Monthly Archive: March 2025

The Great Murray Rothbard

2025-03-14

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2025-03-14

Murray Rothbard was the chief architect of modern anarcho-capitalism, an uncompromising vision of a stateless society rooted in private property and voluntary association. He built upon classical liberal thought, particularly the ideas of John Locke and the individualist anarchism of 19th-century thinkers like Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker. However, unlike his predecessors, Murray fused these ideas with the Austrian School of economics,...

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State Street survives Swiss pension fund axe

2025-03-14

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2025-03-14

US asset manager State Street looks after CHF46bn of Swiss pension funds Keystone Listen to the article Listening the article Toggle language selector...

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Closing Signs Are Signs of the Times

2025-03-14

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2025-03-14

It was not long ago when signs for “Help Wanted” seemed to be in every store window. That is starting to be replaced in 2024 and 2025 with “Store Closing” signs. This switcheroo tells us volumes about how people and the economy are adjusting to the Fed’s money printing business. While the government and the wealthy elite benefit from the money printing, consumers and workers only seem to suffer.I do feel sorry for the rank-and-file workers in the...

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Tariffs Also Tax Capital, Not Just Consumption

2025-03-13

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2025-03-13

In a recent column, Paul Craig Roberts wrote that tariffs not only made international trade possible, but that they were merely a tax on consumption and were neutral elsewhere—and should be much-preferred to income taxes. He wrote:Trump sees tariffs in a different way than indoctrinated free-market economists. Tariffs don’t prevent trade. They ensure that countries have something with which to trade. Moreover, tariffs are a tax on consumption, not...

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Gold, Money, and the Nation-State

2025-03-13

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2025-03-13

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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Covid: The New, “New Deal” Revisionism Is Already Starting

2025-03-13

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2025-03-13

As a history teacher and an economist, it never ceases to amaze me at the success of certain historical myths (in this case, defined as verifiably untrue beliefs) have come to dominate popular understanding. Often it seems that no presentation of facts to the contrary of such myths are sufficient to dislodge them.Perhaps one of the most stubborn myths—and other myths related to it—is that Roosevelt’s New Deal policies brought about economic...

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Swiss e-commerce sales reached CHF15 billion 2024

2025-03-13

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2025-03-13

Nearly CHF 15 billion generated by e-commerce in 2024 Keystone-SDA Listen to the article Listening the article Toggle language selector...

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The Struggle for Liberty: A Libertarian History of Political Thought

2025-03-13

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2025-03-13

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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Too Obvious to See?

2025-03-13

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2025-03-13

The Trump-Musk assassination troops going through the federal bureaucracy will eventually arrive at an oddball entity called the Federal Reserve. It is and isn’t many things, which if confusion is your sport, is part of its charm.It is an “inflation fighter” whose main purpose is creating inflation. On rare occasions a Fed member or even the Chairman will state in plain language what the Federal Reserve does—“print money”—but most people seem to...

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CPI Is Cooler Than Expected

2025-03-13

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2025-03-13

Following a hot January CPI set of inflation data, the BLS CPI report cooled down in February. Headline CPI rose +0.2% versus +0.3% consensus and +0.5% in January. Core CPI was also +0.2% for the month. The year-over-year headline and core rates fell 0.2% from last month's figures to 2.8% and 3.1%. The 3.1% core … Continue reading »

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A Break in the Drama, Greenback Consolidates

2025-03-13

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2025-03-13

Overview: There seems to be a nervous calm in the foreign exchange market as the dollar consolidates mostly inside yesterday's ranges, in largely uneventful turnover. In addition to the US steel and aluminum tariffs, and retaliatory moves by the EU, Canada, and China, the other big development this week is the effort to achieve a 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine. US-Russian officials meet today. Ahead of the talks, Russia reported captured a...

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The Importance of Asset Allocation in Building a Resilient Investment Portfolio

2025-03-13

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2025-03-13

A well-structured asset allocation strategy is the foundation of a resilient investment portfolio. It determines how your investments are distributed across different asset classes, balancing risk and return to align with your financial goals. Proper asset allocation can help you navigate market fluctuations, protect wealth, and optimize long-term performance. In this article, we’ll explore the …

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The Madness of Presidential Tariffs

2025-03-13

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2025-03-13

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds is an early study of crowd psychology by Scottish journalist Charles Mackay, first published in 1841 under the title Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions. The book was published in three volumes: “National Delusions”, “Peculiar Follies,” and “Philosophical Delusions.”The first three chapters address economic events to include:The Mississippi SchemeThe South Sea BubbleThe Tulip ManiaThe...

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Empire as the Price of Bureaucracy

2025-03-12

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2025-03-12

William F. Buckley, Jr. wrote in 1952, “We have to accept Big Government for the duration [of the Cold War]—for neither an offensive nor a defensive war can be waged . . . except through the instrument of a totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores.” Since, the conservative establishment has sacrificed the nation at the altar of defeating the latest boogeyman abroad. They have accepted bureaucracy in place of markets, technocracy in place of...

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Trade War Escalates, Bank of Canada to Cut Rates, US Reports February CPI and Sells $39 bln 10-Year Notes

2025-03-12

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2025-03-12

Overview: The next phase of the evolving trade war that is both a cause and effect of strain in the traditional US alliance, in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific has begun. The US has imposed 25% tariffs on imported steel and aluminum. Despite lobbying form various countries, no exemptions were announced. The EU quickly announced retaliation, but the measures do not go into effect for a month, which allows time for negotiations. The dollar is...

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Buy The Dip Or Sell The Rip?

2025-03-12

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2025-03-12

The rally over the last two years has helped investors forget that markets also go down. After two +20% consecutive years, a sudden 8% drop from recent highs has investors panicking. Bear in mind, no pun intended, that the S&P 500 is only down 4% for 2025. Consider the graph below. It shows that the … Continue reading »

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Cocoa-free chocolate arrives in Switzerland

2025-03-12

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2025-03-12

These cocoa-free products, designed to replicate the taste and texture of traditional chocolate, address two major challenges: soaring cocoa prices and the environmental concerns associated with cocoa farming. Keystone / Christian Beutler Listen to...

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Who Gets the Blame for the Upcoming Recession?

2025-03-12

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2025-03-12

Over the weekend, President Trump made headlines for refusing, on two occasions, to rule out the possibility that the US will experience a recession this year. The comments came days after the Atlanta Fed announced it now projects GDP to fall by nearly three percent in the first quarter of this year.Those developments, paired with the recent stock market decline set off by the market’s reaction to Trump’s tariff plans, have many political opponents...

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Tokenization: The New Frontier For Capital Markets

2025-03-12

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2025-03-12

There is tremendous value in the world of crypto! Given some of our recent opinions (linked below), you probably did not expect to hear those words from us. Digital tokenization of assets, made possible by the crypto-blockchain construct, can boost efficiency in the capital markets, thus greasing the wheels that drive the economy.   Our …

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Tho Bishop on Trump, Tariffs, and America’s Rigged Economy

2025-03-12

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2025-03-12

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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