There has been a radical change in the social and political landscape in this country, and any person who desires the victory of liberty and the defeat of Leviathan must adjust his strategy accordingly. New times require a rethinking of old and possibly obsolete strategies.

Last week, I went to a vision center to get my new eyeglass prescription filled. Because I wear progressive lenses with antireflective coating and do not have vision insurance, I anticipated that the out-of-pocket cost of the glasses would be quite high. When I entered the shop and stated my business, the manager immediately asked if I had vision insurance, and I responded that I did not.

Our main text for the Rothbard Graduate Seminar this week is Murray Rothbard’s Power and Market: Government and the Economy, which contains a systematic treatment of one area of economic theory, interventionism.

Chairman Paul and members of the subcommittee, I am deeply honored to appear before you to testify on the topic of fractional-reserve banking. Thank you for your invitation and attention. In the short time I have, I will give a brief description of fractional reserve-banking, identify the problems it presents in the current institutional setting, and suggest a potential solution.

The editors are to be heartily congratulated for putting together this book, which covers an impressive range of topics in monetary economics from an explicitly Austrian perspective. Most of the twelve essays are of a very high quality and one will learn much about money and related topics by a careful reading of them.

In a recent article entitled “Where Are All the Austrian Scholars’ Yachts?” John Tamny has criticized Austrian economists, and Mark Thornton in particular, for their skepticism regarding the relatively “ebullient stock market” in the midst of the pandemic. Mark Thornton responded to Tamny’s main argument in an earlier post. In this post, I will address two serious errors that underlie Tamny’s argument.