Category Archive: 6b) Austrian Economics

Davos Man Will Fail, World Will Move Toward Decentralization

I truly enjoyed the conversation with Hrvoje Morić. I hope you will enjoy it 2. Happy Weekend! In liberty, Claudio Claudio Grass, Hünenberg See, Switzerland This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Therefore please feel free to share and you can subscribe for my articles by clicking here

Read More »

Does Government Create a “Level Playing Field” or Does It Make the Field More Uneven?

Bernie Sanders and other politicians have made socialism attractive to voters, especially young ones, because it promises to eliminate the injustices of capitalism. As to what socialism and capitalism mean, no one seems to care much, other than that by socialism, they mean a kinder, caring society without income extremes, whereas capitalism is the preferred system of ruthless exploiters who amass obscene fortunes while real workers struggle to...

Read More »

The Case of Adani versus Hindenburg

Between 2019 and 2022, the fortune of India’s Gautam Adani swelled from $9 billion to $127 billion. As the value of his seven publicly traded companies—providers of everything from natural gas to digital services—soared, he was briefly the world’s second-richest person.

Read More »

Yes, the US Government Has Defaulted Before

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.

Read More »

Another Recession Sign: Part-Time Work Is Growing Faster than Full-Time Work

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.

Read More »

The Price-Gouging State

Friends and family are talking, on Facebook, about the rapid rise in the price of eggs. Their posts also report that there are plenty of eggs in the dairy sections of local grocery stores. A few people, along with some reporters, blame this rapid increase in the price of eggs on price-gouging corporations.

Read More »

“Fundamentals and technical analysis are two sides of the same coin”

Interview with Laurent Halmos For most die-hard physical gold investors and students of history like myself and most of my readers and clients, technical analysis is often seen as a bit of a taboo, or at best something irrelevant to our worldview and investment approach. Nevertheless, to paraphrase the old saying about politics, just because you are not interested in the charts doesn’t mean that the charts are not interested in you.  I met...

Read More »

The Fed’s Portfolio Is Nonexistent: The Fed Does Not Invest. It Destroys Investments

Every so often, I check my investment portfolio to see how it is doing. (I stay out of stocks these days, but that is due to my personal situation and is not to be taken as investment advice.) Portfolios are collections of various financial instruments that one is holding, and one always hopes that their value will head in the right direction over time.

Read More »

Managing Money Is as Important as Making It: The Sad Case of Athletes Going Broke

Lacking a solid team is a recipe for organizational failure, and those intending to excel in business—or any other sector—must invest in management. Considering that many professional athletes encounter bankruptcy shortly after retiring, they are a demographic that could greatly benefit from quality financial management teams.

Read More »

Subsidizing Higher Education Is Not Creating Widespread External Benefits

President Biden’s student debt relief proposal created a storm of controversy. That is not surprising, since it was a transparent (and apparently successful) attempt to buy the votes of an important Democratic constituency, even though it created a target-rich environment for critics.

Read More »

You Think the Global Economy Is Brightening? Beware: The Big Hit Is Yet to Come

Relief is spreading among economic analysts and stock market experts. Energy prices are decreasing noticeably. The energy supply this winter seems secure; in Europe, government support for consumers and producers is available if needed. China is turning away from its zero-covid policy, and production is ramping up again.

Read More »

The Chinese Communist Party Is Creating a Crackdown Economy

True story: Many weekends during my studies in Changzhou, China, my friends and I would go out to have a drink only to realize that our favorite bar was not open that night. In fact, all of the city’s clubs would be closed. The reason? Police had decided to crack down on these nightclubs.

Read More »

The Fed Is Already Flashing Signs It’s Done Raising Rates

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.

Read More »

2023 Libertarian Scholars Conference

Join the Mises Institute at the 2023 Libertarian Scholars Conference on Saturday, September 23. We'll meet at the Grand Hyatt in Nashville, Tennessee. The first Libertarian Scholars Conference was held in New York City in 1972 under the aegis of the Center for Libertarian Studies.

Read More »

It’s Never Too Late to Begin Protesting against the Proposed Central Bank Digital Currency

Whether you like it or not, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) are coming. That’s the message in a recent tech column in the Wall Street Journal. A similar tone can be found coming from organizations like the World Economic Forum, the International Monetary Fund, and the Atlantic Council.

Read More »

More Recession Signs: Money Supply Growth Went Negative Again in December

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...

Read More »

Is the Japanese Low Inflation–Low Interest Rate Model at an End?

The macroeconomic situation in Japan seems to be coming to a head. When the Bank of Japan, under its President Haruhiko Kuroda, announced on December 20, 2022, that it would raise its interest rate ceiling on ten-year Japanese government bonds from 0.25 percent to 0.50 percent, share prices in Tokyo plummeted and the Japanese yen appreciated sharply.

Read More »

Outrage on Refugees and Silence on Sanctions

I have seen immigration-control advocates exclaim against illegal immigration my entire life. They say that U.S. officials just need to “crack down” in the war on illegal immigration in order to bring an end to America’s decades-long, never-ending, ongoing, perpetual immigration crisis and immigration chaos along the border.

Read More »

Fighting Inflation Really Means Fighting the Federal Reserve

There are surely other worlds than this—other thoughts than the thoughts of the multitude—other speculations than the speculations of the sophist. —Edgar Allan Poe, “The Assignation” Nothing brings out misleading or false narratives like the subject of money. Prices over the last twenty-five months have shot up, and this development is roundly called inflation. Why? Because prices have shot up. The criminals running the government even passed an...

Read More »

How Fast Should the Money Supply Grow?

Some economists have suggested that inflation results when the money supply expands faster than the rate at which goods and services are produced. They correctly point out that this expansion of the money supply will generally lead to rising prices. But what most economists fail to mention is that inflation can exist even when prices are stable.

Read More »