A stable inflation rate is no guarantee of overall economic stability.
MARKETS
Britain Needs Trump for Smooth Brexit
At the Washington joint press conference with Prime Minister May held on January 27th, President Trump told the watching world, “Brexit is going to be a wonderful thing.” The meeting did much to clear the way for Britain to stand alone and enter trade with the United...
Businesspeople are Producers, not Predators
Businesspeople who produce material values are not the same as crooks who prey on gullible investors or customers or both, and produce nothing.
James Mill, David Ricardo and the Triumph of Free Trade
The nineteenth century victory of free trade over Mercantilism and Protectionism represented one of the great triumphs in the history of classical liberalism.
What Does It Take to “Make America Great Again”?
Preferring American-made products to those made in China or Mexico just because they were made in America, does not enhance American prosperity.
Italy’s Bank Rescue Foreshadows Nationalization of More EU Banks
On December 7, 2016, Italy’s Prime Minister Matteo Renzi resigned following defeat in a national referendum, that he had supported, that would have changed the country’s parliamentary system. The development, which represents just the latest sign of anti-EU sentiment...
David Ricardo on Wealth, Inflation, and Freedom (Economic Ideas)
David Ricardo (1772-1823) was one of the most influential economic theorists of the first half of the nineteenth century.
Flourishing Business Needs Free Markets
iPhones would never have been created in a centrally planned economy where the government regulates the prices, from CEO pay to those of products.
Thomas Malthus on Population, Passions, Property and Politics (Economic Ideas)
This escape from poverty originated in Western Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with the coming of the Industrial Revolution and the freeing of men and markets from the heavy-handed regulations and commercial restrictions of government.
Has the Fed been Holding Down Interest Rates?
Free banking money guru George Selgin opines.
Bush Trumps Reagan: Trump’s Parallels To Bush Over Reagan Are Striking
The nightmare scenario is that once again tax cuts and deregulation take the blame, allowing Bernie Sanders or a socialist candidate to ride another populist wave, only this one headed far left, into the White House of 2020.
Bush Trumps Reagan
The optimism that has followed the election of Donald Trump has pushed the Dow Jones Industrial Average to the threshold of 20,000, a level that will be both a nominal record and a symbolic milestone. Although this is not the way most observers had predicted that 2016...
Government “Free” Trade Deals Don’t Promote Freedom
Truly free trade can only take place in free markets, not in the prevailing mixed economies where governments pick favored trading partners
Adam Smith on Free Trade, Crony Capitalism, and the Benefits from Commercial Society: Economic Ideas
Adam Smith’s central contribution to economic understanding was surely his demonstration that under an institutional arrangement of individual liberty, property rights, and voluntary exchange the self-interested conduct of market participants could be shown to be consistent with a general betterment of the human condition.
Globalization Faces Challenges
Those countries that embrace free trade with new technologies stand to reap great rewards. Those who do not, and revert to trade protectionism, could experience economic recession and monetary adversity accompanied by serious social and financial upheaval.
War on Cash Spreads to India
The war on cash is a sign that central banks may see a dangerously deteriorating situation, one that has led to a feeling of desperation by governments and a wish to control the wealth of citizens.
War on Cash Spreads to India
Over the past year, central banks, commercial bankers and prominent economists have expressed the view that digital money and transfers should replace large denomination cash and cash transactions. This dramatic transition has been fostered under the guise of the...
Adam Smith on Moral Sentiments, Division of Labor and the Invisible Hand: Economic Ideas
In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith applied Francis Hutcheson’s idea of “natural liberty” in formulating a conception of the meaning of individual freedom and the role and functions of limited government in a free society.
Economics Ideas: David Hume on Self-Coordinating and Correcting Market Processes
Hume presented a devastating criticism of Mercantilist thinking on trade and commerce, while at the same time, demonstrating the self-regulating and “balancing” forces of the market process.
Economic Ideas: Adam Ferguson and Society as a Spontaneous Order
One of the most cherished misunderstandings, if not delusions, of the social engineer – the individual who would presume to attempt to remake society through conscious and planned design – is the confident belief that he (and those like him) can ever know enough to successfully remold mankind and human institutions.
Money and Banking Under Laissez-Faire Capitalism
This talk examines the development, operation and performance of monetary systems in the absence of government intervention.
Monopoly Money: The Destabilizing Consequences of Central Banking
How currency monopolies promote booms and busts, and having a lender of last resort leads to moral hazard and financial instability.
Economic Ideas: Adam Ferguson and Society as a Spontaneous Order
Society was not created by design to provide safety and security, but, instead, freedom and rights emerged and evolved out of more primitive forms of tribal and collective association as responses to considered injustices and abusive power.
Fraud is Not an Ethical Dilemma: Avoiding Scams Like the Wells Fargo Fake Accounts
Clear moral principles, such as honesty, make the right—the self-interested, win-win—course of action so much easier.
Economic Ideas: Francis Hutcheson and a System of Natural Liberty
Adam Smith was one of Hutcheson’s students in Glasgow, and his influence on Adam Smith was singularly significant, from everything from the importance of division of labor and the role of private property, to the normative notion of a free society based on a “system of natural liberty.”
Economic Ideas: Bernard Mandeville and the Social Betterment Arising from Private Vices
The “moral” that Mandeville drew from his tale was that prosperous, wealthy and great societies only arise from men’s self-interested desires, and that is what made for successful civilizations:
Trump: Wrong On Free Trade
Protectionism is not a recipe for prosperity—free trade is.
The Corporate Social Responsibility “Package Deal”
CSR also sneaks in the ideal of altruism, the duty to serve others “to further some social good, beyond the interests of the firm.”
A Monetary Policy Primer, Part 7: Monetary Control, Then
“Monetary control” refers to the various procedures and devices the Fed and other central banks employ in their attempts to regulate the overall availability of liquid assets, and through it the general course of spending, prices, and employment, in the economies they oversee.
Reforming Last-Resort Lending: The Flexible Open Market Alternative
I regard any need for last-resort lending as reflecting, not the inherent shortcomings of private financial markets, but the debilitating effects of misguided regulatory interference with the free development of those markets.
Bad Business: The Moral Sanction of the Regulatory State
By clearly and publicly withdrawing their moral sanction of government’s freedom-curtailing and welfare-destroying actions, business leaders can have a big impact on all of our future.
King of Debt Takes the Reins
The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 provides the best recent precedent for the unexpected triumph of Donald Trump (in my opinion, the other post-war Republican takeovers of the White House –Ike in ’52, Nixon ’68, and W. in ’00 – did not constitute a real break...
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