MARKETS

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 from...

King of Debt Takes the Reins

Trump Triumphs as Brexit Faces a Serious Threat

by John Browne

Brexit and the Donald Trump presidential victory should rightly be viewed as the most significant international developments of the last decade. Both events illustrate a breaking down of globalist order and they both threaten the entrenched elite that has so...

Trump Triumphs as Brexit Faces a Serious Threat

by John Browne

Inflation, Price Controls and Collectivism During the French Revolution: Economic Ideas

When governments find it impossible to continue raising taxes or borrowing funds, they have invariably turned to printing paper money to finance their growing expenditures. The political economy of the French Revolution is a tragic example of this.

The French Physiocrats and the Case for Laissez-Faire: Economic Ideas

The best policy for government to follow is “laisser passer, laisser faire” — let goods pass and leave men alone to their own decisions.

Mercantilism as Monarchy’s Planned Economy: Economic Ideas

Mercantilism developed in the emerging nation-states under the kings, especially, in France and Spain and in Great Britain, as a set of economic tools to assist in bringing about the centralization of political power and control.

Midnight in America

Stunned political analysts are missing the most plausible argument explaining Donald Trump's unexpected victory. The misreading of the American electorate stems from the political class’ acceptance of mistaken (and increasingly insane) economic dogma that has arisen...

The Church, “Just Price” and Interest: The Institutions and Economics of the Middle Ages, Part 2

The Catholic Church had a set of fundamental beliefs and principles that set it apart from the Greek and Roman views that had preceded it, and which were to have importance in the future in terms of their economic impact.

The Election’s Bearing on Monetary Freedom

The sad reality is that the battle for monetary freedom has for some time now taken the form of a rearguard action, aimed at resisting as much as possible ever-increasing government incursions into an ever-shrinking realm of financial choice.

Manorial and Guild Systems: The Institutions and Economics of the Middle Ages, Part 1

Political, social, and economic life in the Middle Ages revolved around two sets of institutions.

The Perils of Financial Over-Regulation

Financial systems, like economies generally, are organic entities. They must be allowed to flourish in a natural way.

Globalization Faces Challenges

by John Browne

For much of the second half of the 20th Century, and even into the new millennium, “Globalization” was the dominant theme used to describe the drift of the world economy. It was widely considered both natural and inevitable that the world economy would continue to...

An Introduction to Austrian Economics (Part 9 of 9): Booms and Busts

Government Regulation of Business: Protection or Harm?

Government should get out of regulating business at all, including regulations on product safety, emissions, and dealing with industrial waste.

An Introduction to Austrian Economics (Part 8 of 9): Government Intervention

The Ancient Romans: From Rule of Law to Price Controls

The area in which the Ancient Romans did leave a body of thought, and one that has had lasting influence and significance for future generations, especially in the West up until our own time was in the area of law and contract.

Video: An Introduction to Austrian Economics (Part 7 of 9): Everything Takes Time: Savings, Investment, and Prosperity

Video: An Introduction to Austrian Economics (Part 6 of 9): Why Socialism Was and Always Will Be “Impossible”

The Next Recession Looms Large

Currently economists and market watchers roughly fall into two camps: Those who believe that the Federal Reserve must begin raising interest rates now so that it will have enough rate cutting firepower to fight the next recession, and those who believe that raising...

Aristotle and Economics