In his seventh, and final, State of the Union address this January, President Obama, clearly looking to bolster his legacy as the president who vanquished the Great Recession, boldly asserted that “Anyone claiming that America’s economy is in decline is peddling...
MARKETS
The Fed’s Nightmare Scenario
Operating under the mistaken belief that a modest dose of inflation is either a prerequisite for, or a by-product of, economic growth, the nation’s top economists have been assuring us for quite some time that inflation will stay very low until the currently mediocre...
Mission Accomplished
On May 1, 2003 on the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln then President George W. Bush, after becoming the first U.S. president to land on an aircraft carrier in a fixed wing aircraft (in a dashing olive drab flight suit), declared underneath an enormous...
Clueless in Davos
Making their annual pilgrimage to the exclusive Swiss ski sanctuary of Davos last week, the world’s political and financial elite once again gathered without having had the slightest idea of what was going on in the outside world. It appears that few of the...
Fed’s Rocket Ship Turns Hoverboard
Over the past year, while the U.S. economy has continually missed expectations, Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen has assured all who could stay awake during her press conferences that it was strong enough to withstand tighter monetary policy. In delivering...
Failure to Launch
The popular belief that the U.S. economy has been steadily recovering has endured months of disappointing data without losing much of its appeal. A deep bench of excuses, ranging from the weather to the Chinese economy, has been called on to justify why the economy...
QE’s Creeping Communism
Washington has joined Tokyo on the road to Leningrad.
Trade Deficit Angst
International trade operates under the same general principles as domestic trade.
Look Beyond Supply and Demand to Understand Labor
The marginal utility of human work does not diminish, as the number of workers increases. As the size of a market grows, the value of firms and workers within it rises.
Tariffs on Foreign Goods To Save Jobs
When Congress creates a special privilege for some Americans, it must of necessity come at the expense of other Americans.
Making Moral Business Choices
True self-interest cannot involve cynical exploitation of others through initiation of physical force or fraud
The Logic of Adam Smith: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
What actually makes for a more just society experiencing greater opportunity, improved conditions and rising standards of living for virtually all over the long run? In a nutshell, three words: freedom, competition and trade. These are Adam Smith’s “open sesame” to …
Free Trade, Tariffs and Quotas: “Protectionism” vs. Individual Rights
Is the protection of domestic jobs more important than the protection of individual rights?
The Free Market versus the Bureaucratic State
As Ludwig von Mises explained, an enterprise or activity is either guided by the pursuit of profit or it is not: Make profits by satisfying consumers better than the market supply-side rivals or meet the legislative mandate of the government bureau or agency by followin…
Balance of Trade: China Is Not “Killing Us” with Foreign Trade
American job losses are not the result of freer trade and an excess of imports over exports, but of government policies that prevent capital accumulation in the United States, among them policies that limit imports.
America’s National Debt Bomb Caused by the Welfare State
The Federal debt has now crossed the $19 trillion mark. When George W. Bush entered the White House in 2001, Uncle Sam’s debt stood at $5 trillion. When President Bush left office in January of 2009, it had increased to $10 trillion. Now into seven years of Barack Oba…
Carl Menger and the Foundations of Austrian Economics
Carl Menger is a towering figure, not only for the development of his variation on the “marginalist” theme, but for originating a still unique and distinct and highly relevant approach to economic and social analysis that still rightly bears the name, the “Austria…
An Escalating War on Cash
Investors should be aware of such possibilities and consider whether to hold cash and precious metals prudently outside the banking system. Better to be even months too early than a second too late should we be left facing a bank’s closed doors.
The World is Still a Slave To The Fallacies and Defunct Economics of John Maynard Keynes
Keynes helped undermine what had been three of the essential institutional ingredients of a free-market economy: the gold standard, balanced government budgets, and open competitive markets. In their place Keynes’s legacy has given us paper-money inflation, government…
Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk: Refuter of Marxism and Theorist on The Economics of Capitalism
Böhm-Bawerk is famous as one of the leading critics of Marxism and socialism in the years before the First World War. He is equally renowned as one of the developers of “marginal utility” theory as the basis of showing the logic and workings of the competitive mark…
Bill Gates Against Capitalism and Freedom
I wish that people who make millions or billions of dollars, such as Bill Gates, would stop denigrating and seeking to undermine the very system that enabled them to be successful in the first place: capitalism.
Economist Joseph Schumpeter: Father of Capitalist “Creative Destruction”
Schumpeter is famous as a leading 20th century formulator of the notion of the entrepreneur as dynamic innovator of change, and also as a master of the history of economic ideas.
Self Interest and The “Common Good”
A common exhortation heard today is: Set self-interest aside and act for the “common good.” Businesspeople in particular are accused of selfishness and are told (by media commentators, NGOs, and ethicists, among others) to serve the “common good.” This exhortation...
Individualism and Capitalism vs. Central Planning and Statism: The Political Battle of the 21st Century
If all of that dispersed and decentralized knowledge that exists in the individual minds of all the members of society is to be effectively used and brought to bear for mutual improvement of the human condition, each of us must be left free to use that knowledge as we, …
Lifting Sanctions on Iran a Mixed Bag
From a financial perspective, the New Year has been anything but happy. As of January 20th, the S&P had fallen over 9% since the beginning of the year, to levels not seen since 2014,reflecting a loss of some $2 trillion in market value. Compounding matters was the...
Statism vs. Capitalism: Why Government Cannot Manage The Economy, Part II
The more complex the social and economic system the less any single or handful of human minds could comprehend, master or manipulate the relationships for better outcomes than when the market was left free.
Statism vs. Capitalism: Why Government Cannot Manage The Economy, Part I
The “knowledge of the world” is dispersed and divided up in the minds of all the members of society, with each knowing and understanding only a small part relative to all the knowledge that exists in everybody’s minds, combined.
The New Nomenklatura: California’s “Progressive” Exclusionary Housing Market
Land prices skyrocket when the supply of land is artificially and drastically reduced, which means that housing prices become astronomical.
Protectionism Will Not Make America Great Again
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said he will push for companies, including Apple Inc., to bring manufacturing back to the United States. “Make America great again,” Trump recently said in a speech at Liberty University in Virginia. “We’re going to get...
Politicians Ignorance of Capitalist Free Market Economics
Politicians can’t see the wonders that the market provides, but they somehow see everything government does as a blessing — taxes that cut into people’s pay and regulations that make it more expensive to produce. They don’t see that their well-intended “pro-consumer” r…
Ending Government’s Monopoly Control Over Money
A central tool for governments to maintain their authority in society and their control over people’s lives is the ability to make the citizenry accept and use their monopoly medium of exchange.
Video: Why Businessmen Should Not Give Something Back
Don Watkins, co-author of the national bestseller “Free Market Revolution,” argues that businessmen do not have an obligation to “give something back.”
Subscribe for free.
Latest pro-Capitalism goodness sent weekly to your email box.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.