[This article is the introduction to The Struggle for Liberty: A Libertarian History of Political Thought, by Ralph Raico, now available in the Mises Book Store, online at mises.org, and at Amazon.com.]It is appropriate, unfortunately, that Ralph Raico (1936–2016) begins this series of lectures with an anecdote about Lord Acton. Acton, as Raico notes, was an exceptionally erudite historian and a proponent of radical laissez-faire liberalism—also known as libertarianism. For all his extensive work as a historian, however—and although he had intended to do so—Acton did not leave behind a panoramic text detailing the history of the fight for freedom. Similarly, Raico, who was himself a proponent of laissez-faire, and one of the great historians of freedom and free markets, did not complete

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.

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.

Several key figures in the Trump administration have declared that the “gold at fort Knox” ought to be audited. I’m all in favor of this, but the gold at Fort Knox is less than sixty percent of the federal government’s gold holdings. The rest of the gold reserves needs to be audited as well.How Much Gold Is There?The US government has not performed a proper audit of its gold reserves since 1953. A partial audit occurred in the 1980s. The “audits” that have occurred since then have generally been little more than brief, hardly comprehensive, visual inspections. For example, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin briefly visited the US Bullion Depository at Fort Knox in 2017.US bureaucrats are fond of needlessly keeping secrets from the Americans who pay all the bills—and who pay the bureaucrats’

I’m all in favor of a thorough and public audit of the US’s gold reserves. This includes the gold, not only at Fort Knox, but also at the other gold storage facilities at West Point, Denver, and the New York Federal Reserve Bank. Ron Paul was right when, in 2011, he tried to force the federal government to be transparent about its gold holdings.Virtually everything the US government owns is stolen, whether it’s stolen from Americans or from foreign individuals and institutions. This is certainly true of the federal government’s gold hoard. It’s important to know how much gold the US government owns for the same reason it’s important to know how much of any asset—land, buildings, or cash—the government owns. States can easily convert wealth into power, and it’s good to know how much wealth

In recent days, President Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Senator Rand Paul, and some others have pressed for an audit of the US gold reserves, with a special focus on the gold at Fort Knox. This is perfectly reasonable given that the US gold reserves—which are the property of the US Treasury and not the Federal Reserve—have not undergone even a partial audit in at least forty years.Part of the reason for the audit is to discover if any of the gold has been stolen. The US Mint, the government agency that acts as custodian of the gold, has reported for many years that the official size of the gold reserve is 8,133.46 metric tons of gold. Since there has been no audit in so many decades, though, the Mint’s position is essentially “trust us, bro.” Trusting federal bureaucrats has never been a

Over the past five years, 33 counties in Illinois have voted to secede from the state, presumably to either form a new state or join another state. In most of these counties, the voters were given the option to vote yes or no on  a ballot question that looked generally like this: “Shall the board of (the county) correspond with the boards of other counties of Illinois, outside of Cook County, about the possibility of separating from Cook County to form a new state and to seek admission to the Union as such, subject to the approval of the people?”Many of the voters and policymakers supporting the separation note that they consider themselves to be economically, culturally, and historically separated from Chicago and the counties surrounding it. Most of the state’s 13 million residents—more

On the night of the Boston Tea Party in 1773, American insurrectionists donned disguises and destroyed a shipment of tea imported by the East India Company. The protestors boarded privately owned ships in the harbor and threw the tea overboard. Later that night, the activists discovered another tea shipment that had been unloaded at a warehouse. Not content with having destroyed most of the company’s import, they broke into the warehouse and destroyed that tea, too. The total damages amounted to more than $1.5 million in today’s dollars.This was the work of the Sons of Liberty, a group which would become known for acts of resistance, arson, and violence against tax collectors and other agents of the crown.But why destroy the tea of a private company if the group’s target was the British

Politico reports today: A bipartisan group of House lawmakers wants answers from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth amid reports that President Donald Trump’s administration is gearing up to dismiss high-ranking military officers.“There are valid reasons to remove a General or Flag Officer, but there must be clear, transparent, and apolitical criteria and processes associated with any such dismissal,” Reps. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), Don Bacon (R-Neb.), Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.), Jason Crow (D-Colo.), Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.) and Jared Golden (D-Maine) wrote in their letter to Hegseth. “An apolitical military is an essential component of our democracy and our national security,” they added. The idea that high ranking military officers are “apolitical” is as absurd as the claim that the US Supreme

Writes “GS”, in response to recent articles on federal contractors and federal employees: Onsite observations of civil servants and their contractors I found what I believe to be averages:25% hard workers and people of integrity like are found everywhere50% that are average to below average25% that are useless as in not working at all and visiting with their friends who are doing the same. There are also certain protected categories who know they are protected and act accordingly. Use your imagination here.One facility I was at had a building of several thousand people that had a beautiful food court. One fine day I noticed there were morbidly obese workers that rode their scooters to the court at 10 AM for a mid-morning break. This was so disconcerting I avoided ever going there after

In late January, the Trump administration issued a series of executive orders that paused Treasury payments to a variety of federal contractors and grantees. These orders also often cancelled contracts with NGOS and other contractors altogether. Soon afterward, we began to see countless media stories about job losses at private NGOs and for-profit federal contractors. Many were so heavily reliant on revenue from taxpayer cash that they immediately began laying off employees.This media frenzy over these job losses has helped to highlight the immensity of the world of federal contractors and grantees. Among workers in the real private sector—i.e., not in the tax-funded sector of government contracting—many often forget that millions of Americans work for these supposedly private

In his Tuesday article on Trump’s bizarre and immoral Palestine plan, Tom DiLorenzo connects the plan to President Lincoln’s obsession with deporting the black population of the United States to a “colony” in Africa or Central America. There is an interesting postscript to all this in the form of the Grant administration’s attempt to annex Santo Domingo, what is today known as the Dominican Republic. As DiLorenzo notes, Lincoln was personally obsessed with his colonization plan, and that he was “hard at work until his dying day counting how many ships it would take“ to carry out his plan. The idea did not totally die with Lincoln, however.By the time Ulysses S. Grant was sworn in in 1869, he was already supporting an ongoing plan to annex Santo Domingo for several reasons. This attempt to

“Workers across the country responded with anger and confusion,” the Associated Press reported last week, in response to the Trump administration’s layoffs of probationary workers. CBS News tells us “federal workers express shock, anger over mass firings,” and The New York Times writes that federal works face “sleeplessness, anger and tears.” Some workers launched lawsuits against the Trump administration. Others went on legacy media television shows to claim they have been mistreated. The media interviews, lawsuits, protests, and open letters all hit on a similar theme: that it is wrong and unfair that taxpayer-funded government workers might have to look for work in the marketplace like ordinary people. Regular workers, after all—the type without federal jobs from which, historically, it

Three weeks ago, the Trump administration sent out an order to the executive branch calling for federal agencies to “temporarily pause all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all Federal financial assistance” that could conflict with President Donald Trump’s agenda. The order primarily targeted federal dollars doled out to so-called non-governmental organizations, often called “NGOs.” The effect on many NGOs was immediate. Many started complaining that they would not be able to meet payroll or survive without a constant inflow of government largesse. Thus, in recent weeks, one hears repeatedly of layoffs of taxpayer-funded employees as thousands of ostensibly non-governmental organizations find themselves cut off from their main source of income: the taxpayer gravy train.In

At its September 2024 meeting, the Fed’s FOMC cut the target federal funds rate by a historically large 50 basis points and then justified this cut on the grounds that “The Committee has gained greater confidence that inflation is moving sustainably toward 2 percent, and judges that the risks to achieving its employment and inflation goals are roughly in balance.”The FOMC again cut the target rate in November and then again in December. Each time, the FOMC’s official statement said something to the effect of “[price] inflation is headed to two percent. Specifically, the November statement said “[Price inflation] has made progress toward the Committee’s 2 percent objective.” The December statement said exactly the same thing.It remains unclear what motivated the FOMC to slice the target

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.

Yesterday in Mises Wire I looked at how citizenship in the United States was originally determined by the member states themselves. There was no definition of citizenship in either the original US constitution (i.e., the Articles of Confederation) on in the later 1787 constitution. Thus, the way to “US citizenship,” to the degree that it existed at all, was to become a citizen of one of the US’s member states.A problem with this situation quickly arose, however. The United States from the very beginning was an expansionist state, and according to the Treaty of Paris which ended the Revolutionary War, the new “United States” included vast territories west of the Appalachian mountains. These areas were, for all practical purposes, not part of any US state. Yes, state governments claimed to

President Donald Trump has the opportunity to do de-fund one of the most useless and most propagandistic institutions that is kept alive by the sweat of taxpayers: The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The Kennedy center is nothing but a playground for the wealthy and their friends in various entertainment industries.Unfortunately, Trump has apparently decided that while he tries to slash budgets from other areas, he’s going to keep throwing taxpayer money at what is essentially the federal government’s Department of Court Jesters.It was clear right away that Trump was getting it all wrong when he posted on his social media account:“Just last year, the Kennedy Center featured Drag Shows specifically targeting our youth — THIS WILL STOP … The Kennedy Center is an American Jewel, and

Murray Rothbard is well known as an opponent of warfare perpetrated by states. This includes acts of war by states against other states, as well as acts of war by states against non-state organizations and individuals. Consequently, Rothbard historical scholarship and his political commentary is characterized by consistent opposition to aggressive warfare and imperialism as practiced by states in general, and by the United States government in particular. Thus, Rothbard’s normative analysis of foreign policy and international relations is quite clear in his many prescriptive statements calling for fewer wars, smaller wars, and more limited warfare in general. In this, Rothbard follows a long tradition of libertarian or radical “classical liberal” theorists. But did Rothbard provide us with

[The Sources of Russian Aggression: Is Russia a Realist Power?, by Sumantra Maitra, Lexington Books, 2024; 205 pages]One of the unfortunate realities of the foreign policy debate in America is that few Americans are paying much attention. This general level of public ignorance makes it much easier for the American foreign policy elites to then feed the American public whatever lies suit the regime’s agenda.This has certainly been the case with the US’s current proxy war against the Russians in Ukraine. In the early months of the 2022 Russian invasion there was seemingly no end to the regime’s spinning of wild yarns trying to convince us that Putin is the new Hitler, that Moscow will soon re-create the Soviet Union, and that anything short of the US launching World War III is akin to

[The Sources of Russian Aggression: Is Russia a Realist Power?, by Sumantra Maitra, Lexington Books, 2024; 205 pages]One of the unfortunate realities of the foreign policy debate in America is that few Americans are paying much attention. This general level of public ignorance makes it much easier for the American foreign-policy elites to then feed the American public whatever lies suit the regime’s agenda.This has certainly been the case with the US’s current proxy war against the Russians in Ukraine. In the early months of the 2022 Russian invasion there was seemingly no end to the regime’s spinning of wild yarns trying to convince us that Putin is the new Hitler, that Moscow will soon re-create the Soviet Union, and that anything short of the US launching World War III is akin to

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.

According to the latest monthly statement from the Treasury Department, the US government spent $668 billion in November, the second month of the 2025 fiscal year. That’s in addition to October’s spending total of $584 billion, for a total of $1.25 trillion in spending so far this year. All that spending is a drain on the real economy. But it gets worse: the federal government has only collected $628 billion in revenue for the same period, meaning the two-month total deficit is now as $624 billion.That’s the largest total ever for the first two months of the fiscal year, higher even than the $429 billion spent during the first two months of the 2021 fiscal year—October and November 2020. It should not surprise us, then, that the federal government is now on track to have the largest

The recent destruction of the Syrian regime, replaced by Islamists and Jihadists, reminds us that the American foreign-policy establishment in Washington continues to do the bidding of the State of Israel which exerts its influence through one of the most well-funded and extensive lobbying efforts Washington has ever known. The surreptitious alliance of terrorist Syrian Rebels, Israelis, and Americans, is just the latest manifestation of this working relationship. For more than thirty years now, the US has repeatedly committed American troops and American treasure to carry out the bidding of Tel Aviv with no advantage gained for ordinary American people. The Iraq War—with its thousands of American casualties—the endless drone wars, the potential war in Iran, and the American alliance with

Unhumans: The Secret History of Communist Revolutions (and How to Crush Them) by Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec. Skyhorse Publishing, 2024; 258 pp.With their profoundly mediocre new book Unhumans: the Secret History of Communist Revolutions, Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec inadvertently illustrate some of the reasons why conservatives so often fail to counter the ideological victories of the Left. Like so many conservative activists before them, Posobiec and Lisec attempt to fight the Left with strategies that can yield only short-term tactical victories, while retreating when it comes to the larger more important battle: the battle of ideas.This book appears to be an attempt by the authors to address some larger historical and strategic questions about the problem of communist coups and

Another national election has come and gone, and like many of our readers, I think the less awful candidate won. After all, a victory for Kamala Harris was likely to be interpreted as an endorsement of the status quo and a “mandate” for more of the same.Unfortunately, though, opposition to the status quo is not the same thing as support for peace, freedom, or free markets. Dissatisfaction with the regime is good, but it’s not enough. We will see this illustrated many times over in the coming years as the new administration fails to significantly rein in federal spending or to embrace a foreign policy of nonintervention. The foundational institutions of the federal state will likely remain untouched.It’s not a mystery why this will occur. The unfortunate fact is that politicians’ lack of

In late November, the seemingly dormant civil war in Syria reignited and Syrian rebel groups began a new drive across western Syria. At first, the rebels captured Aleppo and Hama, and then moved on to the capital Damascus, finally toppling the Assad regime. 

In late November, the seemingly dormant civil war in Syria reignited and Syrian rebel groups began a new drive across western Syria. At first, the rebels captured Aleppo and Hama, and then moved on to the capital Damascus, finally toppling the Assad regime. The fall of the Assad regime—the last secular Arab regime—represents a victory for Islamist, terrorist insurgents and their allies. These terrorists’ allies, most especially the US and the State of Israel. Washington began to publicly and actively pursue this in 2013 when then-President Barack Obama declared that Assad “must go” during a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Then, as now, the US was being repeatedly pulled into regional conflicts in the service of the Israeli state. Tel Aviv wanted a

This article is the foreword to The World at War by Ralph Raico, edited and annotated by Edward Fuller. Buy the book at the Mises store. The twentieth century was a century of war, which means it was also a century of tragedy. The full extent of this tragedy, however, is often hidden by the popular narratives of the world wars that continue to be pushed in the West, especially among Americans. But many aspects of the tragedy are also taught far and wide. When it comes to the Second World War, we Americans hear often and repeatedly of the crimes of the German National Socialists and the Empire of Japan. In contrast, the Americans and their allies, we are told, were the irreproachable good guys, fighting only in defense of themselves and others. As for the First World War, we nowadays

According to today’s report from the federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the US economy added 227,000 payroll jobs during November, according to the establishment survey. The unemployment rate rose slightly to 4.2 percent. This follows October’s jobs report which was the weakest since 2020. In October, private-sector employment fell month-over-month by 2,000 jobs.So, many media outlets described this latest report as a “rebound” or sorts from October’s weak numbers. Unfortunately, if we look beyond the headline establishment survey number, we don’t find much evidence of a rebound at all. According to the BLS’s other survey, the household survey, we find that the total number of employed workers fell for the second month in a row in November, and that full-time jobs have

It should go without saying that asking generals and other Pentagon bureaucrats about defense spending is like asking your barber if you need a haircut. They are hardly disinterested observers. So, it’s not surprising at all that the usual pentagon uniformed technocrats, after failing their audit for the seventh time in a row, remain unrepentant. Last month, after failing to provide documentation showing the Pentagon actually knows what it does with its money, the DoD engaged in the song and dance we have come to expect. For example, the Pentagon’s CFO Michael McCord announced that in spite of its abysmal performance in its audit, the Department “has turned a corner in its understanding of the depth and breadth of its challenges.” “I think we’re making progress,” he added.That’s swell, but

Today in Politico, finance reporter Victoria Guida takes a look at the prospects for any meaningful reform that might rein in the Fed’s runaway powers that have expanded far beyond its historical remit in recent years.It seems the prospects are not good. For starters, the president-elect has no interest at all in having the Fed do less. As president, Trump has only ever called for lower interest rates, which means he always favored a more activist fed interfering more often in markets. Yes, before he was president, Candidate Trump had criticized the Fed for keeping interest rates too low for too long. That line of thinking quickly evaporated after Trump was sworn in. Trump has seen to be antagonistic toward Powell, but only because Trump sees Powell as too restrictive on monetary policy.

Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been making a lot of noise about all the federal employees it plans to fire. The DOGE people have framed total federal employment as something of a proxy for the total size of the federal government.  Cutting the federal workforce is all well and good, but in reality, the size of the federal payrolls doesn’t really tell us much about the growth of the federal government. Federal employment has been flat for decades. If the total number of federal workers was a good proxy for federal power, we’d be forced to conclude that the federal government has gotten smaller and weaker over the past thirty years. Obviously, that’s not remotely true given that federal spending has increased at breakneck speed. Since 1950s, federal

On Sunday night, President Biden issues a broad and sweeping pardon for his son Hunter Biden, covering “those offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024.” Hunter Biden was due to be sentenced this month for federal tax and gun crimes. This pardon removes the possibility of any further legal action in those cases. This pardon comes after many months of the President claiming that “no one is above the law,” and after repeated claims by the President that he will not use the power of the presidency to protect his son from the possibility of any punishment for the crimes for which he was convicted. These latter claims were apparently lies, as Biden has now issued a pardon for

Listen to the Audio Mises Wire version of this article.The Thanksgiving holiday in the United States has a checkered past. Its more recent origins lie largely in government attempts at pushing propagandistic narratives. For example, Abraham Lincoln demanded Americans be thankful for ”the advancing armies and navies of the Union” during the Civil War. George Washington instructed Americans to give thanks for the new constitution in 1789. While Andrew Jackson refused to boss around his constituents with days of mandatory gratitude, proclamations of prayer and thanksgiving have been used by many US presidents, especially during times of crisis.In practice, however, what is now Thanksgiving Day involves mostly a celebration of domestic and family life, quite separate from any presidential

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.

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.

President-elect Donald Trump based much of his campaign on promises to crack down on immigration and carry out mass deportations. Politically, this was likely a winning issue for Trump after social media exposed millions of Americans to countless reports and videos of foreign nationals getting free cash, free housing, food allowances, and overall special treatment at taxpayer expense.

This week, the people who run the Biden administration escalated tensions between Russia and the US by giving the Ukrainian regime authorization to use American-made (and presumably American-funded) ATACMS ballistic missiles against targets inside Russia itself.This significantly raises the stakes of the US-Russia conflict because it put the US in the position of directly funding and encouraging attacks on Russian territory.In response, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters that “the use of Western non-nuclear rockets by the Armed Forces of Ukraine against Russia can prompt a nuclear response.”It is unclear what exactly this nuclear response would be, but the latest escalation by the US ought to cause us to question why Washington is entertaining tactics that might prompt a

The Treasury Department posted its latest revenue and spending totals this week, and deficits continue to mount at impressive speed. During October—the first month of the 2025 fiscal year—the federal deficit was more than a quarter of a trillion dollars, coming in at $257.4 billion. Tax revenue in October had totaled $326 billion, but spending totaled $584 billion. Now one month into the new fiscal year, the federal government is on pace to add more than $2 trillion dollars to the national debt during the 2025 fiscal year. If the economy significantly worsens in coming months—and tax revenues plummet as they do during times of economic trouble—the deficit will be much larger than $2 trillion. There is no sign of any relief from mounting deficits. The 2024 fiscal year ended on September 30

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest price inflation data, CPI inflation in October accelerated and month-to month increases in CPI inflation hit multi-month highs.The seasonally adjusted Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 0.24 percent month over month in October, rising to a six-month high. Year over year, the CPI rose 2.49 percent in October, not seasonally adjusted. That’s a three-month high.The ongoing price increases largely reflect growth in prices for shelter. Year over year, shelter prices rose 4.9 percent, according to the BLS report. That’s up from September’s year-over-year increase of 4.8 percent.Similarly, the CPI measure, less food an energy, also showed increases with a month-over-month growth rate of 0.28 percent. Year over year, the same index showed prices

The Trump transition team on Wednesday announced that he is nominating South Dakota governor Kristi Noem as the next head of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). In the coming weeks, we’ll hear a lot about Noem’s personal politics and origins. We’ll also hear about how the DHS is, as the AP puts it, “one of the biggest government agencies that will be integral to his vow to secure the border and carry out a massive deportation operation.”Unfortunately, all this misses the most important point about the DHS which is that the DHS was invented in 2002 to justify more government spending, to reward political allies, and to influence local governments with federal grants.For voters who supported Trump because they thought a Trump presidency might actually reduce government waste, they

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.

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.

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.

The first Trump term was notable for countless terrible appointments Trump made. This was true in terms of both politics and policy. On the political end, Trump appointed people who routinely sought to undermine him politically. Many of Trump’s own appointees would go on to campaign against Trump in 2020 and 2024. Trump’s more clueless followers assured us that this was all, somehow, 4-D chess. Of course, it wasn’t. The 4-D chess trope has always been, as the kids say, “copium.” On the policy end, Trump’s appointments were even worse. Neocon warmongers like Nikki Haley, John Bolton, and Mike Pompeo—and countless lesser neocon junior bureaucrats—held prominent positions in the administration. Moreover, with their key positions in many federal departments, these advocates of the warfare

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.

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.

There were a few seemingly tense moments at the FOMC press conference on Thursday when two reporters asked Jerome Powell about the prospect of Donald Trump asking Powell to resign. The first reporter asked “would you resign if asked to do so by Donald Trump?” To this, Powell responded with a resounding “no” followed by silence. A few moments later, Powell was asked by another reporter if it was lawful for Trump to either remove or “demote”—that is, remove Powell as chairman, but leave him on the Board of Governors—Powell. To this, Powell responded with a forceful “not permitted under the law.” Apparently, Powell wished to leave no ambiguity whatsoever about this position that he cannot be removed or demoted by a sitting president. It would agree that the spirit of the law here is that a

The 2024 election is over, and in some states, big majorities voted for the winner Donald Trump. In Wyoming, Trump won 72 percent of the vote. In fact, more than 60 percent of the voting population went for Trump in 13 states.Fortunately for the majorities in those states, they’ll get the president they voted for.However, the outcome would have been different if fewer than a million people—in a nation of 330 million—had changed their votes in Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Michigan. Then, Kamala Harris would now be the president-elect.She would have won even though the voters of more than a dozen states had lopsided majorities in favor of Trump.Moreover, Kamala could have won even though there was far less enthusiasm on her side. That is, only a single state, Massachusetts, had a voting

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.

States do not have rights. States, after all, are just organizations with a monopoly on the means of coercion within a certain territory. They are not natural, and certainly do not enjoy any natural rights. At their best, states can be used to protect the rights of the people who live within their borders. States are usually not at their best, however. Usually, state powers are employed to violate the rights of the people unfortunate enough to live under the power of state operatives. These victims of the state include both the state’s residents as well as innocent victims living in other, weaker states. A common phrase used by Israeli propagandists, however, is the phrase “Israel has a right to exist.” This is phrased vaguely on purpose. What is meant is this: “The State of Israel has a

As this election cycle has demonstrated yet again, Democrats are not shy about calling for tax increases. In every election cycle they call for more taxes, whether through corporate taxes or through taxes on unrealized capital gains. Donald Trump, meanwhile, has pledged to cut some taxes. I say “some” because Trump has also pledged to raise taxes on imports.Nonetheless, Trump ran on the idea that he would reduce the tax burden on Americans if elected.  Unfortunately, Trump has no plans to cut government spending, and this means there is little chance that ordinary taxpayers are going to experience any real tax relief. This is because tax cuts without spending cuts don’t actually lessen the cost of government. A tax cut without a spending cut simply moves around the tax burden, and often

One of the most foundational assumptions behind modern democracy is that the elected officials somehow represent the interests of those who elected them.Advocates for the political status quo flog this position repeatedly, claiming that taxation and the regulatory state are all morally legitimate because the voters are “represented.” Even conservatives, who often claim to be for “small government” often oppose radicalism of any kind — such as secession — on the grounds that political resistance movements such as the American Revolution are only acceptable when there is “taxation without representation.” The implication being that since the United States holds elections every now and then, no political action outside of voting — and maybe a little sign waving — is allowed.This, position,

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.

According to the most recent report from the federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the US economy added only 12,000 payroll jobs during October. This was the smallest month-to-month employment gain in nearly four years. Moreover, total private jobs fell in October by 28,000.This is the worst employment report since 2020, and it reflects an overall downward trend in employment growth since 2022. In addition to the drop in private employment, the report also shows drops in full-time employment and ongoing stagnation in the total number of employed workers. This is an economy in which whatever lackluster growth there is in employment, it’s being driven by part-time jobs and taxpayer-funded government workers.Government Jobs vs. Private EmploymentTotal government jobs grew by 40,000

The freedom of speech is today threatened in the West to a degree not seen since the nineteenth-century classical liberals battled the censorious police states of the old conservative regimes. The free-market liberals largely won that battle, yet everywhere that a ruling class knows it is both unpopular and outnumbered it will attempt to silence free speech. A common argument used by those who cling to illegitimate power is the claim that free speech will encourage radicalism and fanaticism. By this thinking free speech can not be tolerated because it would encourage violence and contempt for the supposed rule of law. Speech that counters the approved narrative is dismissed as misinformation or as an outright incitement.This was true during the absolutist regimes of the seventeenth

For a video version of this article, see here and below. Donald Trump created some excitement last week when he suggested that he might abolish the income tax and replace it with taxes on imports. Understandably, Most of the excitement came from the prospect of abolishing the income tax. Of course, the Trump plan isn’t to simply abolish the income tax, it’s to replace it with another tax. Moreover, the Trump proposal, like most so-called tax reform programs, is designed to be revenue neutral. That is, the federal government doesn’t experience any actual drops in tax revenue, and thus, experiences no actual threats to its power. Also, Americans don’t see any true drop in their tax burden under so-called tax reforms like this. Much of the excitement rests on misconceptions about income

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.

There’s a new ballot initiative in Colorado that shows what the “progressive” Left wants as the next step in abortion policy. Coloradans are now in the process of voting on Amendment 79 which paves the way for taxpayer-funded abortions and for protecting pro-abortion mandates on private insurance. The amendment would also create a legal right to an abortion in the state constitution. For many years—especially during the 1980s and 1990s— the abortion lobby in America insisted that it only supported abortion as a last resort for low-income mothers who had no other choice. The slogan was “safe, legal, and rare.” In practice, however, the mere legality of abortion was never enough for these people. Even during the “safe, legal, and rare” days, abortion advocates repeatedly lobbied for

Late last month, Erik Prince, the founder of the Bush Administration’s mercenary army in Iraq—also known as Blackwater—expressed admiration for the State of Israel’s “pager attacks.” The attacks, which killed at least two children and critically injured many others, employed explosives in crowded civilian areas. Even a lose application of just war theory would force us to conclude such attacks are war crimes. Detonating bombs without any knowledge of where the bombs might be, or who will be affected, fits no definition of “just war.” It’s unclear the targets were even Hezbollah agents. We’re just expected to trust the opinions of Israeli technocrats.Nonetheless, Prince praised the operation declaring it to be “magnificent.” He went on to say he is “jealous” of Israeli intelligence agents

Donald Trump on Monday floated the idea that he might seek to replace the federal income tax with federal taxes on imports—also known as tariffs. This is potentially a good idea, but not for economic reasons. There is no economic reason why tariffs are any better or any worse than the income tax. A tariff, which is just a tax, is no less compulsory than the income tax. A tariff is no less destructive to private wealth and capital than the income tax. Contrary to various protectionist myths, Americans pay tariffs like they pay any other tax imposed by the US government. [Read More: “How to Look at Tariffs“ by Murray Rothbard]On the other hand, a tariff isn’t necessarily worse than an income tax. Yes, tariffs act to diminish trade, and that’s a bad thing. But income taxes do the same. When

Earlier this month, the regime of the Dominican Republic (DR) announced new efforts to deport 10,000 Haitians “per week.” The DR reportedly expelled 67,000 Haitians in the first half of the year, as part of a stated plan by the administration of Dominican President Luis Abinader to curtail an ongoing surge of foreign nationals arriving from Haiti. This is only the latest part of an ongoing campaign against the flood of Haitian foreign nationals which has grown sizably since the 2010 Haitian earthquake. The wave of Haitians into the DR has been sustained in more recent years by the disintegration of the Haitian state and continued gang violence that ensures chaos in Haiti.The backlash against Haitians living in the DR is, unfortunately, what we would expect in these situations. Contrary to

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.

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.

The days of slowing and falling money supply growth rates are over. Money-supply growth accelerated, year over year, in August by the largest amount in 23 months, and August was the third month in four months that the money supply has grown, year over year. The current trend in money-supply growth suggests a significant turnaround from more than a year of historically large contractions in the money supply that occurred throughout much of 2023 and 2024. Since April 2023, year-over-year growth in the money supply has slowly inched upward, and the money supply appears to be, for now, in a period of stabilization overall. Looking to month-to-month growth, the money supply has been largely flat for 17 months, coming in between $18.8 trillion and $19 trillion with only small variations, month

After many years of writing articles on the Federal Reserve and central banking, there is one thing I can always expect in the hours following the publication of an article about the Fed: a reader will send me an indignant email insisting that the Federal Reserve is a private organization and that this is very important. Moreover, from the context of these messages it is apparent the authors believe that the alleged private nature of the Federal Reserve is a bad thing. It’s unclear, however, why a central bank that is private is any worse (or better) than a nationalized, government-owned central bank.  Thus, the pertinent question to ask on the matter is this: does it matter if a central bank is public or private? Experience shows that the answer is no. After all, the two quintessential

For decades, the US Federal Reserve has carefully cultivated and promoted the idea that it is somehow separate and independent from the US regime that created it. The ruse has certainly worked. Economists and media pundits frequently refer to this alleged Fed “independence” as if it were a given, and as if there were a wall of separation between the executive branch and the central bank. Others take it even further, and in podcasts and social media one encounters a variety of crackpot theories asserting that the Fed is somehow at odds with the regime, or that the Fed answers only to bankers without regard for the regime’s agenda. Some of those who have been hoodwinked by the Fed-independence myth will, at times, even claim that the Fed is some kind of benevolent fifth column that’s trying

This article is adapted from a lecture delivered at the Albuquerque Mises Circle in New Mexico, September 14, 2024. Listen to an audio version, here. Throughout its history, liberalism—the ideology today called “classical liberalism” or “libertarianism”—has suffered from the impression that it is primarily against things. This is not entirely wrong. Historically, liberalism coalesced as a recognizable ideology in opposition largely to mercantilism and absolutism throughout western Europe. Over time, this opposition extended to socialism, protectionism, imperialism, aggressive warfare, and slavery as well. In this regard, liberals have for centuries fought against a wide array of moral and economic evils that spread poverty, injustice, and misery.Being “against” things, however, has never

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.

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.

Last Friday’s employment report from the Bureau of Labor statistics was labeled “shockingly good” by MSNBC, and as a “blowout” report by Reuters. According to the BLS, the US economy added 254,000 jobs in September, seasonally adjusted. That’s the biggest increase in six months.Defenders of the status quo seized upon this latest number as evidence that the US economy is in great shape. Uber-establishment economist Mark Zandi, for example, declared “One couldn’t paint a prettier picture of the job market and broader economy.”Well, the problem with this view is that nearly everywhere else we look, we find data that points to either stagnation or to a truly problematic economic situation.We could point to many indicators outside the employment report of course. There is the Fed’s own Beige

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.

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.

This week, the US Supreme court announced that it will consider throwing out the Mexican government’s suit in the case of Smith & Wesson Brands v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos. The Mexican government alleges that Smith & Wesson and wholesaler Witmer Public Safety Group Inc. are intentionally conspiring with middle-men to supply Mexican cartels with guns. The Mexican plaintiffs have never actually proven any of this, of course, and this is all part of a larger effort by the Mexican regime and its apologists who have looked for a scapegoat to blame for Mexico’s runaway homicide rates over the past twenty years. In truth, the Mexican government would do well to look a bit closer to home. Mexico’s crime problems are a result of Mexico’s corrupt state, its centralized government—which is a federal

For more than four years now, the Biden Administration has been insisting that the state of small business in America is better than it has ever been. This claim, however, is based on a single government statistic: the business applications metric published by the Census Bureau, which is a record of applications for an employer identification number (EIN).The Administration has repeatedly and enthusiastically promoted the surge in these new applications. According to a press release from the Small Business Administration in January, business applications prove the US is in the midst of the “Biden-Harris small business boom” with “historic” numbers of new business applications. Wow, that all sounds very impressive. The economy must be, as Jerome Powell puts it, “in great shape.” If we look

Federal Reserve technocrats like to use a variety of slogans and buzzwords designed to make the Federal Reserve look like it’s an apolitical, “scientific” institution guided only by a quest for sound management of the economy. Specifically, nearly every time Fed chairman Jerome Powell makes an appearance—whether it’s the usual FOMC press conference, or when testifying before Congress—Powell is careful to make mention of how the Fed is “data driven,” and how the Fed “seeks to achieve maximum employment and inflation at the rate of 2 percent over the longer run.”This sounds nice, of course, and gives the impression that the Fed is concerned about keeping price inflation “low.” In practice, however, limiting price inflation is lowest among the Federal Reserve’s priorities. Rather, the Federal

The videos coming out of western North Carolina, of entire towns wiped off the map by flood waters of Hurricane Helene, are both tragic and shocking. Lesser, but serious, impacts have been felt across the entire region. The residents of much of southern Appalachia, Georgia, Florida, and the Carolinas are facing temporary shortages in terms of access to clear water, power, and fuel. For some social-media bomb throwers, however, the floods are an excellent opportunity to attack both private property and immigrant business owners.On Monday, Twitter/X user “Washingtons ghost” posted a video that allegedly shows a gas station owner in Georgia charging ten dollars per gallon for gasoline. The poster portrayed this as illegal price gouging. The post has received 1.9 million views. Lest we think

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.

Opponents of the Trump campaign are having fun this week with some year-old comments from vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance. Apparently, in a Senate hearing during March 2023, Vance stated that car seat laws have an impact on the number of children parents feel they can afford. As quoted in the Ohio media site cleveland.com:“I think there’s evidence that some of the things that we’re doing to parents is driving down the number of children that American families are having,” he said. “In particular, there’s evidence that the car seat rules that we’ve imposed — which of course, I want kids to drive in car seats — have driven down the number of babies born in this country by over 100,000.”Anti-Trump activists got to work mocking the idea, and some suggested that Vance must have simply

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.

I’ve been writing professionally in various capacities for over twenty years. The jobs have come in many different forms: press releases, white papers, studies on home prices, and more than a thousand op-eds for mises.org. For me—and for anyone who needs to write a lot— it’s important to find some examples on which to model one’s work. Good templates make writing a lot easier. One can draw from many different authors while searching for ideas and models. For example, I consider the late film critic Roger Ebert a master of the short-form article, even if his subject matter has nothing to do with what I usually write about. Another great writer—closer to home ideologically—is Frank Chodorov. Chodorov had a great skill for getting to the point and keeping the reader reading. But not every

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.

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.

The Federal Reserve’s FOMC slashed the target federal funds rate at its meeting this month, reducing the target rate by 50 basis points from 5.5 percent to 5.0 percent. This was the largest cut to the target rate since March of 2020 in the midst of the Covid Panic. This cut comes after fourteen months of the FOMC holding the target rate at 5.5 percent. In late 2022, the FOMC was forced to allow interest rates to rise in response to mounting price inflation which hit a year-over-year growth rate of 8.9 percent in June 2022. Since the official CPI inflation rate fell back below five percent in Spring of 2023, however, there has been continuing speculation about a “Fed pivot” in which the Fed will once again begin a cycle of cuts to the target interest rate. This pivot finally came today, and

From day one of his presidency, it has been apparent that Argentina’s President Javier Milei wants the Argentinian regime to be a willing member of the US-NATO axis in international affairs. Milei has demonstrated this with a variety of overtures toward the State of Israel and by his repeated meetings with the dictator of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. This all positions Burenos Aires as a reliable supplicant and friend of Washington. Or, as I summed it up back in June:[Milei] displays no particular affinity for anti-interventionist foreign policy, and he’s certainly no threat to the established US-dominated geopolitical order. Milei is, and will likely continue to be, a reliable ally of the American security state. More succinctly, we might say that Milei is a “CIA-approved head of

It’s now been nearly 35 years since E.L. Jones first published his watershed book The European Miracle. Jones’s history of Europe’s economic development examined the reasons why Europe—a comparatively poor and backward part of the world in the Middle Ages—somehow became the wealthiest and most productive place on earth in the nineteenth century. The fundamental question remains: why did Europe surpass other civilizations1such as Islam and China—which had once been much richer than the west?According to Jones, a major factor in Europe’s drive to economic prominence was the high degree of economic freedom. As Jones puts it: “Economic development in its European form required above all freedom from arbitrary political acts concerning private property.” Or, as historian Ralph Raico concluded,

For centuries, advocates for greater state power have claimed that modern sovereign states are like families.The value of the strategy is clear: most people view families as both necessary and natural. Even in our current age of widespread divorce and single parents, the idea of “family” (variously defined) remains enduringly popular. Thus, for a politician looking to increase the perceived legitimacy of the state, it only makes sense to attempt to show that the family is analogous to the state—that the state is a type of family writ large.This comparison may seem, to some, as plausible on the surface. But any serious look at the methods used to govern families reveal that the two institutions are thoroughly dissimilar.Because the family has long been regarded as both natural and popular,

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.

[A simplified video version of this article is available here.]According to the most recent report from the federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the US economy added 142,000 jobs during August while the unemployment rate fell slightly to 4.2 percent. Since the highly disappointing July jobs report, media reports on the state of the job market have become far less positive. This report was described by CNN as “mixed news.” Yet, the employment situation has not fundamentally changed from what has been common over the past year. Claims of solid, or even “blowout,” gains in employment throughout most of the past year have always been unconvincing if we look at the bigger picture. August’s “mixed” jobs report simply shows a continuation of the gradually weakening employment market

If one has the patience or the curiosity to go down certain conservative rabbit holes in social media, one will encounter a small corner of the movement in which one finds a latent or explicit desire to somehow rehabilitate Adolf Hitler and the National Socialists (i.e., the “Nazis.”)This is often found in the form of comments or memes that take the position that the National Socialists were the defenders of “the West” against a militant Left then growing in Europe. For example, note the below meme with the phrase “I tried to save you” superimposed over Hitler’s face. This image and similar images are generally accompanied by comments to the effect that Western Europe would somehow today be better off if the National Socialists had managed to implement their preferred regime type across

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. 

View the video version of this article below, or on Twitter/X.One of the myths being endlessly repeated in this inflationary cycle is the myth that rising prices are caused by greed.For example, Democratic senator Bob Casey is running around Pennsylvania campaigning on the idea while claiming he’ll solve the problem if you re-elect him. Kamala Harris is doing the same.But the fact that greed doesn’t cause inflation is obvious if we just ask why prices across the board have surged since 2020. Since then, consumer prices rose more than twenty percent, knocking off about a fourth of the value of every dollar you hold.Is that all because greed suddenly got worse after 2020 for some unknown reason? And, if so, why is it that greed was magically barely a problem at all for many years during the

I have four children, one of whom is grown, and all of them have grown up under a government that has continually waged elective and aggressive wars. There has never been a time in any of my children’s lives that Washington politicians were not incessantly haranguing the public about how “we are at war” and that anyone who opposes the regime is “with the terrorists,” “a foreign agent,” “unpatriotic,” or “anti-Semitic.” There has never been a time in their lives that the United States government was not calling for “regime change” somewhere, or actively occupying at least one foreign country. In other words, the United States is now a country devoted to a permanent state of war.Not surprisingly, the federal government then uses these wars as excuses to eviscerate American freedoms, spend

[Unpopular Sovereignty: Mormons and the Federal Management of Early Utah Territory, by Brent M. Rogers, Nebraska University Press, 2017, xiv + 383 pp.] Behind its clinical-sounding subtitle about “federal management,” Brent Rogers’s Unpopular Sovereignty contains essential history for understanding how American westward expansion paved the way for the growth of federal power during and after the American Civil War.Contrary to the popular myth that the settlement of the trans-Mississippi frontier was a laissez-faire process with minimal federal involvement, Rogers shows how Congress and federal agents took a keen and active interest in asserting federal power and control into western territories in the 1850s. Examples of this process can be found in Kansas, New Mexico, and in California,

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell held a press conference at the annual Jackson Hole economic conference today, and he all but said that a September cut to the federal funds rate is a done deal: “The time has come for policy to adjust. The direction of travel is clear.”Naturally he threw in the usual propaganda phrases about how the Fed is data driven. He continues: “the timing and pace of rate cuts will depend on incoming data, the evolving outlook, and the balance of risks.”Remember, with its official statements, the Fed is always careful to try and give the impression that it is not a political organization and responds only to economic data.But, for whatever reason, Powell and the Fed have now decided official CPI inflation is low enough for the central bank get away with NEW infusions of

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.

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.

Watch the video version of this article on X/Twitter. The latest monthly report on taxes and spending from the Treasury Department shows that in July, the federal deficit was $244 billion, or nearly one quarter of a trillion dollars.In spite of the fact that the US government managed to collect $330 billion in taxes in July, they also managed to spend $574 billion.

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.

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.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) today issued a major downward revision in total employment, telling us what more savvy observers of the federal jobs data already knew. Namely, that the employment situation isn’t nearly as strong as the federal establishment survey says it is.The establishment survey is the employment survey that looks at total jobs—whether full time or part time—and not at total employed people. So, that’s the report that’s being revised here, and it’s the biggest downward revision since 2009 when the economy was in bad shape during the Great Recession. It’s the second largest downward revision on record.This is for the year ending in March 2024, and specifically, the BLS has reduced the total jobs numbers for the period by 818,000 jobs. For context for this number,

In September 26, 2022, seven months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, saboteurs destroyed the Nordstream pipeline which was a major conduit of natural gas to Germany and western Europe. At the time, NATO personnel, the US regime, and the Ukraine regime all denied involvement, and all even implied that the Russians themselves had somehow been involved. The US media dutifully repeated Washington’s party line, repeatedly hinting that Putin had ordered the destruction of the pipeline for some never-explained reason. This paragraph from Vox is representative of the common narrative at the time: [U]nofficially, many in Europe are accusing Russia of the sabotage, given the EU believes the Kremlin has a track record of trying to weaponize energy. Moscow likely has the capability and equipment

The Kamala Harris campaign announced today that it will present a plan to ban “price gouging” by food suppliers. In other words, the Harris campaign plans to mandate price controls.Get ready for rising prices and shortages in meat and other groceries, because that’s where laws against “price gouging”—which are price controls—lead.  According to UPI: Vice President Kamala Harris will propose a federal ban on corporate food and groceries price gouging when she lays out her policies in a North Carolina campaign speech Friday.According to the campaign, the proposal against price gouging is part of the larger Harris economic policy platform she plans to roll out publicly at a Friday campaign rally in Raleigh.“There’s a big difference between fair pricing in competitive markets, and excessive

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.

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.

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.

“Democracy” is one of those terms that is essentially useless unless the one using the word first defines his terms. After all, the term “democratic” can mean anything from small-scale direct democracy to the mega-elections we see in today’s huge constitutional states. Among the modern social-democratic Left, the term often just means “something I like.” The meaning of the term can also vary significantly from time to time and from place to place. During the Jacksonian period, the Democratic party—which at the time was the decentralist, free-market, Jeffersonian party—was called “the Democracy.” By the mid twentieth century, the term meant something else entirely. In Europe, the term came to take on a variety of different meanings from place to place. For our purposes here, I want to focus

This article is adapted from a lecture presented on August 3, 2024 at Mises University 2024 in Auburn, Alabama. The full name of this talk is “Self-Determination, Imperialism, and Secession: 3 Sides of the Same Coin.” So, I abuse the metaphor a bit, be we might also say that self-determination and secession—and self-determination’s opposite, imperialism—are three ways of looking at the same object.The defense of self-determination is well-established within the so-called “classical” liberal tradition, and so let’s start with Ludwig von Mises, who understood liberalism well.In his 1927 book Liberalism, Mises took a strict and expansive view in favor of self-determination. Specifically, he noted that respect for the right of self-determination required states to allow the separation of new

Historically—especially during the days of the classical gold standard—central banks maintained stocks of gold to facilitate the conversion of gold-backed national currencies. Those days are long gone, but in modern times, many central banks continue to own gold, and many central banks buy gold as part of their open-market operations. For example, in his article last week—”Central banks purchase gold to offset their own money destruction“—Daniel Lacalle writes: The rising purchases of gold by central banks are an essential factor justifying the recent increase in demand for the precious metal. Central banks, especially in China and India, are trying to reduce their dependence on the dollar or the euro to diversify their reserves. However, this does not mean full de-dollarization. Far from

Money-supply growth rose year over year in June for the second month in a row. This is the first time the money supply has grown for two months in a row since October of 2022. The current trend in money-supply growth suggests a significant turnaround from more than a year of historically large contractions in the money supply that occurred throughout much of 2023 and 2024. As of June, the money supply appears to be, for now, in a period of stabilization.The money-supply growth of May and June ends an eighteen-month period during which the money supply repeatedly contracted, year over year. In June, YOY growth in the money supply was at 0.24 percent. That’s the same as the May 2024 increase, and was a large reversal from June 2023’s YOY decline of 12.5 percent. Until recently, the US money

Historian Julian Zelizer writes that Watergate-style investigations are OK sometimes, but we shouldn’t go overboard in being mistrustful of the government. After all, “faith in government,” Zelizer writes, “is necessary for a healthy society.” As Rothbard notes below, the watergate scandal was an excellent event precisely because it undermined faith in government. Zelizer, however, tells us to “banish the memories of Watergate” so we can get over all this unhealthy suspicion of government. Writes Zelizer:Often, this outlook [of suspicion of government] has salutary effects by encouraging politicians to make sure that similar levels of corruption don’t happen again. But, too often, as many would say has been the case with the IRS, stories of administrative mismanagement are blown out of

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.

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.

According to the most recent report from the federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the US economy added 114,000 jobs (according to the establishment survey) during July. This was a lackluster number that came in below expectations, and it wasn’t enough to prevent a surge in the unemployment rate up to 4.3 percent. Moreover, the “underemployment” rate, the “U-6” unemployment rate, jumped substantially from 7.4 percent to 7.8 percent. Excluding the Covid Panic, that’s the largest year-over-year increase in U-6 since the Great Recession.At the same time, the BEA’s other employment survey, the household survey, showed that the year-long stagnation in employment continued into July. According to the household survey, total employed persons in the United States increased by only

A key function of propaganda has always been to demoralize the opposition. From the perspective of the propagandists, it is important to always give the impression that their side is the side of the majority, and the most popular. We have witnessed this in action in recent years with the rise of censorship designed to “combat misinformation.” By suppressing dissident viewpoints, the regime lessens access to “unorthodox” ideas, but there is an important secondary function: suppressing dissenting speech also gives the impression that the dissidents are less numerous and more isolated than they really are. By ensuring that certain voices dominate the public square, propagandists help to create a sense of inevitability of the regime’s program. This facilitates greater public acceptance of the

The Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) announced today that it will maintain the current target policy interest rate (the federal funds rate) of 5.5 percent. The committee has now held the rate at this level since the end of July 2023.According to the FOMC’s press release:The Committee does not expect it will be appropriate to reduce the target range until it has gained greater confidence that inflation is moving sustainably toward 2 percent. In addition, the Committee will continue reducing its holdings of Treasury securities and agency debt and agency mortgage‑backed securities.After such a long period holding rates flat, it would be unprecedented for the Fed to begin a new cycle of rising rates. Given this, and given that economic indicators continue to weaken, we

US sanctions against Venezuela are barbaric and immoral. But, they are not responsible for the economic collapse that has transpired in Venezuela over the past twenty years. Yes, the sanctions have further reduced the standard of living in Venezuela, and the burden of relative impoverishment caused by the sanctions has fallen hardest on those at the lowest end of the socio-economic ladder.However, the effects of these US-imposed sanctions have not been nearly broad enough to be responsible for the general collapse of economic conditions that we now see in that country.It is important to make this distinction because defenders of Venezuela’s socialist economic policies have repeatedly attempted to claim that sanctions are the primary reason for the country’s economic collapse.Why do the

President Biden has not been seen in public since announcing he would not seek re-election on Sunday. Biden’s “resignation” was nothing more than a text-only post on Twitter/X—and we know that the president does not manage his own social media accounts. There has been no video of the president making an announcement, and the White House is apparently planning no press conference or official act of any kind. Biden has not been seen by anyone except his inner circle in days. (We can contrast this situation with Lyndon Johnson’s televised address announcing his withdrawal from the 1968 presidential campaign.) This is, in the words of Glenn Greenwald, “strange.” Moreover, Biden’s silence is inexplicable if Biden actually made the decision to withdraw from the race. After all, Greenwald, notes,

On Sunday, July 21, President Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential campaign via a text-only post on Twitter/X. Less than an hour later, Biden—also via a text-only post on Twitter/X—endorsed vice president Kamala Harris for the presidency. Thus, in just a few minutes, the ruling party in Washington completely erased the primary election process from one of the country’s major parties. That is, the same Democratic party that tells us it is the party of “democracy” just completely cut ordinary voters out of the selection process for the Democratic nominee. Instead, the Democratic nominee in 2024 will be chosen by a small group of elite party insiders. We’re told there will be an “open convention” in Chicago to choose the nominee, but all that means is that that there is no

According to the most recent report from the federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the US economy added 206,000 jobs during June while the unemployment rate rose slightly to 4.1 percent. Unlike most months over the past year—which repeatedly described the employment situation as “strong” and “a blowout”—the general media narrative for the June jobs report was far less enthusiastic. According to CNN, for example, the June jobs report suggests a “’steady-as-she-goes’ US labor market.Yet, the employment situation has not fundamentally changed from what has been common over the past year. That is, claims of solid, or even “blowout,” gains in employment have been unconvincing if we look at the bigger picture. As we have seen repeatedly over the past year, reporting on monthly jobs

Within minutes of the July 13 attempted assassination of Donald Trump, observers were asking how the assassin managed to gain a clear shot of Donald Trump at the Butler Farm Show Grounds near Butler, Pennsylvania. Since then, the question remains unanswered, but many allegations about the shooting have emerged. For example, multiple sources plausibly contend that both local police and the Secret Service had spotted the armed shooter—on a nearby roof with a rangefinder and a gun—several minutes before the shooting occurred. Law enforcement officers and agents chose to do nothing. Videos of the event show bystanders vocally warning both police and federal agents of the shooter’s presence. Again, law enforcement did nothing. The New York Post reports that a “counter sniper team” staffed by

Yesterday, we looked at how the Business Employment Dynamics (BED) report showed job losses last year while the much-reported and much-touted monthly Establishment survey report showed “blowout” job gains throughout most of the year. Indeed, over the past year, the Establishment survey has repeatedly showed considerably more job growth than both the BED report and the Household survey. Another source we can now consider is the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW), also released by the Burau of Labor Statistics. This report is prepared quarterly, rather than monthly. It provides far more detail than the Establishment report, and QCEW surveys nearly twenty times more businesses than the Establishment survey. The most recent QCEW report revisions show—not surprisingly—job gains for

Unless you work for a bank or the government, you may not have noticed that yesterday was a federal holiday—Juneteenth—commemorating the end of slavery in the United States. This is a perfectly good thing to celebrate, of course, but alas, as Connor O’Keeffe has recently noted, since the day was declared a federal holiday in 2021, it has largely been used by leftwing groups to push ever larger amounts of government intervention in favor of the Left’s favorite interest groups. For example, among the “property is theft” crowd, the end of chattel slavery is framed as merely a small part of the larger “ongoing struggle“ to abolish so-called “wage slavery.” The Origins of “Wage Slavery”The idea that wage earners are “slaves” of one sort or another is certainly not new. Consider, for example,

The most recent Business Employment Dynamics (BED) summary from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the US economy lost 192,000 private-sector jobs during the third quarter of 2023. According to the BLS: From June 2023 to September 2023, gross job losses from closing and contracting private-sector establishments were 7.8 million, a decrease of 37,000 jobs from the previous quarter, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over this period, gross job gains from opening and expanding private-sector establishments were 7.6 million, a decrease of 561,000 jobs from the previous quarter. The difference between the number of gross job gains and the number of gross job losses yielded a net employment decline of 192,000 jobs in the private sector during the third quarter of

Last week, we looked at the weakness of the job market that belies all the happy talk from the administration about employment. For instance, we noted the fact that full-time employment is in decline, as is temporary work. We can couple this with the fact that the total number of employed persons in this economy has gone nowhere in eleven months. On top of all this, another indicator of the lackluster jobs economy is the volume of government-job growth compared to private-sector job growth. There are a couple of ways to look at this. The first is to look at growth in government jobs versus growth in private employment over time. In this case, we see that since March of 2023 government employment has been growing faster than private employment. Last month, for instance, government

Earlier this week, those of us who follow news about the US dollar’s global status noticed numerous claims that the US-Saudi petrodollar agreement had “expired” and that the Saudis would now sell oil for many currencies other than dollars. Some versions of the story even claimed the Chinese yuan would replace the dollar. The reports appear to have originated either in India or in publications that cater to crypto investors. Fervor over the story was large enough that economist Paul Donovan at UBS felt the need to clarify that there have not actually been any big, new developments in Saudi-US currency relations. It now seems clear that these reports of an alleged formal petrodollar “contract” did indeed get several key facts wrong. First of all, the Saudis’ turn toward embracing currencies

The Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) yesterday left the target policy interest rate (the federal funds rate) unchanged at 5.5 percent. The target rate has now been flat at 5.5 percent since July of 2023—as the Fed waits and hopes that everything will turn out fine. In his prepared remarks at Wednesday’s FOMC press conference, Powell continued with the soothing message he has generally employed at these press conferences over the past year. The general message has been one of moderate but sustained growth, and  an economy marked by “strong” employment trends and moderating inflation. Powell then combined this view of the economy with a general narrative on Fed policy in which the FOMC will hold steady until the committee believes that inflation is returning to the

According to a new report from the federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday, the US economy added 272,000 jobs during May while the unemployment rate rose slightly to 4.0 percent. As has been repeatedly the case over the past year, the latest monthly job-growth number was described as a “blowout” or “hot” number by major media outlets like CNN. As is typical in the good-news-is-bad-news view on Wall Street, the Dow fell on Friday out of fear that the “strong” jobs report would impel the Federal Reserve to put off interest-rate cuts further into the future. Clearly, the memo went out from the administration’s supporters that this jobs reports was to be reported as nothing but good news. The Biden White House, for example, released a statement claiming the employment

When it comes to political battles and controversies there is, unfortunately, a deeply-seated human tendency to emotionally attach one’s self to political leaders and candidates, rather than to principles or policies. This tendency is especially foundational to modern democratic politics in which voters are encouraged to embrace candidates on an emotional level.

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.

There is no shortage of former hangers-on at the Mises Institute who now claim to have deep insights into the inner workings of the Institute and its staff. Among these people, one will often find a certain group of people who never miss an opportunity to tell you all about how tight they once were with the Institute staff, and how now they can no longer support the Institute because “it changed.” The latest writer that checks the usual boxes of the “self-described-insider-turned-critic” gimmick is a person named Jordan Schachtel in an article titled “Libertarian Cancel Culture: Prominent Think Tank Dismisses Scholar for Supporting Israel.” The “prominent think tank” in question is the Mises Institute, and the alleged “dismissal” is apparently supposed to describe the fact that Walter

Tuesday at Power & Market I described a certain type of soft and wobbly Mises Institute “supporter” who believes that the Mises Institute is not allowed to have standards. In the minds of these people, the Institute must publish articles that contradict the Institute’s core editorial positions in the name of “debate” and avoiding “dogmatism.” Apparently, it’s not enough that nearly the entire edifice of the American regime—along with academia and the legacy media— are opposed to the values and mission of the Institute. It’s not enough that one can read, virtually everywhere, commentary devoted to supporting the state, its socialism, and its wars. No, in the mind of these “supporters,” we are also required to make the case at mises.org for terrible anti-freedom ideas in the name of being

In case you haven’t read it lately—or perhaps you’ve never read it—the mission statement of the Mises Institute states that the Institute “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.”For those who find this mission statement to too non-specific, I recommend consulting the decades’ worth of commentary and research published by the Institute over the forty-plus years of the Institute’s existence. For anyone who has bothered to read any significant portion of this body of work, the Mises Institute’s mission and editorial positions over the past four decades are no mystery. In my ten years as an editor at the Mises Institute, however, I’ve

Last week, John Mearsheimer presented an excellent summary on what is going on in Israel since the October 7 Hamas attack. Mearsheimer is one of the most insightful foreign policy scholars working today. Naturally, he is virtually ignored by the Washington establishment which is more concerned with obeying the foreign-policy blob and the Israel Lobby. Mearsheimer, of course, famously worked with Stephen Walt to author the important 2007 book The Israel Lobby which describes the remarkable degree to which Israeli lobbyists are able to influence American foreign policy. Mearsheimer also predicted that Ukraine would regret giving up its nuclear arsenal, and he predicted that the US’s insistence on pushing NATO eastward would lead to increased conflict with Russia. 

Remote video

Money-supply growth fell year over year again in March, but March’s decline was the smallest money-supply drop recorded in sixteen months. Moreover, the money supply in March grew—month over month—by the highest rate in two years. The current trend in money-supply growth suggests a continued turnaround from more than a year of historically large contractions in the money supply. As of March, the money supply appears to be in a period of stabilization. The money supply is still flat or down on a year-over-year basis, but there is clear growth over the past several months.  Money-supply growth has now been negative—year over year—for seventeen months in a row. During March 2024, the downturn continued as YOY growth in the money supply was at –2.57 percent. That’s up from February’s rate of

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.

[Dangerous Ground: Squatters, Statesmen, and the Antebellum Rupture of American Democracy by John Suval, Oxford, 2022, 281 pp. ]Historian Charles Tilly once famously described the origins of the state as this: “war made the state and the state made war.” Tilly also understood, however, that the process of building and consolidating state power involved much more than simply waging wars against competing states. As Tilly notes in his book Coercion, Capital, and European States, states engage in several other activities to consolidate and expand their power. For example, states are greatly concerned with expanding their monopoly on coercion within a territory by “attacking and checking competitors and challengers within the territory claimed by the state.” Tilly further notes that state

Washington’s interventionist and bipartisan foreign policy blob in recent weeks has pushed two new and despotic pieces of legislation. Both are designed to consolidate even more federal power in the name of combatting various alleged foreign enemies. The first of these is the so-called “TikTok ban” with the Orwellian name “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act,” signed into law on April 24. Supporters claim that TikTok is owned by the Chinese regime and the popular social media app must be sold to new non-Chinese owners, or banned in the US altogether. The legislation grants the president vast new powers to force the sale of “a website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application” that is deemed to be owned by

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.

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.

Among the larger albatrosses burdening the economics profession is the idea of Homo economicus. To this day, most economics undergraduates hear about it in the context of neoclassical economics. Homo economicus, we are told, is the ideal economic man who always seeks to maximize profits and minimize costs. He only acts “rationally,” and rationalism is defined as, well, always seeking to maximize profits and minimize costs. Even worse, “profit” is often assumed to mean “monetary profit” measurable only in dollars (or some other currency).Yes, many economists will say, “It’s just a model,” and note there are many caveats that come with its use. These protestations are often less than convincing given the use of models based on “rational” behavior. But, for now, let’s just take the economists

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.

According to a new report from the federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics this week, the US economy added 175,000 jobs for the month of April while the unemployment rate rose slightly to 3.9%. The new reported job growth was considered a “miss” in that it came in below expectations, and for the first time in months, the media did not declare the jobs report to be “a blowout” or “strong.” Instead, the official narrative seemed to be that the “slowing economy” will bring down CPI inflation, and thus the Federal Reserve will soon force interest rates back down and bring about the fabled “soft landing.” Not surprisingly, then, the lackluster jobs report led to a rally in stocks, as Wall Street anticipates a Fed rate cut. For anyone who has taken a more skeptical view of the jobs

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 importance of the individual in understanding economic analysis. This focus on the individual provides another advantage as well: Austrian School economists are far less likely to forget the fact that society and the economy are not machines to be fine-tuned and tinkered with. Rather, we understand that groups of individuals are far too diverse and

When I was still in graduate school and still in my early twenties, I was riding on the airport shuttle to an event at the Mises Institute when I encountered an interesting phenomenon. It was the phenomenon of the "libertarian" who is free-market in the small stuff, but embraces war and statism in the big things. I still remember that shuttle ride well.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson sat down for a three-hour-plus discussion on the Joe Rogan Show last week, covering everything from UFOs, to religion and artificial intelligence. But perhaps the most important topic they covered was the insidious and dangerous role played by the US regime’s intelligence agencies in America. Specifically, Carlson suggested the CIA continues to lobby for keeping the JFK files secret, possibly because the CIA had a role in the assassination. Tucker also brought up how the FBI’s second-in-command was responsible for taking down Richard Nixon. Carlson described how intelligence agencies hold immense power within Congress because members of Congress—who are generally disreputable people with many secrets—are terrified of being blackmailed. After all, in a

During the 2016 and 2020 campaigns, Trump’s opponents in the Democratic party (and elsewhere) often pointed out that Trump’s protectionism hobbles private markets and the economy overall. Yet, the allegedly anti-protectionist Biden administration has done virtually nothing to end Trump’s protectionists policies put in place from 2017 to 2020. The motivation is unclear, but it is possible that the Biden administration realized that protectionism is a useful political tool. These policies offer a way of punishing opponents, rewarding allies, and pandering to voters. Now that it’s election season, the pandering side of the equation is in full swing. Biden this week called for "sharply higher U.S. tariffs on Chinese metal products." Appropriately, Biden included this new spate of protectionism

Thomas Woods has reminded us more than once that "no matter who you vote for, you get John McCain." It’s not strictly and always true, of course, but the evidence is clear that it’s often true. The latest example is the GOP’s speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) who has turned out more or less exactly like us skeptics have predicted. Johnson is a friend to the war party, a do-nothing on issues important to the rank and file (like immigration), and a true enemy of the people on issues like warrantless spying. In recent weeks, Johnson has increasingly doubled down on supporting Washington’s foreign policy blob, and insists on spending at least a hundred billions dollars—dollars the Treasury doesn’t have and the Fed will have to print—on propping up the Ukraine regime. This regime,

Frédéric Bastiat is well known for his radical free-market positions as expressed in his still-famous book The Law and in insightful essays such as “That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Not Seen.” Joseph Schumpeter called Bastiat “the most brilliant economic journalist who ever lived.”

"Over the past three years, the word sedition has again become popular among regime agents and their friends in the media. It’s not the first time the word has been frequently used. In the American context, it’s frequently employed whenever the ruling class wishes us to become hysterical about some real and imagined enemy, both domestic and foreign."This event was co-hosted by the Mises Institute and the Ron Paul Institute, and recorded in Lake Jackson, Texas, on April 13, 2024.

Donald Trump last week said he opposes any national legislation on abortion, and said he supports state governments adopting their own policies. According to USA Today:  "Former President Donald Trump said individual states should choose their own abortion restrictions, avoiding talk of any kind of federal government ban and drawing criticism from Democrats and anti-abortion Republicans alike on a pivotal election issue. …At the end of the day, this is all about the will of the people." Democrats naturally condemned these remarks, insisting that the only acceptable position is support for nationwide policy mandating the legality of abortion everywhere. Trump, however, also met opposition from some Republicans who continue to cling to the (clearly unrealistic) idea that a national

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest price inflation data, CPI inflation in March rose to a seven-month high, and price inflation hasn’t proven nearly as transitory as the regime’s economists have long predicted. According to the BLS, Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation rose 3.5 percent year over year during March, without seasonal adjustment. That’s the thirty-seventh month in a row of inflation well above the Fed’s arbitrary 2 percent inflation target. Month-over-month inflation was flat with the CPI rising by 0.4 percent from February to March, with seasonal adjustment.  Month-to-month growth had also been 0.4 percent from January to February.The ongoing price increases largely reflect growth in prices for food, services, electricity, and shelter. For example, prices for

According to a new report from the federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics this week, the US economy added 303,000 jobs for the month of March while the unemployment rate fell slightly to 3.8%. In what has become a familiar pantomime, reporters from the legacy media were sure to declare this a "blowout jobs report" while Richmond Fed president Tom Barkin described the report as "quite strong." This report showed, however, that the jobs economy continues to follow a pattern that began in December of last year: namely, full-time jobs are disappearing and the "job growth" reported so enthusiastically by the media is virtually all part-time jobs. Moreover, nearly a quarter of new payroll jobs are government jobs. If we look more closely at this report, what we really find is that the

The word "treason" has enjoyed something of a renaissance in recent years—on the Left. It used to be more popular on the Right. During the Cold War, conservatives frequently employed the word to demand their ideological enemies be exiled or executed. Nowadays, anti-immigration activists frequently denounce their opponents as "the treason lobby." But it’s on the Left that the word appears to have its most devoted advocates at the moment. Robert Reich, for instance, is sure that Donald Trump is guilty of treason, and Trump has been accused of treason since at least 2018 for a variety of supposed crimes such as "collusion" with the Russians. In the wake of the January 6 riot, there has been no shortage of commentary denouncing Trump supporters overall as guilty of treason. On the other hand,

The word "treason" has enjoyed something of a renaissance in recent years—on the Left. It used to be more popular on the Right. During the Cold War, conservatives frequently employed the word to demand their ideological enemies be exiled or executed. Nowadays, anti-immigration activists frequently denounce their opponents as "the treason lobby." But it’s on the Left that the word appears to have its most devoted advocates at the moment. Robert Reich, for instance, is sure that Donald Trump is guilty of treason, and Trump has been accused of treason since at least 2018 for a variety of supposed crimes such as "collusion" with the Russians. In the wake of the January 6 riot, there has been no shortage of commentary denouncing Trump supporters overall as guilty of treason. On the other hand,

Last month, former president Donald Trump succeeded in indefinitely delaying his trial on federal charges related to the January 6 riot at the US Capitol building. It is now unclear if or when he will stand trial for the federal crimes with which he was charged in August of last year.The charges are primarily conspiracy charges. Specifically, Trump has been charged in federal court with one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States, one count of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, one count of conspiracy against rights of voters, plus one count of an attempt to obstruct an official proceeding.The fact that Trump is being charged with these conspiracy charges tells us how flimsy the evidence is that he actually committed any of the acts in question. That is, had Trump

Last month, New York City homeowner Adele Andaloro was arrested after changing the locks on a house that had been seized by squatters. According to The New York Post: "Andaloro was charged with unlawful eviction because she had changed the locks and hadn’t provided a new key to the residents. The residents, however, are squatters.Fortunately, Andaloro’s arrest was filmed and went viral, reviving an ongoing debate over squatters "rights," under which trespassers can take over an unoccupied house or piece of land and attempt to establish legal ownership.Not long after the Andaloro video surfaced, an immigrant TikToker with 500,000 followers posted a video encouraging other migrants to squat in private residences in the United States. The immigrant, Leonel Moreno, explained to potential

The idea that the federal Bill of Rights is the only thing standing between freedom and tyranny in America is deeply ingrained in the American mind. It is ubiquitous in our speech, for instance, as can be seen in how we use phrases like "my Second Amendment rights" or "I want to plead the Fifth [Amendment]." It is also assumed that unless the federal Supreme Court has intervened to declare that a legal right exists, then the right is virtually non-existent within the American legal system. Moreover, it is assumed that unless the federal supreme court mandates that state and local governments respect certain rights, then state and local governments will wantonly disregard the rights of their citizens. Put more bluntly, we are repeatedly told that the federal constitution protects your

Money supply growth fell again in January, remaining deep in negative territory after turning negative in November 2022 for the first time in twenty-eight years. January’s drop continues a steep downward trend from the unprecedented highs experienced during much of the past three years.Since April 2021, money supply growth has slowed quickly, and since late 2022, we’ve been seeing the money supply repeatedly contract, year over year. The last time the year-over-year (YOY) change in the money supply slipped into negative territory was in November 1994. At that time, negative growth continued for fifteen months, finally turning positive again in January 1996. Money-supply growth has now been negative for fifteen months in a row. During January 2024, the downturn continued as YOY growth in

Power & Market offers a contrarian take on world events. We favor individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard. Connect to Power & Market via Twitter and RSS.Power & Market is published CC4, unless denoted otherwise.

Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito

Website powered by Mises Institute donors

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 Free Enterprise Society at Oklahoma State University was kind enough to recently invite me to lecture on secession at the University on March 13, 2024.  This talk is significantly different from the secession debate at LibertyCon in February because this lecture covers historical, theoretical, and international aspects of secession in much greater detail. The talk is approximately an hour long:

Remote video URL
[embedded content]

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest price inflation data, CPI inflation in February accelerated for the second month in a row, and price inflation hasn’t proven nearly as transitory as the regime’s economists have long predicted. According to the BLS, Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation rose 3.2 percent year over year during February, without seasonal adjustment. That’s the thirty-sixth month in a row of inflation well above the Fed’s arbitrary 2 percent inflation target. Month-over-month inflation accelerated, with the CPI rising 0.4 percent from January to February, with seasonal adjustment. Month-to-month growth had been 0.3 percent from December to January.The ongoing price increases largely reflect growth in prices for food, services, electricity, and shelter. For

Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito

Website powered by Mises Institute donors

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

Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito

Website powered by Mises Institute donors

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

Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito

Website powered by Mises Institute donors

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

According to a new report from the federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics this week, the US economy added 275,000 jobs for the month of February while the unemployment rate rose to 3.9%. In what has become a predictable ritual, reporters from the legacy media were sure to declare “another strong jobs report.”

The US Supreme Court released its ruling on Trump v. Anderson this week and unanimously slapped down the Colorado Supreme Court which had tried to disqualify candidate Donald Trump from the Colorado ballot using section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US constitution.

Senior Fellow Alex Pollock drew my attention to an important quotation by Smedley Butler: 1935 speech and later a book by Major General Smedley D. Butler (USMC), includes  “… A racket is best described, I believe, something that is not what it seems to the majority of people.

This month marks the fourth anniversary of one of the most disastrous assaults on human rights in American history. It was on March 16, 2020 that the President Trump issued "guidelines" for "15 days to slow the spread" which stated that "Governors of states with evidence of community transmission should close schools in affected and surrounding areas." The administration instructed all members of the public to "listen to and follow the directions of your state and local authorities."It was at this time that an American president, for the first time in American history, introduced the idea that it was possible—and perfectly legal—for government institutions to "close down" the economy by forcibly shutting, en masse, countless businesses, schools, and churches. Trump stated repeatedly in

In this morning’s Mises Wire article, I mentioned that the true nature of the ruling class tends to be revealed in times of emergency. Moreover, it is during declared "emergencies" that it becomes clear that ordinary constitutional limits on state powers—such as the much touted "balance of powers" tend to do little to actually restrain regime power. Not all constitutional systems are equally bad in these situations, of course, but the Covid Panic and the ensuing crisis helped to illustrate that most federal, state, and local government institutions are very poorly constructed if our goal is to limit state powers in times of emergencies. Specifically, in the United States, the federal government and the state governments are organized so that the same agency declaring an emergency are the

On Monday, Aurora, Colorado paramedic Peter Cichuniec was sentenced to five years in prison (for criminally negligent homicide) for his part in the killing of Elijah McClain. McClain was an Aurora resident who had been walking home on the night of August 24, 2019. After police received a call about an unarmed person who looked "sketchy," police stopped and confronted McClain. McClain was doing nothing illegal and had given police no probable cause to suspect any criminal activities. Yet, within nine seconds of contacting McClain, police assaulted McClain, and put him in a choke hold. At least three police officers were inexplicably unable to restrain McClain who was 5’7" and 140 pounds. Police choked McClain and forced him into the ground repeatedly until McClain vomited into his mask.

The generous and bloated American welfare state has become an enormous magnet to both legal and illegal immigrants in the United States. This $290 billion annual magnet subsidizes migration and ensures that the total number of migrants into the US is larger than would be the case without the subsidy.

Over the past year, economist Daniel Lacalle has repeatedly warned that the United States is in the midst of a "private sector recession" and that official GDP measures are being propped up by government spending. The latest GDP numbers from the federal government strongly suggest he is right. Today, the federal government’s Bureau of Economic Analysis released its revised estimate for GDP growth in the fourth quarter of 2023. According to the report, total GDP increased $334.5 billion (quarter over quarter) during the fourth quarter. That’s down from the third quarter’s quarter-over-quarter increase of $547.1 billion, but is nonetheless an ostensibly robust rate of growth. Yet, if we compare GDP growth during the fourth quarter to growth in the total national debt, we find that the

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest price inflation data, CPI inflation in January accelerated, and price inflation hasn’t proven nearly as transitory as the regime’s economists have long predicted. According to the BLS, Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation rose 3.1 percent year over year during January, after seasonal adjustment. That’s the thirty-fifth month in a row of inflation well above the Fed’s arbitrary 2 percent inflation target. Month-over-month inflation accelerated, with the CPI rising 0.3 percent from December to January. Month-to-month growth had been 0.2 percent from November to December.The ongoing price increases largely reflect growth in prices for food, services, electricity, and shelter. For example, prices for “food away from home” were up 5.1 percent

There are many arguments against secession. Some of them are quite prudent, such as those that simply contend that national separation may not be a good idea at this time. 
Many others are premised on the refusal to acknowledge the human right known as self-determination. This argument is wrong and immoral, and is nothing more than the traditional imperialist-colonialist argument repackaged for modern audiences. 
Perhaps the worst "argument" against secession is the use of the phrase "we tried it before and it didn’t work." I put "argument" in scare quotes because the statement isn’t an argument at all. It’s simply a claim that, because a political strategy failed in the past, it can never be tried again. Ever. 
We can see how simplistic this claim is when we imagine explaining it to a

There are many arguments against secession. Some of them are quite prudent, such as those that simply contend that national separation may not be a good idea at this time. 
Many others are premised on the refusal to acknowledge the human right known as self-determination. This argument is wrong and immoral, and is nothing more than the traditional imperialist-colonialist argument repackaged for modern audiences. 
Perhaps the worst "argument" against secession is the use of the phrase "we tried it before and it didn’t work." I put "argument" in scare quotes because the statement isn’t an argument at all. It’s simply a claim that, because a political strategy failed in the past, it can never be tried again. Ever. 
We can see how simplistic this claim is when we imagine explaining it to a

Earlier this month, The New York Post reported that the mayor of New York is giving away pre-paid cash cards—each carrying "up to $10,000"— to foreign nationals in New York. Most of these foreign nationals—i.e., "illegal immigrants"—have arrived in New York with no invitation, no employment prospects, and no plan for housing. But most of them plan on staying. And why shouldn’t they? Upon arrival, thousands of them immediately went on the public dole in some way or another, relying on taxpayer-funded shelters, housing programs, and a variety of sources for "free" food. Those immigrants who have not found taxpayer funded housing in hotels—there are presently at least 66,000 of them—simply live on the taxpayer-funded streets as vagrants. 
The latest idea from the city’s central planners is to

Among the larger albatrosses burdening the economics profession is the idea of Homo economicus. To this day, most economics undergraduates hear about it in the context of neoclassical economics. Homo economicus, we are told, is the ideal economic man who always seeks to maximize profits and minimize costs. He only acts “rationally,” and rationalism is defined as, well, always seeking to maximize profits and minimize costs. Even worse, “profit” is often assumed to mean “monetary profit” measurable only in dollars (or some other currency).
Yes, many economists will say, “It’s just a model,” and note there are many caveats that come with its use. These protestations are often less than convincing given the use of models based on “rational” behavior. But, for now, let’s just take the

Welcome to the first issue of The Misesian.
We’ve decided to rename The Austrian magazine The Misesian to emphasize how Ludwig von Mises remains at the center of everything that that is today called the Austrian School of economics.
When the Mises Institute was founded more than forty years ago, most of our supporters were directly connected to Mises. First and foremost was Mises’s widow, Margit, whose tireless work in preserving Mises’s legacy lives on at the Mises Institute. The Institute also benefited from early support from Mises’s student F.A. Hayek, who won his Nobel Prize specifically for the Mises-Hayek business cycle theory. Journalist Henry Hazlitt was a great admirer of Mises and brilliantly popularized his work in regular columns for publications like Newsweek and the New York

In recent months, stories from both the legacy media and the independent media have continued to pile up on how undocumented foreign nationals—also known as "migrants" and "illegal aliens"—are able to take advantage of a vast network of taxpayer funded benefits in daycare, medical care, housing, and more. 

Modern international law tends to grant a right to “remedial self-determination” only in extreme cases. Unfortunately, this position accepts that states ought to be free to violate human rights so long as the abuses fall short of war crimes and genocide. 
Original Article: A Short History of the Right to Self-Determination

According to a new report from the federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics last Friday, the US economy added 353,000 jobs for the month of January while the unemployment rate held at 3.7%. CNN news was sure to tell us that this was a "shockingly good jobs report" and it "shows America’s economy is booming." 
At this point, many of us who follow these numbers have become accustomed to the routine: the BLS reports "blowout" jobs numbers each month, and the legacy media dutifully reports that the jobs growth is astoundingly good, proving all is well in the economy. 
The media rarely reports on any other economic indicators with nearly as much enthusiasm. The monthly jobs report—well, one specific statistic within it—has become something of a proxy for the state of the economy

Money supply growth fell again in December, remaining deep in negative territory after turning negative in November 2022 for the first time in twenty-eight years. December’s drop continues a steep downward trend from the unprecedented highs experienced during much of the past two years.
Since April 2021, money supply growth has slowed quickly, and since late 2022, we’ve been seeing the money supply repeatedly contract, year over year. The last time the year-over-year (YOY) change in the money supply slipped into negative territory was in November 1994. At that time, negative growth continued for fifteen months, finally turning positive again in January 1996. 
Money-supply growth has now been negative for fourteen months in a row. During December 2023, the downturn continued as YOY growth

In his 1927 book Liberalism, the radical classical liberal and economist Ludwig von Mises took a strict and expansive view in favor of secession. Specifically, he noted that respect for the right of self-determination required extant states to allow the separation of new polities seeking secession. He writes:
The right of self-determination in regard to the question of membership in a state thus means: whenever the inhabitants of a particular territory, whether it be a single village, a whole district, or a series of adjacent districts, make it known, by a freely conducted plebiscite, that they no longer wish to remain united to the state to which they belong at the time, but wish either to form an independent state or to attach themselves to some other state, their wishes are to be

The idea of secession for some regions of the United States—sometimes simplistically called "national divorce"—has increasingly been mentioned as a way to deal with the apparent growing divide between what are crudely called "red states" and "blue states." Polls suggest that perhaps a third of the American population "indicated a ‘willingness to secede’" 
Vehement opposition to the idea remains plentiful, however. Among the writers of the pundit class, any number of arguments are used to claim that secession is not desirable or moral, nor even feasible. Many conservatives, for example, rely on the standard conservative jingoism, arguing that secession is unconstitutional and "treasonous." Conservative nationalists and moralists insist that all US residents have some sort of duty to support

The job market is still hanging on—but not nearly as well as the headline numbers and media pundits would have you believe. 
Original Article: The December Jobs Report Is Mostly Bad News

For those who remember their high school textbooks, the issue of America’s imperial history is very clear cut. American imperialism, the textbooks told us, was that fairly brief period in American history that lasted from 1898 to 1945. This was the period during which the United States acquired a number of overseas territories, including the Philippines and Puerto Rico, among others. The era of imperialism, we are told, ended in 1945 when the Philippines was finally granted full independence from Washington. Even more dubious—the textbook writers tell us—is the idea that the US is or has been a colonial empire. After all, American citizens did not set up any colonies in the Philippines or in Puerto Rico in the way that British migrants populated Virginia or New England.
For those familiar

The arguments of open-borders advocates may be applicable in some corners of the developed world. However, for small countries next to larger ones, open borders bring serious geopolitical consequences. 
Original Article: Why Open Borders Don’t Work for Small Countries

Spreading civilization and human rights has long been used as an excuse for state-building through colonialism and imperialism. This idea dates back at least to early Spanish and colonial efforts in the New World, and the rationale was initially employed as just one of many.  The importance of the conquest-spreads-civilization claim increased, however, as liberalism gained ground in Europe in the nineteenth century. Liberals were more skeptical of the benefits of imperialism, so, as political scientist Lea Ypi notes: "During the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, the purpose of colonial rule was declared to be the ‘civilizing mission’ of the West to educate barbarian peoples ." The residents of these colonies were deemed to be "unsuited to setting up or administering a

According to a new report from the federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics last Friday, the US economy added 216,000 jobs for the month while the unemployment rate held at 3.7%. NBC news was sure to tell us that this "beat expectations."  Market estimates suggested total jobs added at 170,000 with the unemployment rate at 3.8%.  The media’s general consensus on the report is that the jobs economy is "robust" and everything is heading on schedule toward a "soft landing" as predicted by Federal Reserve economists. 
What are we to make of this report? Well, the jobs market looks pretty good so long as one doesn’t dig any deeper than the first paragraph of the press release. But once we look more carefully as numerous indicators of employment as found in part time jobs,

The phrase "great replacement" has been increasingly thrown around by both conservatives and progressives in recent years. Conservatives claim the "great replacement theory" explains deliberate efforts by regime operatives to replace non-Hispanic whites with various groups of Hispanics and non-whites. Progressives, on the other hand, claim it is all a racist conspiracy theory. 
I won’t bore you with the details of the present political debate, but the idea that one demographic group can replace another—with vast political repercussions—is hardly a new idea. Indeed, the phenomenon has been observed in many times and places. Replacing one demographic group with another is often the explicit goal of settler colonization. This can be observed historically in parts of the Americas, Africa,

In the debate over immigration among laissez-faire liberals and libertarians, one aspect of the open-borders side becomes quickly apparent: the debate generally ignores problems related to geopolitics such as international conflict, ethnic strife, and expansionist states. Rather, the libertarian advocates of open borders tend to focus overwhelmingly on why rich countries should open their borders to migrants from lower-income countries. These open-border arguments generally stick to listing the practical benefits of immigration in terms of economic factors like productivity and per capita GDP. It is assumed that open borders will necessarily lead to a rising standard of living for the residents of the host country. Yet, we rarely see these open-border arguments convincingly applied to

The Fed’s Federal Open Market Committee released the minutes to its December meeting yesterday, and the minutes further strengthen the view held by many Wall Street investors and observers that the Fed plans to implement rate cuts by the middle of 2024. Specifically, the most recent Fed survey of market participants "suggested that the first reduction in the policy rate would occur in June." 
This contrasts only slightly with the FOMC members themselves, who, in their own internal survey (i.e., the Summary of Economic Projections,or SEP) overwhelmingly suggests a cut to the policy rate of at least 50 basis points this year. Or as the minutes put it: "almost all participants indicated that, reflecting the improvements in their inflation outlooks, their baseline projections implied that a

The Bill of Rights turns 232 years old today. Adopted in 1791 as a consolation prize for the Anti-Federalists,  it has been the most important part of American legal history since the 18th century.
Original Article: The Bill of Rights: The Only Good Part of the Constitution

[This article is Chapter 9 of Breaking Away: The Case of Secession, Radical Decentralization, and Smaller Polities.]
When we hear of political movements in favor of decentralization and secession, the word “nationalist” is often used to describe them. We have seen the word used in both the Scottish and Catalonian secession movements, and in the case of Brexit. Often the term is intended to be pejorative.
When used pejoratively—as by the critics of Brexit—the implication is that the separatists seek to exit a larger political entity for the purposes of increasing isolation, throwing up greater barriers to trade, and pursuing a more autarkic economic policy. In other words, we’re supposed to believe that efforts at decentralizing political systems leads to states becoming more oppressive and

[This article is chapter 6 of Breaking Away: The Case for Secession, Radical Decentralization, and Smaller Polities. Now available at Amazon and in the Mises Store.]
During the early 1990s, as the world of the old Soviet Bloc was rapidly falling apart, the economist and historian Murray Rothbard saw it all for what it was: a trend of mass decentralization and secession unfolding before the world’s eyes. The old Warsaw Pact states of Poland, Hungary, and others won both de jure and de facto independence for the first time in decades. Other groups within the Soviet Union began to demand full blown de jure independence as well.
Rothbard approved of this, and he set to work encouraging the secessionists over the opposition of many foreign policy “experts.”
“Nationalism” as Decentralization
For

[This article is chapter 5 of Breaking Away: The Case for Secession, Radical Decentralization, and Smaller Polities. Now available at Amazon and in the Mises Store.]
One of the most consistent and enthusiastic defenders of human rights and “natural rights” in the twentieth century was the economist and historian Murray Rothbard. A self-described libertarian, Rothbard would also have fit in well among the more radical liberals of the nineteenth century such as the Belgian-French economist Gustave de Molinari and the American anarchist Lysander Spooner.
Like Spooner—a New England abolitionist who advocated for the dissolution of the United States through secession—Rothbard supported the “radical decentralization” of the state. Indeed, Rothbard regarded secession and other forms of

Weakness in the US economy continues to hide behind surging debt levels and government spending. As noted last month by Daniel LaCalle, 
[A] large part of the growth in GDP came from bloated government spending financed with more debt and inventory revaluation, adding 0.8 and 1.4 percentage points to GDP growth. …
The increase in gross domestic product between the third quarter of 2022 and the same period of 2023 was a mere $414.3 billion, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, while the increase in public debt was $1.3 trillion ($32.3 to $33.6 trillion, according to the Treasury).
The United States is now in the worst year of growth, excluding public debt accumulation since the thirties.
This trend is continuing at least into the first quarter of the new fiscal year, as it is

Get ready to see George W. Bush, Michelle Obama, Mitch McConnell, and Hillary Clinton all mourn together at Kissinger’s funeral as they hail one of the regime’s most devoted apologists. 
Original Article: Henry Kissinger: War Criminal and Enemy of Mankind

Protectionists are no better than any run-of-the-mill Progressive who wants more taxes on one group in order to subsidize some other group. There’s no moral high ground here for the protectionists, just unfounded self-righteousness.
Original Article: The Immorality of Protectionism

According to the Case-Shiller index, home prices have increased 44 percent since February 2020. That’s just an average, of course, and some markets have seen increases in prices that are far higher. Even in middle-American housing markets, however—where home prices are supposedly more reasonable than on the coasts—prices have soared. In Cleveland, for example, the index is up 40 percent since early 2020. During the same period, the index rose 50 percent in Atlanta and 33 percent in Chicago. This sort of price inflation is not merely a product of the physical supply of housing. Demand for housing has been greatly inflated by nearly fifteen years of historic lows in interest rates, following by immense flows of newly created money during the Covid Panic. As economist Brendan Brown has

British conservative critics of industrialization invented new terms like "wage slavery," "factory slavery," and "white slavery." Much of the conservatives’ terminology and their arguments would later be adopted by socialists. 
Original Article: The First Enemies of Free Markets Were Conservatives, Not Socialists

There are many reasons to support the breaking up states into smaller pieces. This is done via secession, and acts of secession produce smaller states. All else being equal, smaller states tend to be richer and they tend to have lower taxes. They tend to exercise less power over the resident population—because it’s easier for people to escape smaller states than larger ones. Moreover, setting these tangible and practical considerations aside, secession may also be desirable simply as a matter of freeing minority populations from the control of a larger dominating majority. For much of the world in the 1990s, the benefits of secession were self-evident as more than a dozen new states seceded from the Soviet Union when it collapsed. 
But do human beings have a right to secede? Classical

The Mises Institute is different. We don’t change our positions or our ideology to match the current zeitgeist. Rather, we’re in it for the long haul. Our business is to change the minds of both scholars and the general public. Victory in the battle of ideas doesn’t begin in legislative committee rooms. It begins in classrooms and living rooms.
To achieve this goal, it’s important to not sacrifice consistency to score some short-term and fleeting victories. This is why the Mises Institute hasn’t changed its core positions in the forty-plus years of its existence. Today we’re just as opposed to the state, its socialism, and its wars as we were when Lew Rockwell founded the Institute decades ago.
One of the specific positions that really sets us apart in this way is our relentless opposition

Coal drove the development of a whole new way of cooking and a radically different diet. A menu based upon coal-fired food was the cuisine that accompanied industrialization. Food and fuel were intricately linked in a fossil fuel-burning age.
Original Article: How Fossil Fuel Revolutionized Our Kitchens and Our Food

For those who value self-determination, free markets, peace, and freedom, Napoleon provides little to be admired. He was a despot, a warmonger, a centralist, and a hypocrite who claimed to spread freedom to justify his own lust for conquest and power. 
Original Article: Napoleon: Europe’s First Egalitarian Despot

As with the Republican party and the conservative movement in the United States, conservatism in the United Kingdom does not constitute a coherent ideological movement. It is, rather, a coalition of ideological groups and interest groups. Some of these are fairly libertarian in nature, as with the Thatcherites. On the other hand, conservative parties and activist groups also contain traditionalist conservatives and nationalists, neither of which are primarily or necessarily free-market or laissez-faire in orientation. The general free-market orientation of conservatives tend to come from the fact that they are anti-Left and anti-socialist. In the UK, as elsewhere, to be anti-Left means in many cases to be de facto pro-market (to varying extents).
A similar phenomenon has prevailed in the

Money supply growth fell again in October, remaining deep in negative territory after turning negative in November 2022 for the first time in twenty-eight years. October’s drop continues a steep downward trend from the unprecedented highs experienced during much of the past two years.
Since April 2021, money supply growth has slowed quickly, and since November, we’ve been seeing the money supply repeatedly contract year over year. The last time the year-over-year (YOY) change in the money supply slipped into negative territory was in November 1994. At that time, negative growth continued for fifteen months, finally turning positive again in January 1996. 
Money-supply growth has now been negative for twelve months in a row. During October 2023, the downturn continued as YOY growth in the

The 2024 campaign is underway, and that means new efforts by politicians to pander to economic nationalists and protectionists by calling for new trade wars and trade controls. This will surely happen even though the Biden Administration has done very little to reverse the protectionist policies that Donald Trump imposed during his term. For example, new so-called "Section 301" tariffs, which have been in place since 2018, are still in effect and are only now being "reviewed." In response to a possible change to these new trade barriers, a bipartisan group of legislators has already called on Biden to keep these taxes in place. Moreover, candidate Trump, now campaigning for 2024 has recently called for an additional 10-percent tariff (i.e., tax) on all imports. 
Politicians who support

Former US secretary of state and national security advisory Henry Kissinger died on Wednesday. He was 100 years old. Kissinger is perhaps most notable for his work during Nixon Administration when he helped Nixon prolong the Vietnam War and expand it to Cambodia and Laos.
But his influence was certainly not limited to the Nixon years, he served in an official capacity in the Ford administration, and in more informal roles during the Reagan and Bush years as well. Throughout it all Kissinger was a ruthless servant of the American foreign policy establishment. As a Harvard-educated political scientist, Kissinger was employed to provide gravitas and legitimacy to a number of US wars and interventions, most of which ended in bloodbaths for the ordinary people of the countries Kissinger claimed

The new problem we now face arises from the fact that huge deficits are only manageable so long as interest rates remain very, very low. 
Original Article: There’s No Easy Way Out of This Debt Spiral

Data on employed persons, wages, and other measures point to trouble ahead in an economy already strained by growing bankruptcies, mounting debts, and disappearing savings. 
Original Article: October’s Sobering Jobs Report Adds to Mounting Bad Economic News

[The Domestic Revolution: How the Introduction of Coal into Victorian Homes Changed Everything, by Ruth Goodman, Liveright Publishing Corporation; 2020. xxi + 330 pp.]
The subtitle of Ruth Goodman’s book The Domestic Revolution doesn’t come close to describing what this book is really about. Yes, this book tells us a lot about coal and how it affected Victorian domestic life. But this book is really about how what we eat and how we prepare food has been closely tied to economic, industrial, and technological changes over 400 years of history. 
Moreover, this book will provide some valuable perspective for anyone who thinks he or she spends a lot of time "slaving" over a hot stove. Whatever time we spend cooking and cleaning in the twenty-first century is nothing compared to the time,

With the release of Ridley Scott’s new film Napoleon, viewers encounter a cinematic version of Napoleon caught up in a tumultuous romance against the backdrop of the upheavals of the Napoleonic wars. 
This has revived interest in the French military commander and left many wondering what they are to make of the real, historical Napoleon. For many Americans in the audience—who, unlike Europeans, devote virtually no time to Napoleon in school—this may be the first time they’ve thought much about Napoleon at all. 
Overall, this question certainly isn’t new. Napoleon does not have a reputation like Hitler, for example. Even people who have never read a history book in their lives know they’re not supposed to like that guy. Nor are we routinely told that Napoleon is benign like, say, George

Resettling Gazans in America—at taxpayer expense—will be sold as a "humanitarian" effort, but anyone who sees through the propaganda will see that it’s really all a cynical effort to please Israeli politicians.
Original Article: You’re Paying for the Israel War. You’ll Also Pay for the Refugees.

On Sunday, Javier Milei was elected president of Argentina by a comfortable margin, with 56 percent of the vote. He will be sworn in as president on December 10. 
Over the past year, however, Milei has made a name for himself as an extremely vocal critic of socialism, central banks, and many types of government intervention in general. He has become memorable for fiery commentary condemning the Left’s ideology and tactics while expressing an interest in immediate (i.e., not gradualist) change. He has said he seeks to abolish Argentina’s central bank and introduce the US dollar as the country’s dominant currency. 
His fiscal policy is far more in the free-market direction than any other head of state in a country as large as Argentina (with 46 million residents). Milei has expressed

How the Israel-Gaza war ends is easy to imagine because it’s following a path that has been trod many times before. We’ve seen it many times during conflicts between settler populations and indigenous populations worldwide
Original Article: American History Is a Preview of the Israel-Palestine End Game

The United States regime has picked sides in the Israel-Hamas war and has committed to funding Israel’s ongoing bombing of non-combatant men, women, and children in the Gaza strip. Northern Gaza’s infrastructure is now all but destroyed, with millions of Gazans displaced and homeless. Nearly ten times more Gazans than Israelis have now died in the conflict. Many Gazans have fled to the southern portion of Gaza, but homelessness and abject poverty awaits them there. 
By employing what is essentially the carpet-bombing approach, Tel Aviv has made the choice of adopting a policy that is sure to produce hundreds of thousands of refugees—or perhaps even more than a million. Indeed, many in the Israeli regime are motivated to maximize refugees, and push Gazans out of the country altogether using

The Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) last week left the target policy interest rate (the federal funds rate) unchanged at 5.5 percent. This "pause" in the target rate suggests the FOMC believes it has raised the target rate high enough to rein in price inflation which has run well above the Fed’s arbitrary two-percent inflation target since mid-2021. I say "believe," but perhaps the more appropriate word here is "hope." 
That is: the Fed hopes it has raised the target interest rate high enough. Moreover, the Fed hopes this will both reign in price inflation and also avoid raising unemployment too high. (See below for what is meant by "enough" and "too high.")
After all, the Fed has no idea what the "correct" federal funds rate is to achieve the goals that the Fed has

We’re about six weeks into fiscal year 2024, but if this year looks anything like last year, we can assume the federal government will continue to pile up debt at astonishing rates. 
According to the September Monthly Treasury report, the US government accumulated an additional 1.7 trillion dollars in debt for the 2023 fiscal year, which ended October 31.  That’ up by $319 billion, or 23 percent, from the 2022 fiscal year. As recently as June, budget-watchers had estimated the year-end deficit would be $1.5 trillion, but deficits quickly added on an unexpected $200 billion by years’ end:

The pace of increase, however, may have been even higher than 23 percent. As CNN noted, the $1.7 trillion number may reflect some creative accounting. As CNN reports, the Treasury Department reported the

The Bureau of Labor Statistic (BLS) released new jobs data on Friday. According to the report, seasonally adjusted total nonfarm jobs rose 150,000 jobs in October, month over month. The unemployment rate rose slightly from 3.8 percent to 3.9 percent over the same period. 
The headline payroll increase of 150,000, however, was possibly among the best news to be found in today’s new jobs data, however. Once we delve more deeply into the numbers, we find substantial evidence that the "strength" of the job situation is greatly overstated by the payroll numbers while employed persons, wages, and other measures point to trouble ahead in in economy already strained by growing bankruptcies, mounting debts, and disappearing savings. 
For example, more than one-third of all new employment growth in

As news of the Hamas attack on southern Israel began to trickle in on October 7, many who follow the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict knew the bad news was just beginning. It was immediately obvious that the ferocity of the Hamas attack, and the high proportion of women and children among the victims, would provide the Israeli state with political justification to launch devastating and revanchist attacks against civilians within the Gaza strip in retaliation. 
Indeed, deaths on the Gaza side now greatly outnumber deaths and injuries suffered by the Israeli population. Whereas Israeli deaths total approximately 1,400, deaths among Palestinians—more than half of them civilians—likely number over 5,000. Hamas has already been ejected from Israeli territory, so from this point on in the

Money supply growth fell again in August, remaining deep in negative territory after turning negative in November 2022 for the first time in twenty-eight years. August’s drop continues a steep downward trend from the unprecedented highs experienced during much of the past two years.
Since April 2021, money supply growth has slowed quickly, and since November, we’ve been seeing the money supply repeatedly contract year over year. The last time the year-over-year (YOY) change in the money supply slipped into negative territory was in November 1994. At that time, negative growth continued for fifteen months, finally turning positive again in January 1996. 
Money-supply growth has now been negative for ten months in a row. During August 2023, the downturn continued as YOY growth in the money

Hamas’s invasion of Israel happened in spite of decades of US intervention and spending in favor of Tel Aviv. Yet, this ongoing conflict has nothing at all to do with the safety and security of the United States itself. It’s time for the US to get out. 

Original Article: Get the US Out of the Middle East

Some free-market advocates are pushing for dollarization in Argentina. But the devastating US sanctions against Panama in 1989 show us how dollarization helps the US exercise more hegemonic power over foreign economies. 

Original Article: Dollarization Puts Foreign Economies at the Mercy of the US Regime

Members of the Canadian Parliament recently applauded a Ukrainian member of the Nazi Waffen-SS during World War II. Apparently, it’s now okay to be a Nazi so long as you’re fighting the Russians.

Original Article: The Left Is Now Telling Us (Ukrainian) Nazis Aren’t So Bad After All

The ongoing conflict between the state of Israel and Hamas escalated considerably on Saturday. A group of armed fighters—presumably of Hamas—broke through the Gaza-Israel border barrier and launched what is sure to be a short-lived invasion of southwestern Israel. 
At least 700 Israeli citizens—most of them apparently civilians—were killed, and more than one hundred were taken hostage. The Israeli state quickly retaliated with widespread bombing of neighborhoods in Gaza producing hundreds killed, and possibly hundreds of thousands displaced. 
Within hours of the initial invasion, images of Hamas kidnappings and killings quickly flooded social media provoking calls for further retaliation by the Israeli state. On the other side, images of Israeli bombings of civilian neighborhoods has

Argentinian presidential candidate Javier Milei—who could actually win in the general election later this month—has become famous for his fiery speeches and his libertarian views from central banking to government spending. Milei’s proposed policies—if he’s able to actually implement them—would do much to help the Argentinian economy recover from decades of malaise caused by runaway government spending and monetary inflation. Among Milei’s positions, however, is his call for the dollarization of the Argentinian economy. It is unclear if Milei seeks currency competition within Argentina or if he seeks "full-blown" dollarization. In the case of the former, the dollar would merely be permitted to openly compete with other currencies. Full-blown dollarization, on the other hand, would mean the

If we read between the lines, it is apparent that the Fed is hoping that price inflation will fall to politically acceptable levels without any additional tightening, and without a recession.  But "hope" is all the Fed has. 

Original Article: The Fed Holds the Fed Funds Rate Steady—Because it Doesn’t Know What Else To Do

Just-wage theory tells us that an employer cannot reduce his workers’ wages below some presumed "cost of living." Yet, that same employer can be permitted to reduce the worker’s wage to zero if the worker has been replaced by a machine. 

Original Article: Why the "Just Wage" Theory Doesn’t Make Much Sense

The Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) on Wednesday left the target policy interest rate (the federal funds rate) unchanged at 5.5 percent. This "pause" in the target rate suggests the FOMC believes it has raised the target rate high enough to rein in price inflation which has run well above the Fed’s arbitrary two-percent inflation target since mid-2021. 
The press release from the FOMC was largely unchanged from previous recent meetings and contained the usual language about the state of the economy and the Fed’s ability to manage it:
Recent indicators suggest that economic activity has been expanding at a solid pace. Job gains have slowed in recent months but remain strong, and the unemployment rate has remained low. Inflation remains elevated. … The U.S. banking

Fed policymaking is all about political expedience. When we see Fed policy, we must keep in mind that "managing the economy" is secondary to managing public debt service and public expectations.

Original Article: August Price Inflation Accelerated, and the Fed Fears More Is in Store

The federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released new price inflation data last week, and according to the report, price inflation during August accelerated, coming in at the highest year-over-year increase in three months. According to the BLS, Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation rose 3.7 percent, year over year, in August before seasonal adjustment. That’s up from July’s year-over-year increase of 3.2 percent, and August is the twenty-ninth month in a row with CPI inflation above the Fed’s arbitrary two-percent inflation target. (More precisely, the Fed targets a two-percent rate in the core PCE measure. In August, the year-over-year change in the core PCE was double the target at 4.2 percent.)
Meanwhile, month-over-month CPI inflation rose 0.6 percent (seasonally

Former Vice-President Mike Pence is very concerned that Republicans are not sufficiently enthusiastic about aggressive, unnecessary wars. In a speech on Monday, Pence claimed "Some Republican candidates …[are] embracing a new and dangerous form of isolationism.” 
"Isolationism" is just a slur used by hawks to describe any policy that falls short of further expanding US interventionism across every region of the globe. Fortunately for Pence and his ilk, no such thing is happening. Not even close. No Republican candidate argues in favor of closing any military bases, reining in CIA meddling, withdrawing from NATO, ending defense commitments in east Asia, or even cutting military spending. The closest any candidate comes to the isolationism Pence mentions is Vivek Ramaswamy who has opposed

In a more reasonable world, people like Cheney, Rice, Bolton, et al., would all be forgotten, shamed, and disgraced for overseeing multiple disastrous wars abroad and the creation of a police state at home. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a more reasonable world. 
Original Article: "America Since 9/11: 22 Years of Lies and Despotism"

By the middle of 2022, it was already become apparent that the US military was having problems meeting recruitment goals. In August last year, The AP reported that the Army would have to cut force size, and an army spokesman admitted the Army was facing "’unprecedented challenges’ in bringing in recruits." This came even with new larger enlistment bonuses. The problem, however, wasn’t as acute for the Air Force, Navy, or Marine Corps. 
Since then, things haven’t gotten any better for recruiters. Now, recruitment shortfalls have spread well beyond the Army.  The New York Post reported last week:
Much of the military will fall short of recruitment goals by as much as 25% this year …
The Army, Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard are all expected to fall short of their recruitment goals this

One sees many flags at half-mast across the country today. And rightly so. Thanks in part to the negligence and incompetence of the CIA and FBI, the Federal government  failed disastrously at what it tells us is the regime’s number-one priority: public safety.  
[Read More: "9/11 Was a Day of Unforgivable Government Failure" by Ryan McMaken]
More than 2,900 human beings died that day, the overwhelming majority of which were civilians working in ordinary private-sector jobs. Most of them paid taxes for many years to the government which told them that the government keeps them safe. Many victims continue to die to this day from illnesses caused by inhalation of building debris. 
But the response to 9/11 has done far more damage to the republic than the perpetrators of 9/11 ever could. Even

If Staten Island is allowed to secede, our national technocrats fear that might open up countless similar demands for self-determination across the nation. For the elites, the current status quo works quite well and they want to keep it that way. 

Original Article: "Let Staten Island Secede!"

Pope Francis made headlines last week when he described the Russian Empire as "enlightened" and invoked the names of two expansionist Russian czars as examples of Russia’s "great culture." In impromptu remarks, Francis said to a group of Russian Catholics,  “You are the heirs of the great Russia: the great Russia of saints, of kings, the great Russia of Peter the Great, of Catherine II, of that great, enlightened Russian empire, of great culture and great humanity.”
Francis was quickly savaged among pro-Ukraine groups for these remarks, but for very superficial reasons. Essentially, Francis’s comments were evaluated almost totally in terms of how they related to the current Russian regime and the ongoing Russo-Ukraine war. Few specifics were mentioned about either Peter I or Catherine

Homeless foreign nationals (i.e., "illegal aliens") began arriving last week at a makeshift shelter in a Staten Island neighborhood. The arrivals come after New York City Mayor Eric Adams decided that a shuttered Catholic school on Staten Island would be used to house some of the more than 100,000 migrants who have arrived in New York City since the spring of 2022. 
Staten Islanders, however, were given no veto and no role in determining the location of the shelter or what policies might be implemented there. As a result, hundreds of protestors this week assembled to express their opposition to the plan which was apparently hatched in secret and only revealed to Staten Island residents when the plan was already fait accompli. As the New York Post reported this week,

The concept of the "fair wage" or the "just wage" is centuries old. It dates back at least to the Middle Ages and was founded on the idea that "just" prices of goods must be sufficient to provide "a reasonable wage to maintain the craftsman or merchant in his appropriate station of life." 
In its modern form, the idea of the just wage is often known as a "living wage." But whatever its form, the notion comes down to the idea that an employer must pay his workers a wage that will be sufficient to fully cover the cost of a "decent standard of life."
As one might guess—given the idea’s popularity in the Middle Ages—this idea has also long influenced Christian moral theology. Many Christian groups—most notably many Catholic theologians—have insisted employers are morally obligated to pay a

In a free society, political crimes like treason and "seditious libel" are few and far between. Under despotic regimes, on the other hand, political crimes multiply. 

Original Article: "Why Governments Love Political "Crimes" Like Treason and Sedition"

In the Gulag, political prisoners were systematically terrorized by ordinary criminals with the encouragement of the authorities. It was hoped this would help the regime liquidate the state’s ideological enemies. 

Original Article: "How the Soviets Used Common Criminals to Destroy the Regime’s Enemies"

The regime has increasingly been consumed with paranoia over threats to itself—propagandistically termed "threats to democracy"—while real crime against private citizens is clearly not a priority at all. 

Original Article: "The State Protects Itself While Crime against Ordinary People Surges"

As violent crime rates rise and unsolved homicides become more common, Many ordinary voters have noticed that the regime doesn’t seem especially interested in investigating and prosecuting actual dangerous criminals. At the same time, the regime appears increasingly paranoid about "antidemocratic" activities and other alleged threats to the state. Gangs of thieves cleaning out the inventory of small businesses? The ruling elite isn’t concerned. Meanwhile, if a small business owner fails to report a $700 transaction on Venmo, heavily armed IRS agents may soon show up on his doorstep. 
This apparent trend toward ignoring violent criminals while prosecuting hapless middle-class taxpayers has caused many conservative activists—such as Tucker Carlson and Mike Cernovich—to resurrect the

The only real crimes are those that constitute violence against actual, specific persons and property. These are crimes such as theft, assault, rape, homicide, and fraud. States and civil governments of all types have long justified their existence on the grounds that they punish perpetrators of these crimes and thus provide "public safety." (The fact that states themselves often commit these crimes—i.e., through torture, police brutality, taxation, and conscription—is carefully ignored.) 
Throughout history, however, states have also created a distinct category of "crimes" known as political crimes. These are described as not just mere attacks on specific persons and property. Rather, these acts are attacks on "society" or "the social order" or "the nation." These offenses are given names

In all the media and regime frenzy over the Janaury 6 riots and the Pentagon Leaker in recent months, it is interesting to examine the contrast between how the regime treats "crimes" against its own interests, and real crime committed against ordinary private citizens. 
Witness, for example, how the Biden administration and corporate media have treated the January 6 riot as if it were some kind of military coup, demanding that draconian sentences be handed down even to small-time vandals and trespassers. Regime paranoia has led the Justice Department to ask for a 30-year sentence for Enrique Tarrio, a man who was convicted of the non-crime of "seditious conspiracy" even though he wasn’t even in Washington on January 6. In recent months, Jacob Chansley, the "QAnon Shaman," received a

The Christian nationalist state is one in which civil rulers—for a time—regard the Church as a convenient ally. Once this comes to an end, however, the "Christian" state transforms into a state hostile to those it was once designed to protect.

Original Article: "The Dead End of Catholic Nationalism"

Money supply growth fell again in June, remaining deep in negative territory after turning negative in November 2022 for the first time in twenty-eight years. June’s drop continues a steep downward trend from the unprecedented highs experienced during much of the past two years.
Since April 2021, money supply growth has slowed quickly, and since November, we’ve been seeing the money supply repeatedly contract—year-over-year— for six months in a row. The last time the year-over-year (YOY) change in the money supply slipped into negative territory was in November 1994. At that time, negative growth continued for fifteen months, finally turning positive again in January 1996. 
Money-supply growth has now been negative for eight months. During June 2023, the downturn continued as YOY growth in

In this new age of decentralized and democratized content creation, union members’ demands may simply be based on wishful thinking for a bygone era.

Original Article: "Striking Hollywood Actors and Writers Might Have to Get Used to Stagnant Wages"

Although they professed to support "states’ rights," many proslavery activists wanted a stronger federal government that could force slavery on the western territories and deny local sovereignty to territorial residents. 

Original Article: "When Slave Owners Chose Federal Power over Local Sovereignty"

People with jobs, children, and actual responsibilities might not have noticed, but Hollywood is nearly shut down right now thanks to both a writers’ strike and an actors’ strike. Or more specifically, the writers and actors—who are members of unions—are on strike. Members of SAG-AFTRA (SAG) and the Writers Guild of America (WGA) are refusing to work until TV and movie studios agree to a variety of demands.
These actors and writers may be in for some unpleasant surprises, however. Studio revenues and advertising income isn’t what it used to be. Cable subscriptions are down. Theater attendance has not recovered from covid. When revenues are stagnant or falling, it’s harder to get the studios to raise compensation.
Another big problem writers and actors face is that we now live in an age

It’s become common now to read arguments claiming that immigrants — broadly speaking —  are good for the economy, or good for "America" in some other fashion.
"Migrants and refugees are good for economies," Nature magazine claims. "Open Immigration Is Good for the Health of People and the Economy," another writer claims. "1,500 economists to Trump: Immigrants are good for the U.S. economy," CNN insists.
Now, I’m not one to argue against freedom of contract and exchange between US citizens and foreign nationals. In other words, if a private employer wishes to offer a job to a foreign national, that foreign national should be free to accept. Similarly, if an American landlord wants to enter into a lease agreement with a foreigner, that ought to be the landlord’s prerogative.
Note that in

[This article is chapter 3 of Breaking Away: The Case for Secession, Radical Decentralization, and Smaller Polities. Now available at Amazon and in the Mises Store.]
In recent decades, many pundits, scholars, and intellectuals have assured us that advances in communications and transportation would eliminate the different political, economic, and cultural characteristics peculiar to residents of different regions within the United States. It is true that the cultural difference between a rural mechanic and an urban barista is smaller today than was the case in 1900. Yet recent national elections suggest that geography is still an important factor in understanding the many differences that prevail across regions within the US. Urban centers, suburban neighborhoods, and rural towns are still

[This article is adapted from a panel discussion on Christian Nationalism at Freedom Fest in Memphis on July 14, 2023. The other panelists were Norman Horn, Kerry Baldwin, and Alex Bernardo of the Libertarian Christian Institute. ]
The specter of Christian nationalism—variously defined—has become one of the current bogeymen to the Left. "Christian nationalism on the rise," reports National Public Radio, and The New Yorker asks "How Christian Is Christian Nationalism?" Some churches are even hosting workshops with names like "The Threat of White Christian Nationalism." Note the insertion of the term "white." An op-ed at The Salt Lake Tribune takes it a step further declaring at the US Supreme Court is now allied with "white male Christian nationalism" (emphasis added).
The lazy, imprecise

The problem here not that the central bank is "setting" the "wrong" interest rate. The problem is the Fed has long been relentlessly forcing down interest rates to satisfy various politically determined "needs."

Original Article: "Wall Street to the Fed: Inflation Is Over. Give Us More Easy Money!"

After 1820, growing numbers of propertyless squatters were voters, and this was an opportunity for politicians to offer cheap land in exchange for loyalty to the Democratic Party.

Original Article: "How "Squatter Democracy" Created America’s First Welfare Program"

A recurring theme in American politics is the cynical use of federal power by those who simultaneously pretend to favor "states’ rights" or "local control." We see this today when Republicans one minute say they favor local control with gun laws or Obamacare—and then demand the federal government impose nationwide drug prohibitions. We see it among Democrats who want local control over "sanctuary cities" for illegal immigrants, but then denounce the idea that states ought to decide for themselves on abortion policy. 
The basic logic goes like this: if you’re negotiating from a position of relative weakness at the federal level, take a faux "principled" stand in favor of local or state sovereignty. However, once it looks like you might have the political power necessary to force federal

When I was an economics undergraduate back in the 1990s, central bankers at the Federal Reserve were more or less above criticism. Those were the days when Alan Greenspan was acclaimed as “the maestro” and it was simply assumed central bankers could skillfully plan the economy to ensure growing prosperity forever. This isn’t an exaggeration. In 1998, the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by MIT economist Rudi Dornbusch claiming that we have. . .a policy team that can prevent recessions indefinitely. He concluded: “This expansion will run forever.” Recession did hit in 2001, of course, with enormous implications for the future of the US economy. This was when Greenspan decided to deliberately create a housing bubble to “stimulate the economy.” This was followed six years later by the

It’s difficult to say what most Americans commemorate or celebrate on Independence Day nowadays. Many appear to focus on some vague notion of "America." Others even take to jingoism equating the United States government with the very notion of "freedom." 
Lost in all of this is the fact that the Declaration of Independence — the document we’re supposed to remember today — is a document that promotes secession, rebellion, and what the British at the time regarded as treason. 
On the other hand, those who do recall the radical nature of the Declaration often tend to romanticize the American Revolution in a way that is neither instructive nor helpful today. 
So, what should we remember about Independence Day, and what can it teach us? For starters, here are three things about the history and

When the Soviet Union began its collapse in 1989, the world witnessed decentralization and secession on a broad scale.
Over the next several years, puppet regimes and states that were independent in name only broke away from Soviet domination and formed sovereign states. Some states which had completely ceased to exist—such as the Baltic states—declared independence and became states in their own right. In its heyday, the Soviet Union had been three times the size of the United States, and was controlled by a regime with nearly untrammeled power consolidated in a centralized state. In its place rose a number of new regimes that were smaller in size and smaller in population. 
In total, secession and decentralization in this era brought about more than a dozen newly independent states.1

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday rejected race-based admissions in higher education at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). The ruling likely calls into question the legality of most race-based college admissions policies, especially at elite colleges.
In the ruling (Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard) a majority of the justices ruled that the use of racial preferences in the admissions process at the two colleges violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Federal law did not require racial preferences in admissions at the time of the ruling, but the federal government tolerated the discriminatory use of racial preferences by higher education institutions. This toleration persisted for decades in spite of the scheme’s

Daniel Ellsberg died on June 16, and he remains one of the nation’s most prominent whistleblowers who leaked secret government information to the public. Upon his death the general consensus among the writers of memorials for Ellsberg was that he was right to leak government secrets. As the editorial board at The Orange County Register recently put it, he was "a true American hero." 
They’re right about Ellsberg. During the Vietnam War, through his release of the so-called Pentagon Papers in 1971, Ellsberg made public a large trove of secret government documents that exposed many of the Federal government’s lies about its involvement throughout Indochina. Much of the information applied to the Johnson Administration which had been lying about the war to both the public and the Congress.

It is not uncommon to encounter political theorists and pundits who insist that political centralization is a boon to economic growth. In both cases, it is claimed the presence of a unifying central regime—whether in Brussels or in Washington, DC, for example—is essential in ensuring the efficient and free flow of goods throughout a large jurisdiction. This, we are told, will greatly accelerate economic growth.
In many ways, the model is the United States, inside of which there are virtually no barriers to trade or migration at all between member states. In the EU, barriers have been falling in recent decades.
The historical evidence, however, suggests that political unity is not actually a catalyst to economic growth or innovation over the long term. In fact, the European experience

In 2023, self-employment has collapsed again with year-over-year self-employment growth dropping by 6.5 percent. That’s the largest drop since December 2007, when the Great Recession officially began.

Original Article: "Yet Another Month of Questionable Federal Jobs Data as 310,000 Fewer People Report Having Jobs"

Money supply growth fell again in April, plummeting further into negative territory after turning negative in November 2022 for the first time in twenty-eight years.  April’s drop continues a steep downward trend from the unprecedented highs experienced during much of the past two years.
Since April 2021, money supply growth has slowed quickly, and since November, we’ve been seeing the money supply repeatedly contract—year-over-year— for six months in a row. The last time the year-over-year (YOY) change in the money supply slipped into negative territory was in November 1994. At that time, negative growth continued for fifteen months, finally turning positive again in January 1996. 
During April 2023, the downturn accelerated even more as YOY growth in the money supply was at

In the pre-industrial world, aggression and physical domination were often labeled as "masculine" virtues because they were useful for survival. The rise of the cooperative market economy changed all that.

Original Article: "How Capitalism Redefined Masculine Virtue"

The Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) on Wednesday left the target policy interest rate (the federal funds rate) unchanged at 5.25 percent. This "pause" in the target rate suggests the FOMC believes it has raised the target rate high enough to rein in price inflation which has run well above the Fed’s arbitrary two-percent inflation target since mid-2021. 
Yet, at Wednesday’s press conference announcing the FOMC’s decision, Fed Chair Jerome Powell also claimed that "Inflation remains well above our longer-run 2 percent goal" and "inflation pressures continue to run high and the process of getting inflation back down to 2 percent has a long way to go."
Moreover, according to Powell, the labor market is red hot, with Powell stating "The labor market remains very tight"

Just in case you wrongly thought sanctions had anything to do with national security: Biden wants to sanction the people of a small African country over anti-LGBT laws.

Original Article: "Biden Wants Sanctions for Uganda Because Its Government Passed Anti-LGBT Laws"

The federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released new price inflation data Tuesday, and according to the report, price inflation during May decelerated, coming in at the lowest year-over-year increase in twenty-six months. According to the BLS, Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation rose 4.0 percent year over year in May before seasonal adjustment. That’s down from April’s year-over-year increase of 4.9 percent, and May is the twenty-seventh month in a row with inflation above the Fed’s arbitrary 2 percent inflation target. (More precisely, the Fed targets a two-percent rate in the PCE measure.)
Meanwhile, month-over-month inflation rose 0.1 percent (seasonally adjusted) from April to May. That’s down from April’s month-over-month gain of 0.4 percent.
May’s year-over-year

Contrary to the still-enduring myth about Republican budget cutting, there is no correlation whatsoever between Republican control of DC and the trajectory of federal spending.

Original Article: "The Republican Debt-Ceiling "Deal" Is Exactly What We Expected"

With the rise of homeless camps and tent cities in many American cities, the issue of squatting has become a cause for alarm among many residents and policymakers. In many cases parks, sidewalks, and other public rights-of-way have been taken over by people living in tents or makeshift shelters, rendering the areas unusable to most area residents. In other cases, some of these homeless people have taken over empty businesses and homes that were left unattended long enough for squatters to take over. 
The use of the term "squatter" to refer to those living on land they never paid for is generally not used to suggest approval. In modern parlance, squatters are often regarded as equivalent to trespassers. There once was a time, however, when supporting squatters was de facto federal policy in

[This article is Chapter 1 of Breaking Away: The Case for Secession, Radical Decentralization, and Smaller Polities. Now available at Amazon and in the Mises Store.]
Because of their physical size, large states are able to exercise more state-like power than geographically smaller states—and thus exercise a greater deal of control over residents. This is in part because larger states benefit from higher barriers to emigration than smaller states. Large states can therefore better avoid one of the most significant barriers to expanding state power: the ability of residents to move away.
The significance of this in practice becomes more clear if we consider the extreme and hypothetical case of a world with a single state. In this case, a person has no other choices at all. The number of

One of the main fronts in the current culture war in the United States is the debate over "masculinity." Certain corners of the Left tell us that "toxic masculinity" is a terrible thing. Yet, it’s often unclear whether masculinity is itself necessarily toxic, or if toxic masculinity is just one type of masculinity. How masculinity is defined is essential to the debate, and every pundit wants to define it his or her own way. Thus, David French, in his May 28 column for The New York Times, explains that conservatives are "all wrong about masculinity" largely because they employ a faulty definition of it. Meanwhile, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley has published an entire book about "manhood" and "the masculine virtues," supplying his own definitions. For its part, the American Psychological

While the US ratchets up efforts to isolate its many enemies, the Chinese, the Saudis, the Arab League, and OPEC all shrug and look to increasing international communication and trade.

Original Article: "Thanks to Sanctions, the US Is Losing Its Grip on the Middle East"

In an excellent display of how US foreign policy can be used as a means of pandering to domestic interest groups, the Biden administration has threatened to impose sanctions on Uganda as punishment for that regime’s adoption of new laws criminalizing some types of homosexual behavior. 
While it is abundantly clear that this move from the Ugandan state presents absolutely no threat to any vital US interest, the Biden administration apparently believes the situation requires immediate action by the US regime.
According to Axios, the Biden Administration’s proposed actions
includ[e] whether the U.S. will continue to safely deliver services under the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and other forms of assistance and investments. … Biden administration officials will also

A new Fed survey shows that banks are cutting back on lending big time. Over the past thirty-five years, this almost always predicts recession. Our economy can’t survive without endless new infusions of easy money. 

Original Article: "Banks Are Lending Less Money, and That’s a Formula for Recession"

After countless predictions of economic armaggeddon and panicky entreaties to raise the debt ceiling with no strings attached, the Biden White House and Congressional Republicans agreed on a new budget deal this week that does virtually nothing at all to change the status quo. The deal in no way returns federal spending to pre-covid levels. At best, the deal does "limit" spending by placing tentative caps on spending which—assuming they are not abandoned in the face of some new economic or geopolitical "emergency"—allow for a one-percent increase in spending each year over the next two years. At the same time, however, the deal abolishes the debt ceiling altogether until 2025. As summarized by the Associated Press: 
The agreement would keep nondefense spending roughly flat in the 2024

With negative growth now falling to near –10 percent, money-supply contraction is now the largest we’ve seen since the Great Depression. 

Original Article: "The Money Supply Has Plummeted in the Biggest Drop Since the Great Depression"

Back in 2002, then-Vice President Dick Cheney claimed "Reagan proved deficits don’t matter" and went on to push for tax cuts combined with more federal spending. Indeed, the Bush administration would go on to push immense amounts of new spending, supporting a huge Medicare expansion and blowing hundreds of millions of dollars on costly and pointless occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The national debt grew by 70 percent during Bush’s eight years, but no one in Washington—Republican or Democrat—really cared. After 2003, the economy seemed to be growing and after the 2008 financial crisis hit, all that really mattered was bailing out Wall Street to "save" the global economy. 
In fact, for more than thirty years, stern warnings about the federal debt and annual deficits have come from

In perhaps one of the most unexpected and sudden shifts in consumer demand in recent years, sales of Bud Light have now fallen sizably for six weeks in a row, with no end in sight. The New York Post reported on Monday that "Sales of the US’s No. 1 beer were down 24.6% for the week ended May 13 compared to a year ago — slightly worse than the 23.6% dip they suffered a week earlier." 
But it’s not just Bud Light. Sentiment has turned against Bud Light parent Anheuser-Busch Inbev (AB Inbev) to the point that other brands at the company are seeing declining sales as well. Budweiser, Michelob Ultra, Natural Light, and Busch Light all experienced declines during the same period. AB Inbev has lost an "astonishing" $15.7 billion in value over the past six weeks.
Not surprisingly, Bud Light is also

Negotiations over increasing the federal debt ceiling continue in Washington. As has occurred several times over the past twenty years, Republicans and Democrats are presently using increases in the debt ceiling as a bargaining chip in negotiating how federal tax dollars will be spent.
Most of this is theater. We know how these negotiations always end: the debt ceiling is always increased, massive amounts of new federal debt are incurred, and federal spending continues its upward spiral. In fact, since the last time we endured a major debate over the debt ceiling—back in 2013—the national debt has nearly doubled, soaring from $16.7 trillion ten years ago to $32 trillion in 2023. Over that same period, federal spending has increased more than 80 percent from $3.4 trillion in fiscal year

Taxpayer-funded company Dominion is suing private parties for saying things the company doesn’t like. These lawsuits illustrate how defamation laws can be used to destroy free speech.

Original Article: "The Dominion Lawsuit against Fox News Is Part of the War against Free Speech"

On Friday, members of the Arab League welcomed the Syrian regime back to the organization. Representatives from several Arab member states shook Syrian leader Assad’s hand and gave him, a "warm" reception according to several news outlets. Syria was suspended from the league in 2011, but on May 7 in Cairo the league agreed to reinstate the Assad regime. 
This represents a reversal from years of isolation placed on the regime, and a break with US policy which remains staunchly opposed to Assad. Indeed, the League’s rapprochement with Assad should be seen as a repudiation of US policy, and especially as a sign of how Washington’s influence among Leage members—the most powerful of which are Saudi Arabia and Egypt—has waned.
Moreover, this is just the latest bad news for Washington’s influence

The dollar became the dominant global currency not so much because of its own merits, but because of the self-destruction of the pound sterling caused by the British state and central bank.

Original Article: "How the Dollar Became the World’s Top Global Currency"

Banks have been tightening their lending standards, and they plan to keep doing it throughout the rest of the year. Last week, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve released a new report on how much banks plan to expand or tighten lending in coming months. The report, known as the Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey on Lending Practices, found that bankers expect a deteriorating economic picture in 2023, both for themselves and for their customers. 
If accurate, this report is yet one more indication that the US economy is headed toward recession. In fact, it’s one of the more compelling indicators that a bust is unavoidable. This is because, as Austrian Business Cycle Theory shows us, a slowdown in bank lending goes hand-in-hand with a slowdown in monetary growth, which correlates

Special counsel John Durham on Monday released his report on the FBI’s role in investigating the 2016 Donald Trump campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia. This investigation, codenamed "Crossfire Hurricane," had been—according to Durham’s report—"swiftly" opened as a full-blown investigation in response to "unevaluated intelligence information" by FBI personnel "without ever having spoken to the persons who provided the information."
Durham shows that the investigation had been pushed forward largely by FBI agent Peter Strzok, a man known to be politically hostile to candidate Trump. Durham also notes a curious difference between the FBI’s enthusiasm for investigating Trump, and the agency’s more cautious procedures used in investigating the Hillary Clinton campaign:
The speed and manner

The federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released new price inflation data Wednesday, and according to the report, price inflation during April decelerated slightly, coming in at the lowest year-over-year increase in twenty-four months. According to the BLS, Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation rose 4.9 percent year over year in April before seasonal adjustment. That’s down from March’s year-over-year increase of 5.0 percent, and April is the twenty-sixth month in a row with inflation above the Fed’s arbitrary 2 percent inflation target. 
Meanwhile, month-over-month inflation rose 0.4 percent (seasonally adjusted) from March to April. That’s up from March’s month-over-month gain of 0.1 percent.
April’s year-over-year growth rate is down from June’s high of 9.1 percent,

Money supply growth fell again in March, plummeting further into negative territory after turning negative in November 2022 for the first time in twenty-eight years. March’s drop continues a steep downward trend from the unprecedented highs experienced during much of the past two years.
Since April 2021, money supply growth has slowed quickly, and since November, we’ve been seeing the money supply repeatedly contract for five months in a row. The last time the year-over-year (YOY) change in the money supply slipped into negative territory was in November 1994. At that time, negative growth continued for fifteen months, finally turning positive again in January 1996. 
During March 2023, the downturn accelerated as YOY growth in the money supply was at –9.9 percent. That’s down from

Members of the U.S. House of Representatives are set to vote this week on new legislation that would greatly increase the federal government’s power over private businesses, workers, and US citizens. Unfortunately, much of the GOP majority is supportive of the legislation—the “Border Security and Enforcement Act of 2023” (HR 2640)—because it is being marketed as a bill "to secure the border." 
Much of the bill contains reasonable provisions such allowing state attorneys general the authority to sue the federal government for refusing to detain illegal aliens. Other provisions include denying asylum and residency to known criminals. In many ways, the bill is an effort to rein in the executive branch’s control over immigration policy. 
Alarmingly, however, the legislation also contains

In March 2021, Dominion Voting Systems—a company that produces electronic voting equipment and software—sued Fox New Channel for 1.6 billion. Dominion claimed the company had been harmed by allegedly false claims made by Fox program hosts and guests about Dominion’s role in alleged efforts to rig the 2020 US presidential election.  In April 2023, Fox New Channel settled with Dominion for $787.6 million. Dominion still has other lawsuits pending against other parties, including Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell. 
The Fox settlement over a defamation lawsuit comes less than a year after Alex Jones was ordered to pay $965 million in a lawsuit over things he said on his show about the Sandy Hook massacre.  Both lawsuits were centered around merely saying things that other people didn’t like

This spring marks the twentieth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. After an initial frenzy of war fever in the early years of the war, support for the war has since largely evaporated. Nearly two thirds of veterans now say the war was "not worth fighting." Two thirds of American adults say the same thing. Even among Republican veterans, only a minority say the war was worth it. 
These numbers are not surprising. The US obviously failed to achieve its stated objectives in Iraq, and the reasons given to justify the initial invasion were either exaggerations or outright lies. There were no weapons of mass destruction. Iraq was never any threat to Americans. Years after the initial invasion, the US regime still couldn’t keep the lights in in Iraq, suicide bombings became an

Even when currency is backed by gold, governments have many political reasons to pursue national, territorial currencies. Now there are hundreds of national currencies. It didn’t have to be this way. 

Original Article: "Why Do Most Countries Have Their Own Currency? Governments Wanted It That Way."

In March 2009, in the midst of recession, then Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner was pressed to respond on the question of whether or not another currency—possibly the IMF’s special drawing rights (SDRs)—might displace the US dollar as the dominant global reserve currency. Geithner responded that he’s open to more use of SDRs but then felt the need to clarify with “The dollar remains the world’s dominant reserve currency and I think that’s likely to continue for a long period of time.”
It’s not a coincidence that this occurred in the context of financial crises, recession, and some big changes in the global economy. Crises have a tendency to bring out questions about the dollar’s reserve-currency status. Similar discussions occurred in the late 1970s as the United States was experiencing

Understanding what turns an ordinary currency into a global reserve currency can help us understand how the dollar could go into decline and give way to competing currencies.

Original Article: "Why the Dollar Still Beats the Euro and the Yuan"
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.

The federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released new price inflation data last week, and according to the report, price inflation during the month decelerated slightly, coming in at the lowest year-over-year increase in twenty-three months. According to the BLS, Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation rose 5.0 percent year over year in March before seasonal adjustment. That’s down from February’s year-over-year increase of 6.0 percent, and February is the twenty-fifth month in a row with inflation above the Fed’s arbitrary 2 percent inflation target. Price inflation has now been at or above 5 percent for twenty-three months in a row.
Meanwhile, month-over-month inflation rose 0.1 percent (seasonally adjusted) from February to March. That’s down from February’s

Over the past year, three US states have enacted new legislation legalizing recreational marijuana within their borders. In May 2022, recreational cannabis became legal in Rhode Island, and the same occurred in Missouri in December of last year. In the wake of the 2022 election, in which Maryland voters approved Maryland Question 4, recreational use became legal in that state as well. With the addition of Rhode Island, New Hampshire—where cannabis is "only" decriminalized and legal for medical purposes—is now the only state in New England where recreational marijuana is not legal. Missouri joins Alaska and Montana as one of the handful of "red states" that have legalized recreational use as well. 
Now, with these three states approving recreational use, more than 156 million Americans now

Even a partial weakening of the dollar’s global demand will limit the US regime’s ability to throw its weight around internationally. Yet Washington is unwilling to do what’s necessary to prevent it. 

Original Article: "Why the Regime Needs the Dollar to Be the Global Reserve Currency"
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.

Money supply growth fell again in February, falling even further into negative territory after turning negative in November 2022 for the first time in twenty-eight years. February’s drop continues a steep downward trend from the unprecedented highs experienced during much of the past two years.
Since April 2021, money supply growth has slowed quickly, and since November, we’ve been seeing the money supply contract for the first time since the 1990s. The last time the year-over-year (YOY) change in the money supply slipped into negative territory was in November 1994. At that time, negative growth continued for fifteen months, finally turning positive again in January 1996. 
During February 2023, the downturn became even bigger as YOY growth in the money supply was at –6.6 percent. That’s

Among the many facts of modern life that are accepted without question by most ordinary people is that it is somehow perfectly natural, expected, and unremarkable that every sovereign state should have its own currency. We see this everywhere in names such as "the U.S. dollar" or "the Chinese yuan" or "the Japanese yen." Indeed, among the 203 sovereign states of the world, there are nearly as many separate national currencies. The euro, of course, is a notable—and recent—exception to this, but even after more than 20 years of the euro, only 26 of the world’s states use it. Many of those are very small states such as Andorra, Vatican City, Malta, and Latvia. Moreover, the British refuse to give up the pound sterling. The Swedes are sticking with the krona. The Swiss still have the franc.

The Bureau of Labor Statistic (BLS) released new jobs data on Friday. According to the report, seasonally adjusted total nonfarm jobs rose 236,000 jobs (seasonally adjusted) in March, the smallest month-over-month jobs gain since December 2020. The unemployment rate fell slightly from from 3.6 percent to 3.5 percent (month over month). This has changed little since December 2022, and this reflects rising numbers in workforce participation as total employment estimates have increased. In March, the labor participation rate rose very slightly from 62.5 percent, to 62.6 percent, the highest estimate since March 2020. 
These numbers suggest slow but continued growth in total employment, but net growth continues to flatten as layoffs throughout much of the economy continue to mount. For

As evidenced by a number of recent policy changes in China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Brazil, the status of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency is under coordinated attack. Efforts to dethrone the dollar, however, will require time and luck in favor of antidollar forces. For now, however, the US dollar is the most preferred currency for foreign reserves and for settling international transactions.
The fact that the dollar is the most popular currency right now is no guarantee it will be so into the medium or long run. No currency remains the reserve currency forever, and the US dollar has only been the world’s reserve currency since the 1930s. Before then, the global reserve currency was the pound sterling. But thanks to the World Wars, the costs of a colonial empire, and an

The challenge at hand is more than simply opposing the state. Rather, it is necessary to build up, reinforce, and sustain institutions that can offer alternatives to the state.

Original Article: "To Fight the State, Build Alternatives to the State"
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.

Last week, Fox News aired a segment discussing the possibility that the US dollar will cease to be the global reserve currency and what that would mean for Americans. The tone of the piece suggested that a “catastrophic” decline of the US dollar was not only possible, but perhaps even imminent. CNN last week also aired its own segment suggesting the US will face “a reckoning like none before” if the “dollar’s dominance” in the global economy falls significantly.
Much of the analysis was framed to stoke the public’s fears of Chinese geopolitical power, and the Fox segment was especially hyperbolic in its predictions of near-total economic devastation resulting from any movement away from the dollar in international trade and reserves.
Yet both segments are correct that events are piling up

Throughout its history, liberalism—the ideology today called “classical liberalism” or “libertarianism”—has suffered from the impression that it is primarily against things. This is not entirely wrong. Historically, liberalism coalesced as a recognizable and coherent ideology in opposition largely to mercantilism and absolutism throughout Western Europe. Over time, this opposition extended to socialism, protectionism, imperialism, aggressive warfare, and slavery as well. In this regard, liberals have for centuries fought against a wide array of moral and economic evils that spread poverty, injustice, and misery.
Being “against” things, however, has never been sufficient in itself, and liberals have never contented themselves with being so. Liberalism, of course, has long been closely

Advocates for more military spending tell us the taxpayer must pay to expand the US’s nuclear arsenal.  Because of China. In truth, the US’s arsenal is in no danger of not "keeping up."

Original Article: "No, We Don’t Need More Nuclear Weapons"
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.

The Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) on Wednesday raised the target policy interest rate (the federal funds rate) to 5.00 percent, an increase of 25 basis points. With this latest increase, the target has increased 4.75 percent since February 2022.
However, with an increase of only 25 basis points, the March meeting is the second month in a row during which the Fed has pulled back from its more substantial rate hikes of 2022. After four 75-basis-point increases in 2022, the committee approved a 50-point increase in December, followed by a 25-point increase in February, and another on Wednesday. 

Although CPI inflation remains at or above six percent, the FOMC has slowed down in its monetary tightening over the past two months. At Wednesday’s press conference, Fed

Even if Powell is sincere in this stated desire to slay inflation with more rate hikes, recent bank failures will put the Fed under enormous pressure to end its rate hikes and to once again embrace easy money to save the banks and Wall Street. 

Original Article: "Looming Bank Failures Point to More Price Inflation as Real Wages Fall Again"
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.

The Fed is launching a new billionaire bailout designed to keep banks afloat, and the FDIC is promising to back potentially trillions in deposits. The taxpayer will ultimately be on the hook. 

Original Article: "Yes, the Latest Bank Bailout Is Really a Bailout, and You Are Paying for It."
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.

The current job market strength partly reflects the ongoing monetary overhang from years of breakneck growth in money-supply inflation. The $6 trillion in money that was newly created since 2020 is still very much a factor.

Original Article: "The Fed’s Huge Monetary Overhang Keeps Job Totals Up as Real Wages Fall"
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.

Republicans and Democrats may quibble over how federal tax dollars might be spent on various social welfare programs like Medicaid and food stamps. But alongside Social Security, there is one area of federal spending that everyone can apparently agree on: military spending. Last year, the Biden administration requested one of the largest peacetime budgets ever, at $813 billion. Congress wanted even more spending and ended up approving a budget of $858 billion. In inflation-adjusted terms, that was well in excess of the military spending we saw during the Cold War under Ronald Reagan. This year, Joe Biden is asking for even more money, with a new budget request that starts at $886 billion. Included in that gargantuan amount—which doesn’t even include veterans spending—is billions for new

With negative growth now dipping below –5 percent, money-supply contraction is approaching the biggest declines we’ve seen in the past thirty-five years.

Original Article: "Money Supply Growth Went Negative for the Third Month in a Row, and Is Near a Thirty-Five-Year Low"
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.

All of Al Gore’s children went to Harvard. Are we really to believe that this is because the Gore kids had the most "merit"? The only real  meritocracy is in the marketplace. 

Original Article: "The "Meritocracy" Was Created by and for the Progressive Ruling Class"
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.

The federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released new price inflation data today, and according to the report, price inflation during the month decelerated slightly, coming in at the lowest year-over-year increase in eighteen months. According to the BLS, Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation rose 6.0 percent year over year in February before seasonal adjustment. That’s down from January’s year-over-year increase of 6.4 percent, and February is the twenty-fourth month in a row with inflation above the Fed’s arbitrary 2 percent inflation target. Price inflation has now been above 6 percent for seventeen months in a row.
Meanwhile, month-over-month inflation rose 0.4 percent (seasonally adjusted) from to January to February. That’s down from January’s month-over-month gain of

Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) failed on Friday and was shut down by regulators. It was the second-largest failure in US history and the first since the global financial crisis. Almost immediately, the calls for bailouts started to come in. (Since Friday, First Republic Bank has failed, and many other banks are facing collapse.)
In fact, on March 9, even before SVB failed, billionaire investor Bill Ackman took to Twitter to insist a federal “bailout should be considered” if the private sector could not save the bank. Hours after SVB officially failed, Ackman was still at it, and in a 646-word panicky screed, he demanded that the federal government “guarantee SVB deposits” and essentially backstop the entire banking industry to keep failing, inefficient, and poorly managed banks afloat.
Now,

The Bureau of Labor Statistic (BLS) released new jobs data on Friday. According to the report, seasonally adjusted total nonfarm jobs rose 311,000 jobs (seasonally adjusted) in February, which was nearly 100,000 jobs above expectations. The unemployment rate rose slightly from 3.4 percent to 3.6 percent (month over month) but this partly reflected a rising labor participation rate which rose to 62.5 percent, the highest estimate since March 2020. 
These numbers point to continued resilience in the job market, even if the employment numbers are not nearly as good as the Biden Administration has attempted to claim. The total number of employed persons, for example, is up less than one percent over two years. Nonetheless, this report suggests we have yet to see widespread layoffs extend

The foreign policy "elites" have been wrong about regime change, sanctions, "the lesson of Munich," a "rules-based order," and pretty much everything else.  

Original Article: "One Year Later in Ukraine: Washington and NATO Got It Very Wrong"
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.

Money supply growth fell again in January, falling even further into negative territory after turning negative in November 2022 for the first time in twenty-eight years. January’s drop continues a steep downward trend from the unprecedented highs experienced during much of the past two years.
Since April 2021, money supply growth has slowed quickly, and since November, we’ve been seeing the money supply contract for the first time since the 1990s. The last time the year-over-year (YOY) change in the money supply slipped into negative territory was in November 1994. At that time, negative growth continued for fifteen months, finally turning positive again in January 1996. 
During January 2023, YOY growth in the money supply was at –5.04 percent. That’s down from December’s rate of –02.19

The answer lies not in doubling down on political unity, maintained through endless violence or threats of violence. Rather, the answer lies in peaceful separation. 

Original Article: "Secession Is Inevitable. War to Prevent It Is Optional."
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.

On Friday, residential real estate brokerage firm Redfin released new data on home prices, showing that prices fell 0.6 percent in February, year over year. According to Redfin’s numbers, this was the first time that home prices actually fell since 2012. The year-over-year drop was pulled down by especially large declines in five markets: Austin (-11%), San Jose, California (-10.9%), Oakland (-10.4%), Sacramento (-7.7%), and Phoenix (-7.3%). According to Redfin, the typical monthly mortgage payment is now at a record high of $2,520. 
The Redfin numbers come a few days new numbers from the Case-Shiller home price index showing further slowing in home prices growth since late last year. The market’s expectation December’s the 20-city index had been -0.5 percent, month over month, and 5.8

The American Left has decided that the so-called meritocracy is a bad thing. In a typical example from the Los Angeles Times this week, Nicholas Goldberg points to a number of issues exploring how merit is not actually the key to power and riches in America:
The United States is supposed to be a meritocracy. The story goes that if you work hard and play by the rules, especially with regard to education, you can compete, rise and succeed here. . . . But Americans are realizing that’s not always the case. The playing field just isn’t level.
Goldberg claims that the much-lauded meritocracy is less about merit and more about controlling access to elite institutions. It’s hard to argue with some of this. It’s easy to see the lie behind the claims of meritocracy when we look to the very top of

Thanks to copyright laws, the estate of Roald Dahl can not only rewrite his books, but can also essentially outlaw the old versions. Only books in the public domain are safe from this.

Original Article: "Roald Dahl and James Bond Books Are Getting Woke Rewrites. Copyright Law Ensures You Can’t Stop Them."
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.

Opponents of secession say secession is wrong if some people in the population don’t want it and say they will be worse off. The American revolutionaries disagreed and seceded anyway.

Original Article: "Secession: Should the American Revolutionaries Have Quit to Appease the Loyalists?"
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.

It’s been a year since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In spite of claims from the regime and its media allies that Russia was the next Third Reich and would soon roll through half of Europe, it turns out that was never even remotely true.
In fact, things have unfolded more or less just like we predicted here at mises.org: the Russians aren’t even close to occupying any place in Europe beyond eastern Ukraine. It’s not Munich 1938. Economic sanctions have not crippled the Russian regime. Most of the world remains ambivalent on the conflict. The conflict will likely end with a negotiated settlement—contrary to what the Washington wants.
The fact is that in spite of the United States’ and North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) efforts to turn Ukraine into World War III, the war in

Rest in peace, "technolibertarianism." There was a time when many believed tech entrepreneurs would usher in a new era of freedom. Unfortunately, the new tech elites are technocratic collaborators with the regime.

Original Article: "When the Private Sector Is the Enemy"
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.

Never is a very, very long time in politics. Yet whenever the topic of secession or so-called national divorce comes up, how often do we hear that “secession will never happen.” It’s difficult to tell if people using the term “never” actually mean it. If they mean “not in the next ten or twenty years,” that’s plausible. But if they truly mean “not in the next 100 (or more) years,” it’s clear they’re working on the level of absolutely pure, unfounded speculation. Such statements reflect little more than personal hopes and dreams.
Experience is clear that the state of most polities often changes enormously in the span of a few decades. Imagine Russia in 1900 versus Russia in 1920. Or perhaps China in 1930 versus China in 1950. If someone had told the Austrian emperor in 1850 that his empire

The estate of Roald Dahl this month announced that it would be rewriting many of the long-dead author’s books to better suit a “modern” audience. Translation: The books will be rewritten so the text is more in line with the editors’ notions of politically correct language.
As a parent of four children, I’ve read my share of Roald Dahl books over the years, although I wouldn’t consider myself an especially big fan. Yet it’s hard to imagine what is so “offensive” in a Roald Dahl book that it needs to be rewritten. The Dahl books are not comparable to the original editions of, say, the Nancy Drew novels, whose depictions of the Drews’s black housekeeper contain a number of eyebrow-raising stereotypes.
No, it seems Dahl’s main offenses consist of crimes against modern orthodoxies about

It’s a myth that the "Founding Fathers" made America a republic in 1787. It was the state governments and their constitutions that did this. But the top-down myth glorifying the central government endures. 

Original Article: "Why the 1787 Constitution Did Not Bring Republican Government to America"
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.

When Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene called (again) for "national divorce" this week, a common retort among her detractors on Twitter was to claim that so-called red states are heavily dependent on so-called blue states to pay for pretty much everything. Reporter Molly Knight claimed, for example, that "Red states get their money for roads and cops and schools from blue states. You cut off that gravy train and you e [sic] got a third world country."

twitt2.jpg

Others claimed that red states would be "entirely broke" without blue states. America’s social democrats have apparently fully gone over to pushing the narrative that the "red states" are poor and backward while the "blue states" are productive and economically sophisticated.

We’re still living with the consequences of the massive monetary inflation by Trump and Biden. Prices are stubbornly high, and falling real wages are driving Americans to say things are getting worse.

Original Article: "Food and Shelter Prices Keep Climbing as CPI Growth Hits a Three-Month High"
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.

When advocates of secession in the United States bring up “national divorce,” a common objection we hear is that secession can’t be allowed because it would make some people worse off. For example, we’re told that if, say, a majority of Floridians voted to secede, that still can’t be allowed because there would still be a minority that opposes secession. We especially hear this in the context of so-called red states—where, presumably, a majority of residents are some sort of conservative or Republican. It is assumed that if those states seceded, “progressives” or Democrats would be worse off. But this works in the other direction also. Several years ago, when the topic of California secession was in the news, we were told that if the presumably left-wing state of California were allowed to

While the 1979 default was relatively small, the 1934 default affected millions of Americans who had bought Liberty Bonds mistakenly thinking the government would make good on its promises.

Original Article: "Yes, the US Government Has Defaulted Before"
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.

The debate between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists in the late eighteenth century was fundamentally a debate over whether or not Americans wanted or needed a large national state. Thus, in their effort to push ratification of the new constitution, the Federalists employed a wide variety of arguments designed primarily to convince the public that the United States, as it stood in 1787, was not politically centralized enough. 
We often find words like "licentiousness" and "anarchy" used by the Federalists to describe what will afflict the United States if it does not embrace a larger and stronger national government. The Federalists often argued that abuse of power was less of a threat than "too much" freedom and therefore a stronger state is a better guarantor of wealth and order.

By itself, the end of the petrodollar won’t destroy the dollar. But it will continue a trend that weakens both the dollar and the US regime’s power. 

Original Article: "Why the End of the Petrodollar Spells Trouble for the US Regime"
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.

The federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released new price inflation data today, and according to the report, price inflation during the month decelerated slightly, coming in at the lowest year-over-year increase in sixteen months.

[This article is the Introduction to Breaking Away: The Case of Secession, Radical Decentralization, and Smaller Polities.]
The world is now, and has always been, politically decentralized. At no time in history has all of humankind been ruled by a single political regime. Although the Roman Empire claimed to be universal, the Romans never even conquered all of Europe, let alone the whole inhabited world. Roman power never extended to India, China, Sub-Saharan Africa, or the Americas.

The regime is trying to whip up maximum hysteria or the chances that the US government could default on its debts if the debt ceiling is not raised. Anyone whose been paying attention for a while, however, knows there’s a 99.99 percent chance that the parties involved will soon raise the debt ceiling and the US will go back to adding to its $30-trillion-plus debt hoard as usual.

The Bureau of Labor Statistic (BLS) released new jobs data on Friday. According to the report, seasonally adjusted total nonfarm jobs rose 517,000 jobs, which was well above expectations. The words used by the media to describe the report included “stunner” and “wow.” President Joe Biden claimed the number proves his administration has delivered economic prosperity.

The Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) on Wednesday raised the target policy interest rate (the federal funds rate) to 4.75 percent, an increase of 25 basis points. With this latest increase, the target has increased 4.5 percent since February 2022, although this latest increase of 25 basis points is the smallest increase since March of last year.

Money supply growth fell again in December, falling even further into negative territory after turning negative in November for the first time in twenty-eight years. December’s drop continues a steep downward trend from the unprecedented highs experienced during much of the past two years. During the thirteen months between April 2020 and April 2021, money supply growth in the United States often climbed above 35 percent year over year, well above even the "high" levels experienced from 2009 to 2013. 
Since then, the money supply growth has slowed quickly, and since November, we’ve been seeing the money supply contract for the first time since the 1990s. The last time the year-over-year (YOY) change in the money supply slipped into negative territory was in November 1994. At that time,

On January 10, the French government announced plans to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. The change would mean that after 2027, workers in France would have to work 43 years to qualify for a government pension, instead of 42 years. French workers promptly took to the street in protest decrying even this very small reduction government welfare. 

Here we go again. Every few years in Congress there is a purely political battle over the debt ceiling. We’re supposed to be horrified and worried that the US might default on some of its debt. Some commentators will insist the US has never defaulted, and that default be a disaster.

In 2011, the Federal Reserve invented new accounting methods for itself so that it could never legally go bankrupt. As explained by Robert Murphy, the Federal Reserve redefined its losses so as to ensure its balance sheet never shows insolvency.

Those who know Wall Street lore sometimes recall that Fed chairman William Miller—Paul Volcker’s immediate predecessor—joked that most Americans believed the Federal Reserve was either an Indian reservation, a wildlife preserve, or a brand of whiskey. The Fed, of course, is none of those things, but there’s also one other thing the Federal Reserve is not: an actual bank. It is simply a government agency that does bank-like things.

The federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released new price inflation data today, and according to the report, price inflation during the month decelerated slightly, coming in at the lowest year-over-year increase in fifteen months. 

If one cares to look, it’s not difficult to find numerous columns written for mainstream news outlets announcing that the US Constitution has failed. This ought to raise the question of “failed to do what?” The answer depends largely on the one claiming the constitution has failed.

Money supply growth fell again in November, and this time it turned negative for the first time in 33 years. November’s drop continues a steep downward trend from the unprecedented highs experienced during much of the past two years. During the thirteen months between April 2020 and April 2021, money supply growth in the United States often climbed above 35 percent year over year, well above even the "high" levels experienced from 2009 to 2013. 

Twenty-six years ago, the debate was over whether or not the target inflation rate should be raised from zero to 2 percent. Now we’re being told it should be 4 or 6 percent.

Original Article: "No Surprise: Wall Street Wants to Raise the Target Inflation Rate above 2 Percent"
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.

During the 1980s, millions of American children pored over the Toys ‘R’ Us catalog, daydreaming about what toys we hoped to receive in a few weeks on Christmas morning. After all, by the mid twentieth century, Christmas—for countless middle-class households with children— had become more or less synonymous with an enormous number of gifts for children in the form of toys and games. Barbie playsets and a myriad of action figures were routinely advertised during Saturday morning cartoons and in Sunday print ads in the weeks before Christmas. We kids of the 80s were sure to tell our parents what toys we "needed."
We weren’t the first generation with such thoughts, of course. As Jean Shepherd (1921-1999) recounts in the beloved film A Christmas Story—set in 1940—Christmas was the time to

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has frequently bragged that Florida is in high demand among people looking to relocate. In a new report released this week from the Census Bureau, it seems that he’s been correct. According to the Bureau’s report: 
After decades of rapid population increase, Florida now is the nation’s fastest-growing state for the first time since 1957, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Vintage 2022 population estimates released today.
Florida’s population increased by 1.9% to 22,244,823 between 2021 and 2022, surpassing Idaho, the previous year’s fastest-growing state. 
In raw numbers, that amounts to an increase of about 416,000 people, which is the size of a medium-sized American city. This quickly leads to the question of why so many people are moving to Florida. Much

Opponents of secession in the United States often choose from several reasons as to why no member state of the United States should be allowed to separate from the rest of the confederation. Some antisecessionists say it’s bad for national security reasons. Others oppose secession for nationalistic reasons, declaring that “we”—whoever that is—shouldn’t “give up on America.”

The Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) on Wednesday announced it will raise the target federal funds rate by 50 basis points, bringing the target rate to 4.5 percent. Wednesday’s rate hike followed four hikes in a row of 75 basis points, and is the smallest rate hike since March.

Total employed workers fell for the second month in a row in November, dropping nearly 400,000 workers below the pre-pandemic peak in February 2020. According to new employment data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday, the current population survey shows employed workers fell to 158,470,000 in November, down 138,000 from October’s total of 158,608,000.

The international system we live in today is a system composed of numerous states. There are, in fact, about two hundred of them, most of which exercise a substantial amount of autonomy and sovereignty. They are functionally independent states. Moreover, the number of sovereign states in the world has nearly tripled since 1945.

Money supply growth fell again in October, dropping to a 39-month low. October’s drop continues a steep downward trend from the unprecedented highs experienced during the thirteen months between April 2020 and April 2021. During that period, money supply growth in the United States often climbed above 35 percent year over year, well above even the "high" levels experienced from 2009 to 2013. 

The collapse of the crypto exchange FTX may prove to be a canary in the coal mine of the easy-money fueled crypto bubbles. FTX’s collapse has exposed just how little due diligence is actually taking place among investors who are apparently willing to put large amounts of cash in whatever place looks like the hottest new thing and promises—without convincing evidence—big-time returns. 

As mortgage rates have risen this year, the demand for home purchases has fallen. That has spelled trouble for the home construction business. Homebuilder confidence dropped for the 10th straight month in October.

In the old Marxist regimes, anything that displeased the ruling communist regime was said to be contrary to "the revolution." For example, in the Soviet Union, national leaders spoke regularly of how the nation was in the process of "a revolutionary transformation" toward a future idealized communist society.

In another sign of weakness for the job market, the total number of employed persons in the United States fell, month over month, in October. That’s the third time in the last seven months this total has fallen, dropping to approximately 158 million.

Home price growth of the sort we’ve seen in recent years simply cannot be sustained without a continued commitment to easy money from the central bank, and it shows. Home prices continued to slide in August as the economy cooled, and as the Fed hit the Pause button on quantitative easing while allowing interest rates to rise.

Money supply growth fell again in September, dropping to a 37-month low. August’s drop continues a steep downward trend from the unprecedented highs experienced during much of the past two years. During the thirteen months between April 2020 and April 2021, money supply growth in the United States often climbed above 35 percent year over year, well above even the "high" levels experienced from 2009 to 2013. 

In recent decades, every instance in which the economy contracted two quarters in a row has coincided with a recession. Nonetheless, the Biden Administration and the leadership at the Federal Reserve insist there is no recession now, nor is one even in the works. 

According to the establishment survey of employment, released last week by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, total employment increased, month-over-month by 263,000 jobs. The "job market stays strong" reads one CNBC headline, and the new jobs print was hailed as a great achievement of the Biden Administration by MSNBC pundit Steve Benen. 

When asked about price inflation in his Sunday interview with 60 Minutes, President Biden claimed that inflation “was up just an inch…hardly at all.” Biden continued the dishonest tactic of focuses on month-to-month price inflation growth as a means of obscuring the 40-year highs in year-over-year inflation.

On February 8, the Japanese yen fell to a 24-year low against the dollar, dropping to 143 yen per dollar. Not much has changed since then with the yen hovering between 142 and 144 per dollar. In September of 2021, one only needed 109 yen to buy a dollar. 

In recent years, Congress has attempted to add various new mandates to the Federal Reserve’s mission. In 2020, Democrats introduced the “Federal Reserve Racial and Economic Equity Act.”  Then, in 2021, pundits and politicians were telling us that it’s the Fed’s job to “combat climate change.”

With the impending burial of the United Kingdom’s Queen Elizabeth II, republicans from London to Sydney have ramped up their efforts to end the British monarchy. The resulting war of words between monarchists and their opponents has highlighted the sheer diversity of opinions over the desirability of monarchy.

The federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics released new price inflation data today, and the news wasn’t good. According to the BLS, Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation rose 8.3 percent year over year during August, before seasonal adjustment. That’s the seventeenth month in a row of inflation above the Fed’s arbitrary 2 percent inflation target, and it’s six months in a row of price inflation above 8 percent.

The U.S. economy contracted for the second straight quarter during the second quarter this year, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported Thursday. With that, economic growth has hit a widely accepted benchmark for defining an economy as being in recession: two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth. 

Perhaps one of the more astute observers of Russian foreign policy in recent decades has been John Mearsheimer at the University of Chicago. He has spent years warning against US-led NATO enlargement as a tactic that would provoke conflict with the Russian regime. Moreover, Mearsheimer has sought to explain why this conflict exists at all.

The US Bureau of Labor statistics released new Consumer Price Index inflation estimates this morning, and the official numbers for June 2022 show that price inflation has risen to 9.1 percent year over year. That’s the biggest number since November 1981, when the price growth measure hit 9.6 percent year over year.

Most commentary on the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization—which overturns Roe v. Wade—has focused on the decision’s effect on the legality of abortion in various states. That’s an important issue. It may be, however, that the Dobbs decision’s effect on political decentralization in the United States is a far bigger deal.

Last year, just as it was becoming increasingly clear that price inflation was mounting, Jerome Powell repeatedly denied there was any reason for concern. He called inflation "transitory." A few months later, he admitted it was not transitory, but denied it was "entrenched." Then, by late 2021, he admitted price inflation was getting out of control but still took no action of any consequence.

Real wages are falling, inflation is at a 40-year high, and the Atlanta Fed predicts we’ll find GDP growth at zero for the second quarter. Meanwhile, both the yield curve and money-supply growth point to recession.  But when it comes to the latest data on home prices, there’s still no sign of any deflation or even moderation.

Year-over-year PPI growth came in at over 10 percent for the sixth month in a row. This will put more pressure on the Fed to "do something." 

Both consumer prices and producer rose near to multi-decade highs last month. Price inflation rose to 8.6 percent while wholesale producer prices rose by more than 10 percent. In both cases, a significant factor behind rising prices—but certainly not the only factor—was high energy prices. This has been reflected in prices related to transportation and shipping.

Money supply growth fell slightly in April, falling below March’s eight month high. Even with March’s bump in growth, though, money supply growth remains far below the unprecedented highs experienced during much of the past two years.

There is scattered evidence that home prices are finally starting to slow down. But, if the phenomenon is system-wide, we’re still waiting to see the evidence in numbers. Last week, the most recent Case-Shiller national data, for example, showed that home prices in March rose an eye-popping 20 percent, year over year.

If you’ve purchased any airline tickets lately, you’ve probably noticed that prices are up. It’s quite a reversal from the days of covid lockdowns, when airline tickets could be had for half the price of 2019 fares. Or even lower, in many cases.

The Bank of Canada on Wednesday increased its policy interest rate (known as the overnight target rate) from 1.0 percent to 1.5 percent. This was the second fifty–basis point increase since April and is the third target rate increase since March of this year. Canada’s target rate had been flat at 0.25 percent for twenty-three months following the bank’s slashing of the target rate beginning in March 2020.

First it was Columbine. Then it was Parkland. Now, we learn that at Robb Elementary School, police officers again stood around outside a school while the killer was inside with children.

McDonald’s Corporation has announced that it will permanently leave Russia, closing 850 outlets. The company’s chief executive, Chris Kempczinski, explained that the move was motivated by “the humanitarian crisis caused by the war in Ukraine” and that the current situation does not offer “the same hope and promise that led us to enter the Russian market 32 years ago.”

Inflation is so high in America that we’re now supposed to believe that inflation is “moderating” if it doesn’t go above 8.5 percent. That, at least, was the message in much of the speculation yesterday around what April’s CPI inflation numbers would show.

Washington regards the entire world as its “sphere of influence.” But now Beijing is looking to follow the US playbook on hegemony and expand Beijing’s network of military bases abroad.

Since 2008, a key component of Fed policy has been to buy up mortgage-based securities and government debt so as to both prop up asset prices and increase the money supply. Over this time, the Fed has bought nearly $9 trillion in assets, thus augmenting demand and increasing prices for both government bonds and housing assets.

It was last August when Jerome Powell began to admit that inflation just might be a problem. But even then, he was only willing to say that inflation would likely be “moderately” above the arbitrary 2 percent inflation standard. Back in August, low inflation—not high inflation—was still perceived to be the “problem.”

Politicians have become accustomed to conjuring whatever they want through the “miracle” of printing money. But in the real world, it’s still necessary to produce oil and gas through actual physical production.

Original Article: “To Fight Russia, Europe’s Regimes Risk Impoverishment and Recession for Europe”
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.

The US government today likes to pretend that it is the perennial champion of political independence for countries that were once behind the Iron Curtain. What is often forgotten, however, is that in the days following the fall of the Berlin Wall, Washington opposed independence for Soviet republics like Ukraine and the Baltic states.

European politicians are eager to be seen as "doing something" to oppose the Russian regime following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Most European regimes have wisely concluded—Polish and Baltic recklessness notwithstanding—that provoking a military conflict with nuclear-armed Russia is not a good idea.

Money printing may bring rising wages, but it also brings rising prices for goods and services. And those increases are outpacing the wage increases.

Original Article: "Real Wages Fall Again as Inflation Surges and the Fed Plays the Blame Game"
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.

According to a new report released Wednesday by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Consumer Price Index increased in March by 8.6 percent, measured year over year (YOY). This is the largest increase in more than forty years. To find a higher rate of CPI inflation, we have to go back to December 1981, when the year-over-year increase was 9.6 percent.

Some journalists like Steve Portnoy of CBS seem unable to grasp that escalations that might lead to nuclear war are a bad thing. The journalist seemed incredulous last week when asking White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki why the United States has not started a full-on war with Moscow. Psaki’s position—with which any reasonable person could agree—was that it is not in the interest of Americans “to be in a war with Russia.”

The states of Europe have more than enough wealth and military potential to deal with a second-rate power like Russia. The American taxpayers, on the other hand, deserve a break from Europe’s grifting.

Original Article: "NATO: Our International Welfare Queens"
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.

Money supply growth rose for the third month in a row in February, continuing ongoing growth from October’s twenty-one-month low. Even with February’s rise, though, money supply growth remains far below the unprecedented highs experienced during much of the past two years.

Within days of the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Ukrainian regime applied for membership in the European Union. This is understandable from the perspective of Kyiv. If Ukraine is going to be denied membership in NATO—as increasingly looks to be the case—The Ukraine regime could nonetheless increase its geopolitical connections to the West by joining in the EU.

The United States is no longer in any position to remake the world in its image. It’s not 1945 or even 1970. Yet the US seems to be gearing up to bully half the world into compliance with the US Russia sanctions.

Those gloating about Russia being “cut off” are overstating the case. In fact, many of the world’s largest countries have shown a reluctance to participate in the US’s sanction schemes, and even close US allies aren’t going along with it.

Original Article: “Russia Isn’t Nearly as Isolated as Washington Wants You to Believe”
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.

President Biden on Thursday made two big admissions about the US-led economic sanctions on Russia. The first is that the sanctions will lead to food shortages for many countries other than Russia, and that this is simply the price that Americans ought to be forced to pay. 

It is becoming increasingly apparent that isolating Russia and totally cutting it off from the global economy is not going to be easy.  As I discussed last week, from Mexico to Brazil to China to India and much of Africa, the world is resisting Washington’s call to treat Russia as a pariah nation.

Price inflation has been accelerating upward since April of last year. Yet the Fed has done virtually nothing. What’s the Fed waiting for?

The United States and its western European allies have in recent days repeatedly increased economic sanctions against not only the Russian regime, but against millions of ordinary Russians. 

As the Ukraine regime has imposed martial law in the wake of the Russia invasion, it has also apparently imposed a new near-universal conscription order. USA Today reports: The Ukraine State Border Guard Service has announced that men ages 18 to 60 are prohibited from leaving the country, according to reports.

The current advocates for US aggression against Russia would have us believe that Russia is some sort of peer of the United States and of Western Europe.
Tom Rogan at the hawkish Washington Examiner, for example, insists that Russia is a "great power," presumably comparable to the United States in spite of Russia’s small economy.
Moreover, as Ted Galen Carpenter notes, hawks are fond are speaking of modern Russia as if it were pretty much the same thing as the Soviet Union, a state that was considerably larger and more populous than modern-day Russia. Unlike Russia, the Soviet Union was also founded on a totalitarian ideology.
Older readers might find that sort of thing to be plausible. After all, many people over a certain age are still living in the past, in the days of the Cold War, and

The Fed’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) released a new statement today purporting to outline the FOMC’s plans for the next several months. According to the committee’s press release: With inflation well above 2 percent and a strong labor market, the Committee expects it will soon be appropriate to raise the target range for the federal funds rate.

During a confirmation hearing with the US Senate this week, Fed chairman Jerome Powell was asked about whether or not a digital currency issued by a central bank could exist side by side with private cryptocurrencies. Powell responded that there is nothing that would prevent private cryptos from “coexisting” with a “digital dollar.”

A certain meme has become popular among advocates of both gold and cryptocurrencies. This is the “Fix the money, fix the world” meme. This slogan is based on the idea that by switching to some commodity money—be it crypto or metal—and abandoning fiat currency, the world will improve greatly. 

Among those who support the end of government fiat money, it’s not uncommon to hear and see claims that gold is “the best money” or “natural money” or the only substance that’s really suited to be commodity money. In many of these cases, when they say “gold” they mean gold, and not silver, platinum, or any other precious metal.
Naturally, one can expect to encounter these claims among those who have made a living out of promoting gold and gold-related investments for commercial purposes.
For example, consider Nathan Lewis’s 2020 article at Forbes titled “Gold Has Always Been the Best Money.” Lewis contends that gold and not silver is obviously the best money and that its adoption as the metal behind the nineteenth-century gold standard was more or less inevitable and based on the alleged

According to a new report released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control, the life expectancy at birth in the United States fell to 77.0 iyears n 2020, falling from 2019’s life expectancy of 78.8 years. The report also noted an increase of mortality with age-adjusted mortality in the US rising from 715.2 per 100,000 in 2019 to 836.4 per 100,000 in 2020. 

Throughout much of the past century, the idea of a gold standard for national currencies has been routinely linked with laissez-faire economics and “classical liberalism”—also known as “libertarianism.” It’s not difficult to see why.

A Democratic state lawmaker in Illinois has introduced legislation requiring unvaccinated residents to pay out-of-pocket for healthcare services. It’s all part of an effort to come up with new and creative ways to punish people who refuse to get the covid jab.

In discussions surrounding of the world’s monetary systems today there is usually one thing almost everyone can agree on: that money should be controlled by the organizations we call “states” or “sovereign states.” Nowadays when we say “the US dollar” we mean the currency issued by the US government. When we say “the British pound” we mean the money issued by the regime of the United Kingdom.

Since the very beginning of the covid panic, the narrative has been this: implement severe lockdowns or your population will experience a bloodbath. Morgues will be overwhelmed, the death total toll will be astounding. On the other hand, we were assured those jurisdictions that do lock down would see only a fraction of the death toll.
Then, once vaccines became available, the narrative was modified to "Get shots in arms and then covid will stop spreading. Those countries without vaccines, on the other hand, will continue to face mass casualties."
The lockdown narrative, of course, has already been thoroughly overturned. Jurisdictions that did not lock down or adopted only weak and short lockdowns ended up with covid death tolls that were either similar to—or even better than—death tolls in

By mid 2020, it was already becoming clear that the United States was experiencing a spike in crime. Indeed, by midyear, numerous media outlets were already reporting remarkably large increases in homicide in a number of cities. It was clear that if then-current trends continued, homicide rates in the United States would reach levels not seen in over a decade.

Vaccine mandates are much easier to enforce thanks to the spread of government spending, government contracting, and monopolized government services.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday morning that prices rose 6.2% on a year-over-year basis in October. That’s the highest YOY rate since December 1990 when the CPI was also up 6.2 percent. October’s rate was up from 5.3 percent in September, and remains part of a surge in the index since February 2021 when year-over-year growth was still muted at 1.6 percent.

The Federal Reserve concluded its November Meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee on Wednesday. According to the FOMC’s statement, the Fed now plans to taper beginning in mid-November by cutting back its asset purchases by 10 billion in Treasury securities and 5 billion in mortgage-backed securities.

Advocates for vaccine mandates—led by the Biden Administration—are apparently unconcerned that the mandates are likely to drive down total employment and reduce access to government services.

Last week, the media again tried to ratchet up the public’s fear over covid-19 by labeling it more deadly than the 1918 flu epidemic. “COVID-19 Is Now the Deadliest Disease in U.S. History,” reads one headline from an NBC TV affiliate. Considering the realities of cancer and heart disease, that headline is absurdly false.

It’s now been more than eighteen months since governments began the new social experiment now known as “lockdowns.” Prior to 2020, forced “social distancing” was generally considered to be too costly in societal terms to justify such a risky experiment.

The regime is trying to whip up maximum hysteria or the chances that the US government could default on its debts if the debt ceiling is not raised. So far, the financial markets don’t seem to care that much, as ten-year Treasurys over the past week have barely risen above 1.5 percent, and not even matched last March’s recent high.

In late August, Fed chairman Jerome Powell suggested that the Federal Reserve would begin tapering before the end of the year, an admission that price inflation was rising above the 2 percent target. Nonetheless, the Fed took no immediate action in the following month.

The Federal reserve says that inequality is a problem. At the same, the Fed also pretends to have nothing to do with it. Last September, for instance, Jerome Powell bemoaned the "relative stagnation of income" for people with lower incomes in the United States, but then claimed the Fed "doesn’t have the tools" to address this issue.

Money supply growth slowed again in May, falling for the third month in a row, and to a 15-month low. That is,  money supply growth in the US has come down from its unprecedented levels, and if the current trend continues will be returning to more "normal" levels.

Here’s something we often heard in 2020 from experts who wanted long and draconian covid lockdowns: “Yes, these say-at-home orders are causing economic turmoil, but if you don’t lock everyone down now—and keep them locked down for a long time—your economy will be even worse off!”

In the wake of the Covid Recession and the drive to pour ever larger amounts of “stimulus” into the US economy, the Federal Government in 2020 spent more than double—as a percentage of all government spending—of what all state and local governments spent in 2020, combined.

In 2021, it’s clear Americans now have thrown off any notions of subsidiarity and instead embraced the idea that the federal government should be called upon to fund pretty much anything and everything. From "stimulus checks" to "paycheck protection," it’s assumed an entire national workforce can be propped up by federal spending.

On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee voted to continue with a target federal funds rate of 0.25 percent, and to continue with large-scale asset purchases. According to the committee’s press release:

Over the years, I’ve been pretty hard on the European Union. Both as an editor and a writer, I’ve published articles criticizing its central bank and its unelected, bureaucratic central government. Especially objectionable is the EU ruling class’s propensity for cynical politics built around threatening and intimidating voters and national governments who don’t conform to Brussels’ wishes.

After three months in a row of hitting new all-time highs, money supply growth slowed in March, dropping to a 10-month low. This slowdown, however, does not suggest any significant departure from the past year’s high growth in money supply—which came in the wake of unprecedented quantitative easing, central bank asset purchases, and various stimulus packages.

The Treasury department has issued its spending and revenue report for April 2021, and it’s clear the US government is headed toward another record-breaking year for deficits. According to the report, the US federal government collected $439.2 billion in revenue during April 2021, which was a sizable improvement over April 2020 and over March 2021.

In any given year during the past decade in the United States, more than 2.5 million Americans have died—from all causes. The number has grown in recent years, climbing from 2.59 million in 2013 to 2.85 million in 2019. This has been due partially to the US’s aging population, and also due to rising obesity levels and drug overdoses.

The US state with the fastest growing covid-19 caseload is a state that has experienced some of the harshest and longest lockdowns and covid restrictions: Michigan. As of April 20, the seven-day moving average for new covid cases in Michigan was 790 per million. This is higher than any other US state, and it is several times higher than the case rate for Michigan a year ago.

Last week, Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb vetoed a bill that would limit gubernatorial authority in declaring emergencies. The bill would allow the General Assembly to call itself into an emergency session, with the idea that the legislature could then vote to end, or otherwise limit, a governor’s emergency powers.

The reality of federal spending under Donald Trump did much to put to rest the obviously wrong and long-disproved notion that Republicans are the political party of “fiscal responsibility.” With George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, it was pretty much “full speed ahead” as far as federal spending was concerned. Under George W. Bush, some of the biggest budget-busting years were those during which the Republicans also controlled Congress.

Like nearly all US states, Georgia imposed a stay-at-home order in March 2020 in response to demands from public health officials claiming a stay-at-home order would lessen total deaths from covid-19. But unlike most states, Georgia ended its stay-at-home order after only five weeks, and proceeded to lower other restrictions quickly.

Ryan McMaken and Tho Bishop discuss five reasons why Rothbard’s work is so memorable. From his fearlessness in the face of opposition, to his commitment to peace and decency, Rothbard provides us with a model of principled scholarship.

In many school districts across the nation, public school teachers still don’t want to go back to work. Private sector workers have long been hard at work in kitchens, at construction sites, and in hardware and grocery stores. Meanwhile, from Seattle, to Los Angeles, and to Berkeley, California, Teachers’ Union representatives insist they simply can’t be expected to perform the on-site work in the expensive facilities that the taxpayers have long been paying for.

Dominion Voting Systems is suing MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell for $1.3 billion. This comes in the wake of other Dominion lawsuits against Trump advisors Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell. All are accused of lying about Dominion’s supposed complicity in using the company’s vote-counting software to favor presidential candidate Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.

The threat of “nuclear proliferation” remains one of the great catch-all reasons—the other being “humanitarian” intervention—given for why the US regime and its allies ought to be given unlimited power to invade foreign states and impose sanctions at any given time.

Opposition to American secession movements often hinges on the idea that foreign policy concerns trump any notions that the United States ought to be broken up into smaller pieces. It almost goes without saying that those who subscribe to neoconservative ideology or other highly interventionist foreign policy views treat the idea of political division with alarm or contempt. Or both.

The Left long ago figured out how to get ordinary people interested in economic policy. The strategy is two pronged. The first part is to frame the problem as a moral problem. The second part is to make the fight over economic policy into a fight over something much bigger than economics: it’s a fight between views of what it means to be a good person. The Left knows how to make the war over economics into a war over culture.

After decades of financialization and government favors, Wall Street now has little to do with free, functioning markets anymore and has largely become an adjunct of the central bank. Today, entrepreneurship is out, and bailouts are in.

Last week, the United States signed a five-year extension of the New START arms control treaty with Russia. Russia’s President Putin signed the treaty shortly thereafter. The “Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty” allows Russia and the US to monitor each other’s nuclear forces, facilities, and activities.

Within a day of the inauguration, the Biden administration issues a bevy of new executive orders designed to please a variety of the Democratic Party’s core special-interest groups. Among these was an executive order curtailing oil and gas leasing on federal and tribal lands.

Although advocates for covid-19 lockdowns continue to insist that they save lives, actual experience keeps suggesting otherwise. On a national level, just eyeballing the data makes this clear. Countries that have implemented harsh lockdowns shouldn’t expect to have comparatively lower numbers of covid-19 deaths per million.

In the debate over whether or not China will soon rise to challenge the United States as the world’s hegemon, it is often assumed that states with large aggregate economies are necessarily more militarily powerful ones.
This stems from decades-old methods that remain popular among scholars and pundits who write on international relations and foreign policy.

On Wednesday, a mob apparently composed of Trump supporters forced its way past US Capitol security guards and briefly moved unrestrained through much of the capitol building. They displayed virtually no organization and no clear goals.

The 2020 election failed to live up to the projections of many pollsters and Democratic strategists. The predicted landslide failed to materialize, and the Democrats lost seats in the House. This means in 2022 the Democrats will be defending a razor-thin majority in the House—a majority they’re almost certain to lose in a mid-term election if Biden is the final victor.

Two hundred and forty-seven years ago this month, a group of American opponents of the Crown’s tax policy donned disguises and set about methodically destroying a shipment of tea imported into Boston by the East India Company. The vandals trespassed on privately owned ships in Boston Harbor and threw the tea into the ocean.

Thanks to lockdowns, high unemployment, and general uncertainty and fear over covid-19, the personal saving rate in the United States in October was 13.6 percent, the highest since the mid-1970s. This is down from April’s rate of 33.7 percent, which was the highest saving rate recorded since the Second World War.

In November, money supply growth rate was essentially unchanged from October and remains near September’s all-time high. The stabilization we find in money-supply growth in recent months comes after eight months of record-breaking growth in the US which came in the wake of unprecedented quantitative easing, central bank asset purchases, and various stimulus packages.

In 1923 Lenin released a propaganda pamphlet titled Down with the Private Kitchen. It explained how private dinners with one’s family are reactionary, bourgeois, and generally something requiring total destruction.

In October, money supply growth fell slightly from September’s all-time high, although growth still remains at levels that would have been considered outlandish just eight months ago. October’s easing in money-supply growth comes after eight months of record-breaking growth in the US which came in the wake of unprecedented quantitative easing, central bank asset purchases, and various stimulus packages.

It should be self-evident that a just and moral political regime can only exist in the long term if a sufficiently large number of people actually believe in it.

Even if he loses, Donald Trump still has time to change military policy, pardon allies, unseat the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, and throw a wrench in the deep state apparatus.

Original Article: "Here’s What Donald Trump Should Do Before Inauguration Day​".
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon. Narrated by Michael Stack.

"Countries threaten to split apart when their people seem hopelessly divided…. We’re less united today than we’ve been at any time since the Civil War."

Both private sector businesses and police departments believe there is a good chance there will be postelection unrest. Both groups are taking steps to protect themselves in case of riots. Some left-wing protest groups state they plan to do “whatever it takes” to make sure the correct candidate—i.e., Joe Biden—wins. The National Guard has mobilized in several states in anticipation of riots.

Although he was a scholar with degrees in mathematics and economics, Murray Rothbard was very much a fan of the American layman. Indeed, he was a populist both in temperament and in his political views. In a 1992 column outlining his populist strategy, Rothbard noted the importance of reaching out to the general public and especially to those groups that were most negatively impacted by state power.

It’s been clear for decades that national news organizations such as CNN and the New York Times tend to be biased in favor of social democracy (i.e., “progressivism”) and what we would generally call a “left-wing” ideology.

Ryan McMaken and Tho Bishop talk about Tuesday’s debate, why "the issues" don’t matter, and why the debate probably won’t change the minds of many voters.

During Tuesday’s presidential debate, former vice president Biden attempted to paint Donald Trump as the bad-on-crime candidate when he claimed that crime had gone down during the Obama administration but increased during Trump’s term.
Whether or not this is a plausible claim depends on how one looks at the data. And given that law enforcement and criminal prosecutions for street crime are generally a state and local matter, it’s unclear why any president ought to be awarded blame or plaudits for short-term trends that occur during his administration.
Overall, however, it does look like homicides—which tend to be a good indicator of general crime trends—are indeed rising this year. While many factors are likely at play, we may be seeing yet another side effect of the stay-at-home orders

The Fed plans to keep interest rates near zero, while monetizing debt, financing zombie companies, and pouring new dollars into the market. But that may not be enough.

A federal judge on Monday ruled that Pennsylvania governor Tom Wolf’s covid-19 stay-at-home orders and forced business closures were unconstitutional. US district judge William Stickman IV of the US District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania ruled that Wolf’s orders violated the Constitution in three ways.

Extraordinary measures require extraordinary evidence. Have the advocates for lockdowns made their case? The data suggests they have not.

This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon. Narrated by Michael Stack.
Original Article: "The Evidence Keeps Piling up: Lockdowns Don’t Work".

In the early days of the coronavirus crisis, the rationale given for lockdowns was that it was necessary to stay at home for "fifteen days to slow the spread." The idea was that social distancing was necessary so that hospitals and other healthcare resources would not be overwhelmed.

The deficit narrowed during July after months of record shortfalls in federal tax revenues. During April, May, and June of this year deficits surges to unprecedented highs as economic activity dried up, workers were furloughed and laid off, and tax payments were deferred.

President Trump issued a new executive order on August 8 directing the Treasury Department to defer the 6.2 percent Social Security tax on wages for employees making less than about $100,000 a year. The suspension on collections will be in effect from September 1 through December 31. 

No doubt, many of Harris’s detractors will call her radical or a tool of the far left. The reality is actually far more alarming.

The rising unemployment comes partly as a result of state governments forcing the closures of some businesses, or restricting operations, in the name of mandatory social distancing.

In June, for the third month in a row, money supply growth surged to an all-time high, following new all-time highs in both April and May that came in the wake of unprecedented quantitative easing, central bank asset purchases, and various stimulus packages.

It will be very interesting if the police—who did nothing to disperse protests that were obviously in violation of bans on mass gatherings—turn around and arrest business owners and other "violators" of a second round of stay-at-home orders.

Donald Trump’s economic populism, and his break with the established post-war conservative movement, has created an opening for new types of conservatism. Among these is the anti-market wing of the movement characterized by a renewed enthusiasm for trade controls, more spending on welfare programs, and more government regulation in the everyday lives of ordinary Americans.

Last Friday, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics released new unemployment data. The report surprised many because it showed a decrease in the unemployment rate, while many observers had expected an increase.

Fueled by unprecedented quantitative easing, central bank asset purchases, and various stimulus packages, the money supply growth rate ballooned in April to an all-time high. The growth rate has never been higher, with the 1970s as the only period that comes close. It was expected that money supply growth would surge in recent months. This usually happens in the wake of the early months of a recession or financial crisis.

In the early days of the COVID-19 panic—back in mid-March—articles began to appear pushing the idea of “flattening the curve” (the Washington Post ran an article called “Flatten the Curve” on March 14). This idea was premised on spreading out the total number of COVID-19 infections over time, so as to not overburden the healthcare infrastructure.

People of a certain age might remember the old John Birch Society slogan “Support your local police!” The idea here is that your local policeman is a liberty-loving buddy of yours who would only ever support just laws and constitutional mandates. Only those bad guys in the FBI or BATF would ever consider violating your rights.

As of April 26, there were nearly 55,000 COVID-19 deaths reported in the United States. Of those, more than 22,000 (or about 40 percent) were in the state of New York alone. New Jersey was in second place, with nearly 5,900 COVID-19 deaths reported.

In the early days of the COVID-19 panic—about three weeks ago—it was common to hear both of these phrases often repeated: “The fatality rate of this virus is very high!” “There are far more cases of this out there than we know about!”

Unlike the federal government, state and local governments in America can’t just create money out of thin air. So when tax revenues go down, that money is simply not available to the state legislatures and city councils anymore. These governments either have to borrow the money or raise taxes and hope the tax hike itself doesn’t cause total revenue to fall.

Mexico’s president Andrés Manuel López Obrador has been reluctant to impose mandatory “social distancing” orders on the Mexican population. According to USNews, López Obrador “has maintained a relaxed public attitude” toward COVID-19, and the Mexican government did not impose a ban on “non-essential” work until March 30, long after health officials in other countries insisted Mexico must do so.

About 2.9 million people die in the United States each year from all causes. Monthly this total ranges from around 220,000 in the summertime to more than 280,000 in winter. In recent decades, flu season has often peaked sometime from January to March, and this is a major driver in total deaths. The average daily number of deaths from December through March is over eight thousand.

As of March 24, nearly 30 percent of all the COVID-19 deaths in the United States have occurred in New York state. Of the 910 deaths reported so far in the US, 271 happened in New York. Washington State was in second place, with 13 percent of the nation’s COVID-19 deaths.

To read or watch the news in today’s world is to be confronted with a wide array of stories about financial organization and financial institutions. News about central banks, interest rates, and debt appear to be everywhere.

The money supply growth rate rose again in February, climbing to a 37-month high. The last time the growth rate was higher was during February of 2017, when the growth rate was 7.9 percent. During February 2020, year-over-year (YOY) growth in the money supply was at 7.49 percent. That’s up from January’s rate of 6.32 percent, and up from February 2019’s rate of 3.20 percent.

This is how the budget process in Washington begins. Step one: the president submits his budget to Congress. Step two: Congress puts the president’s budget in a drawer somewhere and forgets about it. Step three: Congress passes a budget it likes instead.

It remains unclear how much the stock market implosion of recent days will affect the larger economy. As David Stockman has noted often, the Wall Street economy is not synonymous with the Main Street economy, contrary to what the advocates of rampant bank bailouts and financialization would have us believe.

A unique feature of the Swiss Federal Constitution is the fact that the central government’s power to impose direct taxes on citizens expires every decade or so. In fact, the current taxing authority expires at the end of 2020. Fortunately for the Swiss republic’s central government, voters approved an extension (the “New Financial Regime 2021”) for another fifteen years in a March 2018 election.

The Federal Reserve this morning slashed the target federal funds rate by 0.5 percent today. According to CNBC: The Federal Reserve moved to an enact an emergency interest rate cut after officials saw the coronavirus having a material impact on the economic outlook, Chairman Jerome Powell said Tuesday.

The false notion that the US has eliminated virtually all of its barriers to foreign imports has been repeated more and more in recent years. The claim is made both by advocates for free trade and by critics of free trade. For instance, Patrick Buchanan has claimed only American elites “are beneficiaries to free trade” while implying the US either has free trade, or something close to it.

All too often, discussion over trade deals focuses almost solely on tariffs. It’s true that tariffs—i.e., taxes—are always a significant barrier to free exchange at all levels, but there are also plenty of ways to block or lessen trade that are not primarily tariff-based. Recent conflicts over the pending negotiations between the UK and the EU are a reminder of this.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is in a state of crisis. When it comes to trade negotiations among large states like the US, India, and China, the WTO has been shown to be an organization that is largely irrelevant.

During the early 1990s, as the world of the old Soviet Bloc was rapidly falling apart, Murray Rothbard saw it all for what it was: a trend of mass decentralization and secession unfolding before the world’s eyes. The old Warsaw Pact states of Poland, Hungary, and others won de facto independence for the first time in decades. Other groups began to demand full blown de jure secession as well.

When we hear of political movements in favor of decentralization and secession, the word “nationalist” is often used to describe them. We have seen the word used in both Scottish and Catalonian secession movement, and in the case of Brexit. Sometimes the term is intended to be pejorative. But not always.

In the wake of the Brexit vote, Scottish nationalists have renewed their calls for a new referendum on Scottish independence. But many remain unconvinced, and many claim Scotland is “too small” to be an independent country. Others claim that Scotland is too poor, since Scotland’s GDP per capita is only 90 percent that of England.

The headline was unambiguous: ” Brexit Is Done: The U.K. Has Left the European Union .” As of January 31, The European Union (Withdrawal) Act of 2018 has become law and the United Kingdom has begun the withdrawal process from the European Union. The transition process will continue throughout 2020 as the UK and EU governments negotiate the nature of the future relationship between the UK and the EU.

The money supply growth rate rose in December slowed after a November surge of nearly six percent. During December 2019, year-over-year growth in the money supply was at 5.53 percent. That’s down from November’s rate of 5.9 percent, but was up from December 2018’s rate of 3.90 percent. The increase in money-supply growth in December continues a sizable reversal of the trend we saw for most of 2019.

The US Senate is increasingly targeted by left-wing think tanks and legislators for the fact it is based on “voter inequality.” According to critics, the Senate ensures small states are “overrepresented,”and the body favors voters in smaller and more sparsely populated states. In contrast,  reformers  hold up the concept of “one man, one vote” as an ideal and a solution.

In most times and places, crime tends to be a highly localized phenomenon. I have covered this for Mises.org at the national level, pointing out that homicide rates in, say, the Mountain West and New England are far lower than homicide rates in the Great Lakes region or the South. Gun-control laws clearly don’t explain these differences, since many places with rock-bottom homicide rates such as Idaho and Maine also have few controls on private gun ownership.

The Iranian regime and the Saudi Arabian regime are longtime enemies, with both vying for control of the Persian Gulf region. Part of the conflict stems from religious differences — differences between Shia and Sunni muslim groups. But much of the conflict stems from mundane desires to establish regional dominance.

The Fed announced on Thursday it is adding another 83 billion in “in temporary liquidity to financial markets” And, in a development that will surprise no cynic anywhere, the Fed also noted it “may keep adding temporary money to markets for longer than policy makers had expected in September.”

On December 29, an armed gunman entered the West Freeway Church of Christ in Texas and shot two members of the congregation. Within six seconds, a third member of the congregation drew a weapon and shot the gunman dead. The events were captured on live-streamed video, with the dramatic events — in the minds of many observers — highlighting the benefits of privately-owned firearms as a defense against armed criminals.

It’s almost Christmas time again, and that means its time for White House politicians and staff to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on Christmas decorations and events for the White House.

In my days before I worked for the Mises Institute, I had a colleague who knew I associated with Austrian-School economists. In the wake of the bailouts and quantitative easing that followed the 2008 financial crisis, he’d sometimes crack “where’s all that inflation you Austrians keep talking about?”

Boris Johnson’s Conservatives won an outright majority in yesterday’s general election, pushing the Tories to an 80-strong Commons majority in what the Daily Mail called a “staggering election landslide.” Given that the Conservatives employed an election slogan of “Get Brexit Done,” it appears the election was largely a referendum on Brexit.

Not every square inch of the planet earth is suitable for a housing development. Flood plains are not great places to build homes. A grove of trees adjacent to a tinder-dry national forest is not ideal for a dream home. And California’s chaparral ecosystems are risky places for neighborhoods.

It has now become commonplace for politicians and media pundits to casually assert that “everyone” — to use Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s term — is now working more and more hours — and perhaps two or three jobs — just to attain the most basic, near-subsistence standard of living.

Often, government-created holidays begin with a good premise — i.e., Independence Day, Armistice Day — and get worse from there. On Independence Day, instead of celebrating armed rebellion and secession, we now sing the praises of the government. Similarly, Armistice Day — a day designed to commemorate the end of a war — became Veterans Day, a day designed to honor government employees.

The money supply growth rate rose in October, climbing to a twenty-eight-month high. The last time the growth rate was higher was during July of 2017, when the growth rate was 5.07 percent. During October 2019, year-over-year growth in the money supply was at 4.95 percent. That’s up from September’s rate of 3.10 percent, and was up from October 2018’s rate of 3.49 percent.

School children learn that there are three branches of government: the legislative, executive, and judicial. In actual practice, however, there are four branches of government. The fourth is what for decades now has been called a “headless fourth branch of government,” the administrative state.

It has become nearly commonplace for pundits and politicians to claim that Americans are working more than ever before; that they’re working more jobs, and working longer hours — all for a lower income. During the Democratic debates this summer, for instance, Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio claimed “the economic system now forces us to have two or three jobs just to get by.” Kamala Harris made similar comments.

I’m not of the opinion that the American economy is doing amazingly well. However, I’m also not of the opinion that it is falling apart, or that the American middle class is disappearing before our eyes. Nor is there is no one, single, magic statistic we can point to and say “see, we’re all worse off — or better off — now.” Aggregate economic data is by its very nature lacking in nuance, moreover, difference measures of economic growth and prosperity can be conflicting and woefully incomplete.

In a recent interview with Mises Weekends, Claudio Grass examined some of the advantages of the Swiss political system, and how highly decentralized politics can bring with it great economic prosperity, more political stability, and a greater respect for property rights. Since the Swiss political system of federalism is itself partially inspired by 19th-century American federalism, the average American can usually imagine in broad terms what the Swiss political system looks like.

As the immigration debate goes on, many commentators continue to sloppily ignore the difference between the concept of naturalization and the phenomenon of immigration. While the two are certainly related, they are also certainly not the same thing. Recognizing this distinction can help us to see the very real differences between naturalization, which is a matter of political privilege, and immigration, which simply results from the exercise of private property rights.

Last year, I posted an article titled “If Sweden and Germany Became US States, They Would be Among the Poorest States” which, produced a sizable and heated debate, including that found in the comments below this article at The Washington Post. The reason for the controversy, of course, is that it has nearly reached the point of dogma with many leftists that European countries enjoy higher standards of living thanks to more government regulation and more social benefits.

The new Netflix series Marco Polo might have descended into a forgettable story of palace intrigue, but it fortunately explores far more interesting themes of family, loyalty, and how the state demands everyone sell out his values a little more every day, writes Ryan McMaken.This audio Mises Daily is narrated by Robert Hale.

The opposite of secession is annexation wherein governments extend their monopolies over a greater territory. Just as secession naturally limits the power of states, annexation extends it, and should be opposed, writes Ryan McMaken.This audio Mises Daily is narrated by Robert Hale.

Free markets have provided an abundance of goods and comforts for even low-income households. But constant government intervention in the work, lives, and incomes of the poor continues to create many barriers to economic success, writes Ryan McMaken.See here, here, and here for more information on how the minimum wage makes low skilled workers legally unemployable.This audio Mises Daily is narrated by Clay Barnett.

The homeownership rate is now back where it was forty years ago. So what did all that federally-subsidized homebuying over the past decade accomplish? There was a lot of malinvestment, and a lot of politically-favored interest groups that got richer, writes Ryan McMaken.This audio Mises Daily is narrated by Clay Barnett.