Monthly Archive: March 2025

Dismantling the Department of Education?

2025-03-17

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2025-03-17

President Trump’s proposal to dismantle the Department of Education is one step closer to an open, market-based system of education. The ultimate goal is a free-market system of education in which parents, teachers, and students are able to make their own choices about education, rather than being dictated by federal mandates.One of the most persuasive arguments against the Department of Education is that it holds on to a one-size-fits-all...

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Credit Suisse turned down takeover bids one year before collapse

2025-03-16

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2025-03-16

Diamond claimed his group had proposed buying the investment banking segment of Credit Suisse in 2022. Keystone / Michael Buholzer Listen to the article Listening the article...

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Top Swiss commerce official to meet with Trump administration

2025-03-16

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2025-03-16

Details of Budliger Artieda's meeting in Washington next week still need to be worked out, a spokesperson said. Keystone-SDA Listen to the article Listening the article...

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We Can’t Fix International Organizations like the WTO. Abolish Them.

2025-03-15

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2025-03-15

In a recent Springer publication, Marcos Falcone proposed “Bringing the Austrian School into the 21st century” by embracing existing international institutions as a means of maximizing global liberty. Acknowledging that they are often justly criticized for being bureaucratic and ineffective, Falcone argues that they have historically contributed to economic growth and democratization and that all that is needed are two key reforms to strengthen...

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Richard Murphy, The Bank of England, And MMT Confusion

2025-03-15

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2025-03-15

Professor Richard Murphy is a public supporter of Keynesian fallacies and MMT. He recently provided a glimpse into this increasingly popular perspective by alleging that the Bank of England is deliberately crashing the economy by reducing its Asset Purchase Facility (APF).The latest budget increased government spending, borrowing, and taxes. But as MMT advocates seek to unburden governments from borrowing and think that taxes should be used as a...

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Free Markets Promote Peaceful Cooperation and Racial Harmony

2025-03-15

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2025-03-15

In Human Action, Ludwig von Mises highlights the importance of human cooperation as a prerequisite for the division of labor and free exchange. Without this, humanity remains mired in poverty:The “state of nature” that the reformers and utopians depicted as paradisiac was in fact a state of extreme poverty and distress. “Poverty,” says Bentham, “is not the work of the laws, it is the primitive condition of the human race.” Even those at the base of...

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Nearly one in two bicycles sold in Switzerland is an e-bike

2025-03-15

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2025-03-15

According to Velosuisse, there are currently around 5.2 million bicycles and around 1.4 million e-bikes on Swiss roads. Keystone / Gaetan Bally Listen to the article Listening the article...

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Week Ahead: New FOMC Projections; BOE, BOJ, and Riksbank Standpat, While SNB to Approach Zero -Bound (Again)

2025-03-15

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2025-03-15

The architects of the new US foreign economic policy expected dollar appreciation to absorb some of the cost of US tariffs and expected some exporters to cut prices. Instead, the dollar has mostly fallen against the major currencies. Last week, the greenback recorded new lows for the year against the Chinese yuan, Mexican peso, euro, sterling, the Japanese yen, the Swedish krona, and Norwegian krone. Beijing acted forcefully against Walmart's...

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Over 200 Swiss firms sign up to CO2 reduction targets

2025-03-15

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2025-03-15

The SBTi is a global corporate climate-action organisation that is supported by business associations, environmental organisations and the United Nations. Keystone-SDA Listen to the article Listening the article...

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Sell Off Accelerates As Recession Fears Emerge

2025-03-15

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2025-03-15

Inside This Week's Bull Bear Report Market Volatility Spikes Last week, we discussed that the market continues to track Trump's first Presidential term as he launched a trade war with China. "However, despite the deep levels of negativity, the current correction is well within the context of the volatility seen during Trump's first term as …

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The Precarious State of the American Economy

2025-03-15

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2025-03-15

What is the Mises Institute? The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard. Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property...

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The global brands artificially inflating their prices on Swiss versions of their websites

2025-03-14

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2025-03-14

It is well known that the Swiss are overcharged for nearly everything. However, when products are being sent from a warehouse outside Switzerland one would expect the pre-tax price to be the same. This is rarely the case. The Romande Consumer Federation (FRC) has looked at a number of brands and found unjustifiable price differences as high as 93%. © Casimirokt | Dreamstime.com The FRC found an average price difference of +35% on...

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Why Price Deflation Doesn’t Hinder Investment

2025-03-14

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2025-03-14

What is the Mises Institute? The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard. Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property...

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Trump’s False Tariff “Fairness” Argument

2025-03-14

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2025-03-14

President Trump’s argument for starting an international trade war is based on a socialistic-sounding plea for “fairness” and equality. Some foreign governments plunder their citizens with high tariff taxes on American imports, thereby forcing them to pay higher prices for those or competing domestic goods. The reason they are called “protective” tariffs is that they “protect” consumers from lower prices. When your foreign competitor is forced to...

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Trump is Wrong on Trade

2025-03-14

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2025-03-14

Trumps claims that America has lost high paying manufacturing jobs to China because the communist country promotes its exports through subsidies, tax advantages and currency manipulations. The reality is that we should not care what China does. The more China subsidizes its industries, the more its trading partners gain in the abundance of cheap goods and services and, contrary to what Trump believes, in the creation of high-paying jobs. In an...

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The Abominable Tariff

2025-03-14

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2025-03-14

[The Tariff Superstition: Why Protectionism Always Fails and Who Really Pays the Price by Marcel Kadosa. Translated by Bálint Téborski. Eger, Hungary, 2025. 159 pp.]Hungary in the years after World War I isn’t generally associated with a movement that supported the free market, but Bálint Téborski—whom we have to thank for The Tariff Superstition—tells us that,…this little gem of a book long forgotten for countless decades until we managed to...

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Gold and the Mexican Peso Trade at New Highs, Sterling is Resilient in the Face of the Unexpected Contraction in January

2025-03-14

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2025-03-14

Overview: The US dollar is mixed but the risk-appetites are finishing the week on an update. In the foreign exchange market, this is reflected in the dollar-bloc currencies leading the G10 higher, with the yen and Swiss franc the laggards. Japan's spring wage negotiation round is producing solid preliminary results, but a new funding scandal may weaken the minority government led by Prime Minister Ishida. Most emerging market currencies are also...

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Lincoln’s New Deal

2025-03-14

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2025-03-14

In Frank W. Taussig’s The Tariff History of the United States, he describes the mass of unprecedented financial legislation that took place, which likely would not have occurred absent the context of the war,Probably no country has seen, in so short a time, so extraordinary a mass of financial legislation. A huge national debt was accumulated; the mischievous expedient of an inconvertible paper currency was resorted to; a national banking system...

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The Rotation To Value From Growth: What Comes Next?

2025-03-14

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2025-03-14

In hindsight, markets are easy to assess, yet extremely challenging to forecast. For example, as we will show, it's undeniable that value, particularly large-cap value stocks, have been in vogue during the recent decline, while growth is being kicked to the curb. This rotation from growth to value is an example of how investors rotate …

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Stupidity And The 5-Laws Not To Follow

2025-03-14

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2025-03-14

Human stupidity is the one thing you can rely on in financial markets. I recently read a great piece by Joe Wiggins at Behavioral Investment, which discusses why "Investing is hard." The entire article is worth reading, but here are the five key reasons investors often fail at investing: These are great points, particularly now that …

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