Category Archive: 6b) Austrian Economics

Democratic Fun in Tajikistan

  Capo for Life! The people of Tajikistan love their president Emomali Rahmon deeply. And as we now know, nearly all of them do. The last time a leader of similarly exalted stature enjoyed such unconditional and unshakable support from the entire cit...

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Sloppy Decisions at Greenlight Capital and Pershing Square

  Not Just Wrong, but Monumentally Wrong Massive flaws at SUNE (Sun Edison) + VRX (Valeant) were somehow missed by both of these high profile/ well resourced hedge funds.   David Einhorn (Greenlight Capital) and Bill Ackman (Pershing Square) – both f...

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Time to Raise the White Flag at Gualfin?

  Who Cares What Voters Want? BALTIMORE, Maryland –  There were two newsworthy developments last week, neither of them really important – the first because it won’t happen, the second because it won’t matter. First, the Fed let it be known that it ha...

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Nigeria Currency Devaluation Looms As FX Forwards Crash To Record Lows

Despite US equity investors' exuberance over bouncing crude oil prices, the world's crude producers continue to suffer and while Venezuela is in the headlines every day (having already collapsed into chaos), Nigeria appears the nearest to that abyss ...

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Switzerland About to Vote on “Free Lunch” for Everyone

  Will the Swiss Guarantee CHF 75,000 for Every Family? In early June the Swiss will be called upon to make a historic decision. Switzerland is the first country worldwide to put the idea of an Unconditional Basic Income to a vote and the outcome of ...

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Three unintended consequences of NIRP

Central bankers use low or negative interest rates so that it leads to more investment. For them interest rates are a consequence of the currently very low inflation rates. Patrick Watson argues differently: Falling prices are a consequence of low interest rates.

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Are Investors Idiots?

  Black-and-Blue Crash Alert Flag Let us  begin the week “on message.” The Diary is about money. Today, we’ll stick to the subject.  Old friend Mark Hulbert has done some research on the likelihood of a crash in the stock market.   Ye olde tattered C...

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Austria’s Presidential Elections – Europe’s Social Mood Keeps Worsening

Austria is a small European nation that has made the grievous mistake of needlessly joining the EU in 1995, together with Finland and Sweden. Austria’s neighbor Switzerland, which is of roughly similar size and likewise militarily neutral, proved to have far better instincts. The Swedes subsequently at least had the good sense to stay out of the euro zone. It seems if there is a mistake to be made, Austrian governments will eagerly make it.

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Academic Skulduggery – How Ivory Tower Hubris Wrecks your Life

In the 1970s economists started to incorporate rational expectations into their models and not long after the seminal Kydand & Prescott (1977) article named Rules Rather than Discretion: The Inconsistency of Optimal Plan was published. Their work has...

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Revolution at the Ranch

  Alarming News BALTIMORE, Maryland – An alarming email came on Tuesday from our ranch in Argentina: “Bad things going on… We thought we had the originarios problem settled. Not at all. They just invaded the ranch.”   Originarios on the march… Photo ...

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How to Maximize Economic Potential

The fundamental problem facing today’s economy is the barefaced contempt governments the world over have for the free exchange of goods and services and private stewardship of property. What it is government’s think they are doing with their destructive fiscal and monetary policies is unclear. But what is crystal clear is the scrambled disorder modern day economic policies have wrought.

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How the Deep State’s Cronies Steal From You

The relentless growth of Leviathan: Total Pages of Code of Federal Regulations from 10000 in 1950 to 170000 in 2014. Federal tax rules – from 400 in 1913 to 74,000 in 2012. Aggregate word count of Dodd-Frank regulations doubled.

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The Japanese Popsicle Affair

  Policy-Induced Contrition in Japan As we keep saying, there really is no point in trying to make people richer by making them poorer – which is what Shinzo Abe and Haruhiko Kuroda have been trying to do for the past several years. Not surprisingly,...

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Pareto’s Wily Foxes

  Smart Money Fleeing Stocks DUBLIN – The Dow dropped 180 points on Tuesday – or about 1%. And another clever billionaire says he is looking elsewhere for profits. Reuters:   “Activist investor Carl Icahn on Monday said there was a chance the stock m...

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Fed Suppression, Long Term Economic Repression

The Federal Reserve really wants to raise rates, but they do not dare as the consequence of interrupting an unprecedented level of capital misallocation is too grave to face head on. So our money masters continue their low interest rate policy; pulli...

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Drowning the Fir

  Presidential Duties Our editor recently stumbled upon an image in one of the more obscure corners of the intertubes which we felt we had to share with our readers. It provides us with a nice metaphor for the meaningfulness of government activity. F...

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The Long-Buried Secret of Napoleon Bonaparte

  Family Secrets DUBLIN – The smart money is getting out while the gettin’ is still good. That’s the message we get from reading the recent headlines.   Here’s the Financial Times:   Redemptions from stock funds have hit nearly $90 billion this year ...

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A Tale of Two Parliaments

  Boisterous Debate vs. Non-Existence Readers may recall that we have previously reported on brawls breaking out in various parliaments, such as e.g. in Ukraine’s Rada, where we suspect representatives are actually engaging in a form of performance a...

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Trump’s Biggest Deal

A reader asks Bill Bonner "Trump is the only candidate that might have a chance to get us out of the financial and economic mess the United States is in." Is he really?

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China’s Rolling Boom-Bust Cycle

Pater Tenebrarum looks on the most important China charts that indicate a boom-bust cycle: annual rate of growth of M1 and M2, China fixed asset investment, China Money Supply M1, Shanghai Stock Exchange, China commodity futures, Steel Rebar futures, China residential real estate prices

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