Financial Markets

Where do the government-bond-investing gurus think government gets the money to run up astronomical deficits?

If Ludwig von Mises were alive today, he probably would not have been in the least surprised that the quants’ methods ultimately bore such bitter fruit.

The public loves the fall of a ruthless and greedy financial titan — this, of course, is what made Oliver Stone's original <i>Wall Street</i> such a hit. But the practice of "insider trading" can actually be beneficial. In a free society, there would be no such thing as laws against so-called insider trading.

The fact is that it is their money pumping that is driving both GDP growth and commodities prices — but not the real economy.

They did what they were supposed to do. Now, they have few job options at all.

I am a geek. But I often find that when a tech author is reporting on certain events, he lacks a proper understanding of economic theory.

Recorded at the Mises Circle in Chicago, 9 April 2011.

Faced with such apparently nonsensical results as the Anne Hathaway effect, automatic trading programs look silly. On the other hand, this is true of any task to which humans put computers; it doesn't mean computers are useless.

The main problem with Landsburg's argument is that it unintentionally misleads the reader.

It was a modern thriving economy one day, and then, suddenly, the food disappeared from the shelves, the banks closed, and the ships stopped arriving. Iceland in 2008 experienced an unprecedented economic meltdown that struck fear in the hearts...