Mises Search

Many people were relieved when they saw how mild the 2001 recession was—in fact it didn’t even technically count as a recession since there were not two consecutive quarters of falling real GDP—although 3 out of 5 quarters after the second quarter of 2000 saw a falling GDP. Of course, given how lousy the labor market has been since then most

For free market economists, the issue of economic freedom is very important. No country in the world is consistently ruled according to libertarian ideals and no country is completely socialist, but there are clearly great differences among countries in their degree of capitalism and socialism or statism in general. Clearly there is a great

Despite a falling dollar, the U.S. trade deficit has continued to increase to new record levels. The total current account deficit   rose to a record 6.3 % of GDP during the 4 th quarter of 2004, exceeding for the first time ever 6% of GDP. What are the implications of this for the U.S. economy? Is it good or bad? Or a little bit of both? The

Last year, the world economy grew by 5% , its fastest rate for many years, led by the extraordinary boom in China and very high growth in most other third world countries too. America and Japan also had fairly strong growth, although Western Europe had a more dismal performance. Can the good times last? Or is the world economy heading for a

Solving the low bond yield “conundrum” Alan Greenspan has frequently given various expressions a new meaning associated with contemporary economic phenonemas. First it was “irrational exuberance” in December 1996 to describe the stock market bubble which was then in its early stage. Then in February 2005 he described the surprisingly low yields on

With Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan set to retire next month after more than 18 years on the job, it seems appropriate to summarize his performance. Greenspan has been the single most powerful individual in the world in the economic sphere. By merely changing his choice of words between different speeches he has been able to rattle the

Recently, the so-called Swedish model — that is, the Swedish economic system with high taxes and a big welfare state — has been celebrated again in the press. The alleged recent success of the Swedish economy has allowed welfare statists both inside and outside of Sweden to argue that high taxes and an extensive welfare state are good for the

I have written in several mises.org articles — see here , here , and here — of the great imbalances of the US economy. Yet in all of my previous articles on the subject I have been unable to pinpoint when these imbalances will result in a bust. One can  never be completely sure of the future, of course, as one does not have full information about

As late as 1999, oil was trading at $10 per barrel and gold at $250 per ounce, down from their nominal peaks in 1980 of $39 and $850 respectively. And that’s not even adjusted for the fact that the value of a dollar was a lot lower in 1999 than in 1980. Many pundits at the time argued that prices would continue to go down. The Economist had a

With no one denying anymore the obvious fact that America is in a deep slump, the discussion has instead shifted to why it happened. The Austrians ( including me ) who predicted these problems based on Greenspan’s low-interest-rate policy know of course that the main cause was that low-interest-rate policy, with his numerous bailouts of failed