While I’m all for monetary freedom and competition, I’m also for reforming the U.S. dollar, which for me means freeing it from control by discretionary central bankers.
MARKETS
Intellectual freedom cannot exist without political freedom; political freedom cannot exist without economic freedom; a free mind and a free market are corollaries. – AYN RAND
Black Gold Loses Glitter
While it is true that the new drilling techniques have revolutionized energy production in the U.S. and Canada, the increase in production has been mostly negligible on the global stage.
We Are All Free Banking Theorists Now*
If even economists who’ve never heard of free banking, or who dismiss both it and the people who take it seriously, nevertheless subscribe to some free banking theories of their own, where do their theories come from?
The Clock is Ticking in Switzerland
While other countries were undermined by the promises politicians made with a printing press, the Swiss economy prospered thanks to the discipline provided by gold.
The Doctor-Laborer Inversion
The battle over minimum wage is raging. Emotions are running hot. Some cities are setting the bar very high. For example, Seattle is mandating a $15/hour wage. Economically, the issue is very simple. Minimum wage laws do not raise anyone’s wage. This is because it’s...
Israel Kirzner: Entrepreneurship, Competition and the Market Process
On October 13th, the 2014 Nobel Prize in Economics was announced in Stockholm, Sweden, with French economist, Jean Tirole, the recipient for his work on developing models to better assist governments in regulating private enterprise. A couple of weeks earlier, Reuters...
It’s The Economy, and They’re Not Stupid
The sharp rebuke to the Obama administration delivered by the mid-term elections should not be construed as an endorsement of the GOP, which remains as unpopular as ever.
Fans of Central Banking Have an Achilles Heel
Central planners constantly run into the problem that people are not willing cogs.
Embarrassing Economists
There are economists, most notably Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, who suggest that the law of demand applies to everything except labor prices (wages) of low-skilled workers.
Governments Need Inflation, Economies Don’t
Inflation is not needed to grow economies but to grow governments.
Predatory Journalism Against The Freedom To Price
Editorial demagoguery against “predatory” lending might well be called predatory journalism — taking advantage of other people’s ignorance of economics to score ideological points, and promote still more expansion of government powers that limit the options of poor people especially.
Why is the Gold Standard Urgent?
After President Nixon’s gold default in 1971, many people advocated a return to the gold standard. One argument has been repeated: consumer prices are rising. While this is true, it wasn’t compelling in the 1970’s and it certainly doesn’t fire people up today. Rising...
The Wrong Idea About Inflation
I write often about inflation, and often emphasize that it is not about rising prices. It is important that we define our concepts correctly. Inflation is monetary counterfeiting. Here is a quick graph I made to underscore the point that although the quantity of...
Reforming The Global Financial System: Let Market Forces Play a Greater Role
History shows that, whenever financial institutions, whether domestic or global, have been allowed to develop freely, the results have been far more satisfactory than those from government-designed schemes.
Perception vs. Reality at the Fed
Credibility at the Fed is about subtleties and about perceptions, as opposed to reality.
William Jennings Bryan and the Founding of the Fed
William Jennings Bryan, the most stalwart enemy of both private currency and currency monopoly since Andrew Jackson, helped to create a currency monopoly far more powerful than any that Jackson could ever have envisaged, and far more capable of gratifying Wall Street, at the expense of the rest of the nation, than Wall Street alone, left perfectly free from government controls, could ever have devised.
Business as a Moral Endeavor
Business is moral because our lives and well-being depend on it, and businesspeople are heroes and moral creators who deserve, not our disdain and criticism, but our thanks.
Book Excerpt: Money, Banking, and the Business Cycle
An excerpt from the introduction of Money, Banking, and the Business Cycle.
Why Appeasement Doesn’t Work: Sainsbury’s and Kosher Foods
By appeasing the protestors, the first moral principles the Sainsbury’s manager conceded was the right to liberty.
Cheering the Burger King Takeover of Tim Hortons
To argue that foreign takeovers of Canadian companies are of “no net benefit” is nonsensical.
Mob Rule Economics and “Living Wages”
An employer is not hiring people in order to acquire dependents and become their meal ticket. He is hiring them for what they produce.
Fed Follies: Central Bank Continues to Force Economy in Wrong Direction
Why did the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy of price level stabilization in the 1920s result in the Great Depression of the early 1930s?
Market Competition is Good and Government Meddling is Bad
If we want to enjoy lower prices and better quality products and services, whether in air travel, cell phone service, health care, or anything else, the solution is to stop the government from trying to manage markets and to make them free instead, thus increasing competition.
The Real Causes of the Financial Crisis
I believe that the real cause of the financial crisis is philosophical. We got into this mess through what I call ‘the free-lunch mentality.’
Capitalism Solves Problems; Statism Creates Them
Free market benefits aren’t only measured in dollars and cents.
The Myth of “Unfair” Martkets and “Extreme” Capitalism
It is the government efforts to “moderate” capitalism and to make markets “fair” that create the unfairness they claim to alleviate.
Is Inequality Caused by Capitalism or Statism?
Capitalism creates through freedom; the state destroys via regulation; capitalism gets the blame.
The Ambassador and the Post Office: A Lesson on Freedom from India
You can always keep anything old, clunky and inefficient still in business, if you are willing to pour unlimited amounts of the taxpayers’ money down a bottomless pit.
Capital in the 21st Century: Thomas Piketty’s Envy Problem
A tired old recipe for global communism in 21st century pseudo-academic clothing.
The Inequality Trap Distracts from the Real Issue of Freedom: Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century
Rather than asking the source or origin of that wealth — production or plunder –the egalitarians like Thomas Piketty merely see that some have more wealth than others and condemn such an “unequal distribution,” in itself.
Gary Becker (1930-2014)
Nobel Prize-winning economist Gary Becker was internationally renowned within the economics profession, but was not nearly as well known among the general public as he deserved to be.
The Moral Bankruptcy of Our Educational System
Too many of today’s “educators” see students as a captive audience for them to manipulate and propagandize.
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