Mises Search

After my article on the Heritage Foundation’s Economic freedom index I received a lot of e-mail, almost all positive. I was actually somewhat disappointed (but not completely surprised) that even though I know people associated with the index reads this web page no one even tried to defend the index against the arguments I made, or alternatively

The issue of the so-called core inflation rate has been dealt with repeatedly on this site, by me, by Murray Rothbard and others. Here is one funny way of looking at it , uttered by Bill Davisson managing director of Hartford Investment Management, when commenting on the view that while oil prices are rising sharply, there’s no need to worry

A few days ago, Hong Kong published first quarter GDP growth , with growth being a impressive 6% (although it is somewhat less impressive if one adjusts for a worsening terms of trade) higher than in just about all other rich countries something which might be related to Hong Kong being the freest economy in the world. Anyway, when examining the

The president of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, is “perplexed” that the Euro-zone economy is growing slowly despite low interest rates. Trichet was also perplexed that, with bond yields at their lowest level since at least World War I and inflation-adjusted short-term rates at zero, growth in the 12-member euro zone was modest and

Global Military Spending Tops $1T in 2004 : STOCKHOLM, Sweden -- For the first time since the Cold War, global military spending exceeded $1 trillion in 2004, nearly half of it by the United States, a prominent European think tank said Tuesday. As military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and the war on terrorism continue, the world spent $1.035

There was great relief in financial markets today when today’s CPI reading came in. While the overall monthly increase of 0.5% was somewhat higher then expected, that only reflected higher food and energy prices and they apparently don’t count. The core index was unchanged after having risen 0.7% over the previous two months. But this reading

There is a interesting article in the latest issue of The Economist . As most people here know, the national savings rate in America is now at its lowest level since the Great Depression. What is perhaps less known is the fact that savings have been falling in the other large rich countries too. While the savings rate of for example Japan is still

I found a interesting critique of the Heritage Foundation’s Economic Freedom Index written by left-wing economist John Miller. On some issues he actually agrees with my critique and he does actually make a reference to me, but on other issues he is a bit confused. One thing that did surprise me was that he did not try to argue that the welfare

Sometimes the news media produces really shocking news items. Who could for example have imagined this: Alan Greenspan says he thinks credit expansion is a good thing, particularly praising mortgage loans and installment loans. I am sure everyone else is as surprised as I am. Maybe that explains why he has for years held real short-term interest

The government of Norway is now threatening to close down any company which does not have more than 40% women in the boardrooms by 2007. Nowhere is radical feminism as strong as in the Scandinavian Peninsula and the thought of low female representation in board rooms having anything to do with sex differences in preferences or distribution of