On January 29th, Japan’s central bank governor, Haruhiko Kuroda, announced that the Bank of Japan would introduce a Negative Interest Rate Policy, or NIRP, on bank reserve deposits held in excess of the minimum requisite. The European Central Bank, and central banks...
MARKETS
Two Down – Two to Go
The Federal Reserve’s years-long campaign to sheepishly back away from its own policy forecasts continued in earnest last week when it officially reduced the four expected 2016 quarter point hikes, suggested back in December, to just two. Given the deteriorating...
April Fools in March
It may be almost impossible to underestimate the gullibility of professional Fed watchers. At least Lucy van Pelt needed to place an actual football on the ground to fool poor Charlie Brown. But in today’s high stakes game of Federal Reserve mind reading, the Fed...
Peddling Fiction, Ignoring Fact
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...
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 "Mission...
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 alleviate poverty, privilege, and inequity in society.
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 following the rules and procedures specified in your job description.
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 Obama’s presidency, the Federal debt has almost doubled again.
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 “Austrian School.”
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 deficit spending, and more political intervention throughout the market.
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 market price system, and as the early formulator of the “Austrian” theory of capital and interest.
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.
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