This article is adapted from a lecture delivered to the Federalist Society: The Federal Reserve is a fundamental problem for the Constitutional order of the American Republic. How can it be that it considered itself able to unilaterally impose permanent inflation on the country, without legislative debate or approval?The shifting theories believed by central banks are among the most important of macro-economic factors. For example, William...
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Recent posts
The TikTok Ban Is the Next Patriot Act
HR 7521, called the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, is a recent development in American politics. TikTok has been in the news for the past few years, after the public became aware of its connections to China. The popular social media mobile app is currently owned by ByteDance Ltd, a Chinese company. China and the United States currently have a rocky relationship, leading to fears that the Chinese government...
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A “New” Book of Essays by William Graham Sumner
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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Robert Kagan Goes on a Tear
Rebellion: How Antiliberalism Is Tearing America Apart—Againby Robert KaganAlfred A. Knopf, 2024; 243 pp.Robert Kagan, a senior fellow of the Brookings Institution, has acquired over several decades a well-deserved reputation as a defender of war. Like Woodrow Wilson, he believes the world must be made safe for democracy. He strongly supported George W. Bush’s war against Iraq, and though the war is widely regarded as a failure, Kagan disagrees....
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What Can Carl Menger Teach Us about Falafel Sandwiches?
Earlier this year, I gave a short course on Carl Menger’s Principles of Economics for scientists and engineers at my institute. The course was brief, and I focused only on ideas that were relevant for researchers in engineering and the natural sciences. One of the ideas we talked about was supply and demand, in order to link it to the supply and demand of research-related things: the labor of researchers, research articles on specific topics, and...
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Biden Perpetuates Washington’s Idiotic Steel Trade Policies
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 Federal Reserve’s Capital Has Now Plummeted to Negative $121 Billion
Hold up your hand if you think that the aggregate losses of an organization are an asset of that organization. No hands at all? Absolutely right. Losses are not an asset. That’s accounting 101. Yet the greatest central bank in the world, the Federal Reserve, insists on claiming that its continuing losses, which have accumulated to the staggering sum of $164 billion, are an accounting asset.The Fed seeks to palm off this accounting entry as a...
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Free-Market Profit Comes From Voluntary Exchange, not Exploitation
In our modern political culture, many people claim that profits are the outcome of some individuals exploiting other individuals. Hence, anyone who is seen trying to make profits is regarded as an enemy of society and must be stopped before inflicting damage. According to Henry Hazlitt, “The indignation shown by many people today at the mention of the very word profits indicates how little understanding there is of the vital function that profits...
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Javier Milei and Argentina’s Economic Challenge
The Misesian: It seems to many that Javier Milei was elected due to widespread dissatisfaction with the state of the economy in Argentina. Is this a correct assessment?Nicolás Cachanosky: Yes, I believe that is quite accurate. Argentina’s economy has been plagued by increasing inflation since 2007, reaching a world record of 210 percent in 2023. Additionally, the economy has been stagnant since 2011. Poverty rates are also troubling. Consider this:...
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Progress from Poverty
How Nations Escape Poverty: Vietnam, Poland, and the Origins of Prosperityby Rainer ZitelmannEncounter Books, 2024; xiii + 212 pp.Rainer Zitelmann has a well-deserved reputation as a defender of the free market; few, if any, can match his immense capacity for amassing relevant facts and using them effectively to support his arguments. This capacity is much in evidence in his latest book, How Nations Escape Poverty. They do so, Zitelmann says, by...
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Confusion Worse Confounded
Life after Capitalism: The Meaning of Wealth, the Future of the Economy, and the Time Theory of Moneyby George GilderRegnery Gateway, 2023; 212 pp.George Gilder looks at things in an original way, but this is not always a virtue. There is much good sense in Life after Capitalism, but to find it readers will have to wade through a great deal of mumbo jumbo. Let’s start with the good sense.Gilder contends that the contemporary American economy is...
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Hyperinflation and the Destruction of Human Personality
The Link between Economic Calculation and Human PersonalityEconomists and historians have clearly shown that the destruction of the value and function of money by hyperinflation makes economic calculation impossible and leads to economic and social disintegration and widespread poverty. What is not so clearly understood, even by many economists, is that during periods of rapid inflation, the inability to economically calculate undermines the very...
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The Misesian – 2024 V-01 I-02
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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From the Editor March / April 2024
Inflation Is Destroying UsOne of the most damaging shortcomings of modern statistics-based economics is that it all too often removes the individual human person from its analysis. In this setting, “economics” becomes a matter of “macro” aggregates and data factoids like GDP and CPI. This kind of “economics” removes the individual acting person as the central, key variable.Austrian School economics, on the other hand, never loses sight of the...
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Japan Drives Home Message
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Is America Headed for Stagflation?
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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How House Republicans Outsource Campus Speech Limits to George Soros
This week, the House passed H. R. 6090, a bill sold to the public as an “Antisemitism Awareness Act,” but effectively outsources the definition of actionable Civil Rights Act “antidiscrimination” violations to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. In doing so, the DC uniparty has granted a significant concession on the First Amendment at a time when its freedom of speech is facing a coordinated attack from powerful, globalist...
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TikTok Hypocrisy
President Biden’s campaign will continue using the popular social media site TikTok even though the president supported a provision in the military aid bill he recently signed forcing TikTok’s parent company ByteDance to sell TikTok within 270 days. If ByteDance does not sell TikTok within the required time, TikTok will be banned in the USA. Biden’s continued use of TikTok to reach the approximately 150 million American TikTok users, is not the...
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Fraudulent Logic Guides the UK Smoking Ban
It is the waning days of the Sunak premiership, and the Conservative party still has a stonking majority despite its cataclysmic capitulation in the polls. The government is effectively a lame duck; everyone knows it has no support, yet it will still be around for a few more months. One would think that since the Conservative party still has a large majority in the House of Commons that it would let loose with policy and attempt real reform so that...
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Earth Day—A Phony Holiday
April 22 was Earth Day.. Brain-dead “President” Biden issued a proclamation about it. This said:“More than 50 years ago today, some 20 million Americans came together across the country to demand that we prioritize our planet’s well-being. They came from every walk of life and political background, and were united around a common vision: to protect the Earth and our natural treasures for future generations. Their actions that day ignited an...
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Want More Government Revenue? Just Write More Traffic Tickets.
On some level, all of us realize that traffic tickets are seen by local governments as a form of revenue. Supposedly, the intent behind issuance of fines for traffic offenses is to disincentivize behaviors which are deemed to be unsafe, such as driving over the speed limit or not wearing a seatbelt (despite the fact that the latter poses no risk to anyone but the driver). The punishment for this type of offense being almost always a fine, as...
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When Governments Want More Revenue, Police Gin Up the Cash by Writing Traffic Tickets
On some level, all of us realize that traffic tickets are seen by local governments as a form of revenue. Supposedly, the intent behind issuance of fines for traffic offenses is to disincentivize behaviors which are deemed to be unsafe, such as driving over the speed limit or not wearing a seatbelt (despite the fact that the latter poses no risk to anyone but the driver). The punishment for this type of offense being almost always a fine, as...
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Governments Could Stop Inflating If They Wanted. But They Won’t.
Price inflation is no coincidence. It is a policy. Governments, along with their so-called experts, attempt to persuade you that price inflation stems from anything other than the consistent, albeit slower, rise in aggregate prices year after year. Issuing more currency than the private sector demands, thus eroding its purchasing power and creating a constant annual transfer of wealth from real wages and deposit savings to the government.Oil prices...
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Butler, Butt Out!
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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Fiat Money is the Greatest Danger Our Economy Faces
In nature everything has a cycle. Birth, growth, maturation, death. Everything, including the planets and stars. Nothing stays the same. So why does our government believe they can master economic cycles and not experience ups and downs the way nature does? Throughout history, economies haven’t worked that way.For years, to enhance trade, countries tied their currencies to commodities that were scarce, valuable and had steady prices. Often, gold,...
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Thanks to Government Animal Control, Stray Animals Rule My Neighborhood
In my neighborhood, we have an animal control problem.When I go for a walk, I carry dog mace (a nonlethal alternative to my usual revolver) because there are always, always, loose dogs out. I’ve been followed around by barking dogs many times, and they’re not always on the same streets, which means it’s hard to avoid them. One of my neighbors’ guests was bitten by a loose collie. I narrowly avoided having to break up a dog fight when an aggressive...
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May Day Fed Day
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What the Campus Protesters and Their Critics Get Right and Wrong
As the academic year draws to a close, protests have broken out on college campuses across the country. Students are protesting Israel’s actions in Gaza. Generally, they are calling for the United States government to stop arming and funding the war and, in the meantime, for their universities to divest from Israeli businesses.The current spate of protests can be drawn back to April 17, when the president of Columbia University was brought before...
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Why the GOP Betrayed Its Own Voters on Ukraine
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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Tin Soldiers and Nixon Coming…
A version of this article first appeared as an exclusive update to RPI subscribers. Subscribe for free here.Student action on university campuses against US involvement in Israel’s slaughter of Gaza has exploded across the country. Suddenly there is the distinct feel in the air of the anti-Vietnam war protests once they finally caught on in 1968 and soon thereafter changed the course of US history.Both protest movements were fully demonized by the...
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On Swiss National Bank
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SNB Sight Deposits: decreased by 5.6 billion francs compared to the previous week
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USD/CHF stays above 0.9100 nearing the highs since October
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Pound Sterling falls back as upbeat US Retail Sales strengthen US Dollar
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Canadian Dollar remains vulnerable after strong US Retail Sales
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2024-04-09 – Martin Schlegel: Interest rates and foreign exchange interventions: Achieving price stability in challenging times
Main SNB Background Info
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