Category Archive: 6b) Austrian Economics

The Federal Reserve’s balance sheet reached its all-time high in May 2022. Since then, it was supposed to drop at a steady pace and shed three trillion US dollars by 2024. The normalization of monetary policy was built on the idea of a soft landing for the economy. However, the Fed may be killing the private sector to save the government. Curbing inflation requires a significant reduction in the money supply and aggregate demand. However, if...

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The talking heads on financial TV ask everyday where we are in the banking crisis. Is it over yet? After scooping up First Republic, JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon said, “This part of the crisis is over.” After he said that, however, the shares of regional banks such as PacWest, Zions, and Western Alliance were cut in half. The market doesn’t believe Mr. Dimon. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross described five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression,...

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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...

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On April 6, 2023, President Joe Biden’s Twitter account sent the following message: “Trickle-down economics doesn’t work.” Trickle-down economics is a phrase that is often thrown around negatively to ridicule those who believe that the free-market system is the best way to regulate the economy. “Trickle-down theory” was never coined by economists, and the term has two possible origins, both of which were meant to discredit those who wanted less...

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Illegitimate Authority: Facing the Challenges of Our Timeby Noam Chomsky, edited by C.J. PolychroniouHaymarket Books, 2023; x + 330 pp. Noam Chomsky is universally respected for his contributions to linguistics and to the philosophy of mind, but he is a “public intellectual” as well, and it is in the public arena that opinion about him is divided. Illegitimate Authority is a collection of thirty-four interviews of him by C.J. Polychroniou, the...

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Speaking on a Columbia University Law School podcast, the chief economist of the Bank of England, Huw Pill, said Britons “need to accept” that they have been made poorer by the inflation perpetrated by the central bank. Price inflation today is a result of the record money creation by central banks, especially in the West, from 2020 onward. This was rationalized and justified by the mainstream narrative on covid. The following are choice comments...

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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...

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The Buy Black movement has triggered a series of intense debates in the black community and the wider America. Activists proposed this project as an opportunity to generate wealth for black Americans by supporting black entrepreneurs. On the downside, others say that this agenda perpetuates an insidious form of tribalism. Are criticisms of the Buy Black movement an accurate description of its goals? Sociologists argue that minority groups often...

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