Who Will Take Care of the Roads? Why, The Coercive, Substandard, and Monopolistic Government Department, That’s Who

2024-02-10

According to a new report from the federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics last Friday, the US economy added 353,000 jobs for the month of January while the unemployment rate held at 3.7%. CNN news was sure to tell us that this was a "shockingly good jobs report" and it "shows America’s economy is booming." 
At this point, many of us who follow these numbers have become accustomed to the routine: the BLS reports "blowout" jobs numbers each month, and the legacy media dutifully reports that the jobs growth is astoundingly good, proving all is well in the economy. 
The media rarely reports on any other economic indicators with nearly as much enthusiasm. The monthly jobs report—well, one specific statistic within it—has become something of a proxy for the state of the economy

2023-11-11

Sovereign debt is eating the world. Lining up a financial crash that could make 2008 look like a picnic.
How did we get here?
In short, governments and central banks deluded themselves into thinking that unlimited deficit spending financed by unlimited money printing won’t do what they’ve done for literally millennia — plunge the economy into stagflation.
They are, of course, wrong. And we’re seeing the catastrophe unfold before our eyes.
From Nixon to $33 Trillion in Debt
The story begins in the 1970s when Nixon broke the global gold standard, unleashing permanent deficits worldwide. But the latest chapter starts in 2008 when central banks bailed out the financial system by effectively printing trillions of dollars.
At the time, everybody knew that much printing would cause inflation,

2023-11-07

A History of Money and Banking in the United States:
The Colonial Era to World War II
by Murray N. Rothbard
Edited with an Introduction by Joseph T. Salerno
(Auburn, Alabama: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2002; 510 pages)
A History of Money and Banking in the United States comprises a collection of essays written by Murray N. Rothbard and compiled and edited by Joseph T. Salerno. It is the most comprehensive and enlightening treatise on the history of money and banking (not only in the United States, but also, to a large extent, in the rest of the world) written to date. In short, this work constitutes the most illuminating historical interpretation, from the perspective of the Austrian school, of the evolution of money and banking over nearly the last 250 years. Therefore, all scholars who