Category Archive: 6b) Austrian Economics

[April 5 is the 90th Anniversary of Franklin Roosevelt's executive order banning private ownership of gold. In this selection from Part III of America's Money Machine: The Story of the Federal Reserve, economist Elgin Groseclose shows how FDR's executive order was part of a larger effort to deliberately debase the dollar, drive up prices, nationalize gold markets, and default on gold-based bonds. All the while, he claimed the dollar "a...

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Earlier this month, Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) introduced the Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology Act, or the RESTRICT Act. The bill is being floated as a possible means for the federal government to ban TikTok over its connection to the Chinese government. However, the RESTRICT Act’s vague language and broad scope has many voicing concerns about the bill’s threat to free speech and...

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Thinking that billionaires are a policy failure has become pervasive in the United States. Politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Elizabeth Warren are leading the charge in the demonization of billionaires. Left-leaning politicians and their allies think that billionaires corrode society by accumulating large fortunes, which amplify inequality. As such, many propose taxation as a tool to promote fairness by redistributing resources, yet such...

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The Federal Reserve’s new report of its balance sheet shows that in the approximately six months ended March 29 it has racked up a remarkable $44 billion of cumulative operating losses. That exceeds its capital of $42 billion, so the capital of the Federal Reserve System has gone negative to the tune of $2 billion—just in time for April Fools’ Day. This event would certainly have surprised generations of Fed chairmen, governors, and, we’d have...

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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...

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Access to energy has long been taken for granted as society became quite used to relatively stable prices and the ample abundance of energy. Meanwhile, the business side of energy was relegated to industry insiders, policymakers, and market traders dealing with the matter as a profession. However, the perceptible rise in prices and the fear of supply shortages have pushed energy considerations to the forefront of societal consciousness. This crunch...

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Recently, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), a bank that was heavily involved in cryptocurrency, collapsed. Naturally, Democrats want to exploit the situation to rush through new regulations. But that will only make the problem worse. The failure of Silicon Valley Bank, a forty-year old, $200 billion bank, has caused many to worry about the country’s economic stability. Among the concerned is Senator Elizabeth Warren, who wants to reinstate some of the...

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The panopticon is a hypothetical surveillance and control system first imagined by philosopher Jeremy Bentham in the eighteenth century. It’s envisioned as a tool to control the behavior of a large number of people with as little effort as possible. Here is one description: “The panopticon is a disciplinary concept brought to life in the form of a central observation tower placed within a circle of prison cells. From the tower, a guard can see...

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