Financial Markets

"Do you think Alan might basically be a social climber?"—Ayn Rand

The truth of the matter is that, far from causing starvation and famines, it is the speculator who prevents them.

This is embarrassing. Here we have a textbook on money, banking, and financial markets, where, presumably, interest-rate theory should play a central role. But there is no theory of interest here.

Unless Hugo Chavez's government suddenly ends spending and returns to a free market, the most likely conclusion to current events in Venezuela is a crisis of interventionism, as the bolívar collapses and the government finds it more and more difficult to fund itself.

Recorded at The Mises Circle in Manhattan, on May 22nd, 2010. PPT 

"There is a definite sense in which the government plays by a different rulebook, because the central bank waits in the wings to monetize its debts."

"It's hard to be a contrarian. With the bubble in full bloom, the last thing you want to tell the boys at the club is that you have your money in cash or gold."

Recorded at The Mises Circle in Manhattan, on May 22nd, 2010.

"Without the capital accumulation of modern capitalism, people would not be living from paycheck to paycheck as workers, but from harvest to harvest as peasants."

An ever-growing diversion of real wealth toward government nonproductive programs runs the risk of further weakening the ability of the United States to generate real wealth.