In the currency playground, the United States is the world’s biggest bully. With the world’s reserve currency Uncle Sam doesn’t use the dollar for diplomacy but for destruction. Responding to Russia’s attack on Ukraine in 2022, the U.S. “responded with an extraordinary amount of sanctions and cutting off Russia from the dollar-based system in almost every way imaginable,” Bloomberg’s Joe Weisenthal said on the Odd Lots podcast.It was Woodrow Wilson’s theory that sanctions are a “peaceful, silent, deadly remedy” against recalcitrant foreigners that replace the “need for force.” But, as Justin Raimondo explained “the slow death of economic strangulation can so degrade an entire people that they are reduced to a pre-civilizational state, modern savages living at a subsistence level.”China

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 order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.

If you’re wondering why you should buy gold or worry about a financial meltdown I have two words for you: Jared Bernstein. He is the Chief Economist for Joe Biden. In a clip from an upcoming documentary “Finding the Money” Bernstein is asked about the federal government’s borrowing process and he stumbles and bumbles, saying “The US government can’t go bankrupt because we can print our own money.” It gets worse from there.”They print the dollars so why does the government even borrow?” the interviewer asks.“Well, some of the language is just confusing. The government definitely prints its own money. The government definitely prints money and lends that money. The government definitely prints money,” Bernstein rambled repeatedly, unable to articulate the basic concepts.“It

Those who have declared residency in another state cannot spend even a minute beyond the allowed time in either high tax New York or California. And, Big Brother is watching. George Orwell could not conjure up a more diabolical tale than the Bloomberg story penned by Laura Nahmias and Eliyahu Kamisher.“The minute you file a partial return you’re going to hear from New York state,” said Jonathan Mariner, who created TaxDay, an app that tracks users’ locations so they don’t overstay the threshold of days that would trigger residency status, which is typically 184 (for irony, slip a nine in after the one).So for the really rich, a misplaced day in New York (or on the other coast, California) can mean millions lost to the tax authority. How serious is this? Nahmias and Kamisher write, “State

Those who have declared residency in another state cannot spend even a minute beyond the allowed time in either high tax New York or California. And, Big Brother is watching. George Orwell could not conger up a more diabolical tale than the Bloomberg story penned by Laura Nahmias and Eliyahu Kamisher.“The minute you file a partial return you’re going to hear from New York state,” said Jonathan Mariner, who created TaxDay, an app that tracks users’ locations so they don’t overstay the threshold of days that would trigger residency status, which is typically 184 (for irony, slip a 9 in after the one).So, for the really rich a misplaced day in New York (or on the other coast, California) can mean millions lost to the tax authority. How serious is this? Nahmias and Kamisher write, “state

Economics trumps sentimentality, and gold’s elevated price has some people raiding the family jewelry box to pay bills. “Young people are not wearing grandma’s jewels. Most of the young people, they want an Apple watch. They don’t want a pocket watch,” Tobina Kahn, president of House of Kahn Estate Jewelers told Bloomberg. “Sentimental is now out the door.”When times are tough, treasures change hands, the late Burt Blumert, once a gold dealer and Mises Institute Board Chairman, used to say. “Prices are high, and I need cash,” Branden Sabino, a thirty-year-old information technology worker said, adding that with the cost of rent, groceries, and car insurance rising, he doesn’t have any savings. He sold a gold necklace and a gold ring to King Gold and Pawn on Avenue 5 in Brooklyn. “People

When the latest CPI number came in hot at 0.4% for March and the annual core CPI inflation rate held at 3.8%, Betsey Stevenson, professor of economics at the University of Michigan appearing on CNBC’s Squawk Box said nonchalantly “Three percent inflation is no big deal.”

Day-to-day we don’t hear much about the commercial office property crash. As The Fed’s Michael Barr said at an event hosted by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition in Washington, “This is the kind of thing where it’s likely to be a very slow-moving train as the financial sector and commercial real estate market move forward,” he said, adding that refinancing deals will play out in the next few years. “It’ll take some time.”Barr, the vice chair for supervision said “There are pockets of risks in the system. We’re looking at things like, what’s the level of unrealized losses on the balance sheet from securities? We’re looking at banks that have particular kinds of concentration in commercial real estate.” Wolf Richter at wolfstreet.com, citing Trepp, reports the delinquency rate of

In a few short weeks since SEC approval Inflows into Bitcoin ETF funds had reached just over $59 billion on Good Friday, according to btcetffundflow.com. Meanwhile the unloved and disrespected GLD [gold] ETF holds $54 billion, despite its thousand year pedigree. Gold fan and crypto disser Peter Schiff debated crypto evangelist Raoul Pal on Real Vision for nearly three hours with neither combatant giving an inch. The calm Mr. Pal is the co-founder of Real Vision, a Goldman Sachs alum, and proudly says he is “irresponsibly long” Bitcoin and other cryptos. The dogmatic Schiff did numerous turns on the financial talking heads circuit post ‘08 crash and is the son of famous income tax protester Irwin Schiff.Both agree the U.S. government has borrowed its way into disaster with the only way out

Yeah, the other night I laid sleeping And I woke from a terrible dream So I caught up my pal Jack Daniel’s And his partner Jimmy Beam And we drank alone, yeah With nobody else Yeah, you know when I drink alone I prefer to be by myself ~George ThorogoodI poured hundreds of “Jack and Cokes” when I tended bar from the late 70’s to mid 80’s. It was beyond me how anyone could tell the difference between Jack Daniels Old No. 7 and anything else when mixed with coke or whatever carbonated cola was coming out of the gun. Turns out Dr. Fauci and the Center for Disease Control did Brown-Forman, the makers of Jack, a solid by shutting down America and cooping everyone up. More than some whiled away the hours with their old pal Jack Daniels. People may have had to work from home, but without the boss

Followers of the Austrian school of economics know that the term inflation refers to increasing the quantity of money or money substitutes. The result being a rise in the price of goods and services or a fall in the value of money. But, in the modern era, this rise in prices is called inflation and as Ludwig von Mises wrote, “This semantic innovation is by no means harmless.” The semantic change has people looking everywhere but where they should to blame for higher prices.Bloomberg’s Enda Curran writes, “A prolonged period of elevated inflation has left consumers cranky and eager to cast blame.” With the term inflation evidently getting tiresome, Curren lists some new price increase buzzwords and phrases.“Shrinkflation” This is the President’s favorite. He even mentioned it in his State

Pattie Boyd, British fashion model and muse to two rock superstars, George Harrison and Eric Clapton, engaged Christie’s to auction love letters from Harrison and Clapton in addition to other memorabilia. As with all other assets these days, Boyd’s bounty went for boom-time prices. Chron.com reports, “Christie’s, the world-renowned auction house, said its online sale of The Pattie Boyd Collection sold for around 2.82 million pounds ($3.6 million), or more than seven times the pre-sale high estimate of around 380,000 pounds.” The auction included two love letters from Clapton, written while Boyd was married to the unattentive Harrison. Making up the bulk of the auction proceeds was the original cover artwork for Derek and The Dominos’ 1970 album “Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs.” The

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For lower income folks the landing is already hard. Chief investment strategist at Charles Schwab Liz Ann Sonders posted on X (and reported by Almost Daily Grant’s) that the tally of domestic temporary help employees slipped to a three-plus-year low of 2.748 million down from 3.181 million as of March 2022. The 14% comes in 4th in the category’s downward drops percentage-wise since 1990; to the early 2000s, the 2008 financial crash and the Covid debacle, each coinciding with a recession. Outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas reports nationwide layoffs totaled 84,638 last month, the largest February sum since 2009. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Survey of Consumer Expectations for February finds that respondents give themselves a 14.5% chance of being let go from their jobs

One would guess the folly of rent control regulations needn’t be explained any further. If rents are held in place by government edict, landlords have no incentive to maintain apartment units to attract renters, the housing stock ultimately deteriorates, and homelessness increases.

Further evidence of the crash in office property values comes from news that the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) with $436.9 billion in capital sold its 29% stake in Manhattan’s 360 Park Avenue South for $1 to its partner Boston Properties Inc., which agreed to assume CPPIC’s share of the property’s debt. It was only in the third quarter of 2022, CPPIB committed $83.6 million as part of a tri-party venture with Boston Properties and GIC to acquire the 20-story office building. The pension fund spent $71 million on the project but bailed for a buck (+debt) when required to pony up another $46 million. CPPIB wasn’t done selling. The investment board sold a 45% stake in Santa Monica Business Park for $38 million, a discount of 75% to what CPPIB paid in 2018. Again, the pension

Something’s rotten under the Las Vegas Convention Center and it turns out it’s a chemical sludge with the “consistency of a milkshake,” reports Bloomberg Businessweek. This sludge is a byproduct of Elon Musk’s Boring Company tunneling from the Las Vegas Convention Center to the Encore and Westgate hotels. These tunnels don’t feature rapid transit but instead individual Teslas ferrying carloads of convention goers at just 40 mph. Workers are being burned by the sludge and the Nevada’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is investigating. Bloomberg Businessweek obtained a copy of the report under the Freedom of Information Act.Leaving aside the worker safety issue, Musk has been, shall we say, aspirational about the Boring Company’s prospects for tunneling underground, which

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Mises Institute is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Contributions are tax-deductible to the full extent the law allows. Tax ID# 52-1263436

The number of U.S. commercial foreclosures spiked to 635 in January 2024 from a low of 141 in May 2020 reports real estate data firm ATTOM.

Prices will always increase, some small banks will fail, and the Fed was asleep at the switch when the run on Silicon Valley Bank occurred. Fed chair Jerome Powell admitted those three things in response to Scott Pelley’s questions on 60 Minutes.
“But the overall price level doesn’t come down. It will fluctuate. And some . . . goods and services will go up, others will go down. But overall, in aggregate, the price level doesn’t tend to go down except in fairly extreme circumstances,” Powell said.
Of course, what Powell is referring to doesn’t exist. Murray Rothbard wrote,
There is no such thing as a single, scientific index of the movement of general prices. All such indexes are strictly arbitrary, and there are a huge number of possible indexes, all of which create insuperable economic

Prices will always increase, some small banks will fail, and the Fed was asleep at the switch when the run on Silicon Valley Bank occurred. Fed chair Jerome Powell admitted those three things in response to Scott Pelley’s questions on 60 Minutes.
“But the overall price level doesn’t come down. It will fluctuate. And some . . . goods and services will go up, others will go down. But overall, in aggregate, the price level doesn’t tend to go down except in fairly extreme circumstances,” Powell said.
Of course, what Powell is referring to doesn’t exist. Murray Rothbard wrote,
There is no such thing as a single, scientific index of the movement of general prices. All such indexes are strictly arbitrary, and there are a huge number of possible indexes, all of which create insuperable economic

The wordsmiths at the Federal Reserve wisely omitted the line about a “sound and resilient” banking system in its statement on January 31. That same day shares of New York Community Bank plunged when the bank announced a loss of thirty-six cents per share when analysts expected earnings of twenty-seven cents a share for the fourth quarter.
Internal or external auditors occasionally comb through individual loans in a bank’s portfolio and make judgments as to whether those loans are worth what the bank says they are worth due to lower appraised values and other issues either particular to an individual property or the market as a whole. Bankers then, begrudgingly, set aside earnings for potential loan losses.
In the case of the real estate loans at New York Community Bank, loan examiners