Booms and Busts

Like the Greenspan Fed before it, the Yellen Fed has doubled down on easy money, but will trigger a crisis once it tries to inch toward more normal interest rates.

Happy New Year from everyone at the Mises Institute! After an exciting 2015 filled with important research and growth in our global reach, we look forward to 2016. We start the new year with a Mises Weekends from Judge Andrew P. Napolitano.

With a new funding package in place, the Jeddah Tower — on track to be to be the world’s next tallest skyscraper — is moving forward. Will it prove to be like the Burj Khalifa tower and signal the next bust?

“Austrian insights distill the complexity of what we business owners do down to a very simple mantra: satisfy the desires of others. That's it. That's all any of us are trying to do.”

As an exciting year comes to a close, we want to thank all of our incredible members that allow us to do the work we do in advancing Austrian economics, freedom, and peace.

The signatures have been collected and submitted paving the way for a vote to establish 100% reserve banking in Switzerland.

Even when a boom is obvious, it is still in the interests of individual owners and consumers to keep it going.

This week, the Federal Reserve raised the target Federal Funds Rate ever so slightly. The Fed perhaps felt it had to raise rates to protect its credibility, as credibility problems seem to be plaguing similar institutions worldwide.

Whatever the Fed imagines they can control and whatever their real intentions are, a central authority cannot optimally set prices that are in line with people’s preferences. This is especially important for interest rates, which have far-reaching influence throughout the economy.

In a recent exchange with Janet Yellen, Senator Ted Cruz blamed the Fed for being too "tight" with monetary policy, thus causing the financial crisis of 2008. Cruz is right that the Fed was at fault, but he's wrong about how.