ll raise new

Ever since the fall of 2008, interest in the Austrian theory of the business cycle has exploded. Judging from the email I receive after a Mises Daily article, or the type of people who go to a Mises Circle event, I can personally attest that it’s not just ideological students and college professors anymore. On the contrary, actual financial

In response to a post by Martin Wolf on the Austrian theory of the business cycle, UC Berkeley economist Brad DeLong made a list of positions that he attributes to the Austrians. Not surprisingly, DeLong is not too impressed with (his own understanding of) the Austrian view. Unfortunately, DeLong’s list contains views that are not the “Austrian”

In a recent article at the Huffington Post , Lynn Parramore assembled a team of economists to refute nine “myths” about the deficit. On the one hand, it was refreshing to see these economists discuss with such candor the fact that our financial system is backed up by nothing but green pieces of paper. On the other hand, it was shocking to see