The Escalating Tensions in the Red Sea Are a Bad Omen
2024-01-03
On New Year’s Eve, US Navy helicopters in the Red Sea engaged and sank three boats belonging to Yemen’s Houthis, killing ten. According to US Central Command, the boats were attacking a container ship and fired on the helicopters as they responded to the ship’s distress call. The encounter represents a significant escalation that risks forcing a whole new war on the American public and the Middle East.
The Red Sea region has become one of the world’s most volatile flashpoints in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks in southern Israel. The Houthis of Yemen see it as their “humanitarian and moral duty” to use their location along one of the world’s most important shipping lanes to hamper and disrupt Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza.
Despite what US officials say, the Houthis are the de
Reflections on the Rothbard Graduate Seminar
2024-01-01
I had the good fortune of attending the Rothbard Graduate Seminar (RGS) twice in succession, during the summers of 2020 and 2021. By that time, I was already quite familiar with the ideas of the Austrian School thanks to the many podcasts and recorded Mises University lectures, among much more, the Mises Institute has made freely available online. However, I likely never would have realized my own understanding of Ludwig von Mises’s economic works was so deficient without twice undertaking a close reading of Human Action for RGS.
Further, and importantly, the opportunity to engage in critical conversation about Mises’s masterwork with Mises Institute scholars as well as the other highly motivated attending students makes RGS a priceless experience for those interested in studying the
Central Banks Brought Inflation. Now they Bring Stagnation.
2023-12-30
Although the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank’s message regarding interest rate cuts seems clear, reiterating their commitment to reducing inflation, the market is expecting between five and six interest rate cuts, between 125 and 150 basis points, in the next twelve months.
This shows us the bubble bias of many investors. We live in a world where two generations of market participants have only seen rate cuts and massive liquidity injections. Central banks have created huge perverse incentives in markets that should have been prevented if they truly followed their mandate of stable prices. On top of it, the ECB faces another risk. It must avoid following the siren calls of interventionists if it wants the euro project to survive.
The euro is the biggest monetary success of
Public Goods Viewed through Entrepreneurship
2023-10-02
Public goods, in mainstream economic theory, are goods that are nonrivalrous, where one person using a good does not preclude anyone else’s capacity to do the same, and nonexcludable, where owners of the public goods are generally unable to restrict anyone’s access to the good. Commonly touted examples include public lighting, like streetlights, radio, firework shows, military defenses, and flood defenses.
To the mainstream, public goods present an economic and social problem. According to their understanding, the lack of rivalry and excludability allows free riders to exist, which eliminates the profit motive for providing the good and thus the incentive to provide it in the first place. This means that the market on its own would not produce enough public lighting, radio, and defense.
Is the Money in Your Checking Account Yours or the Bank’s?
2023-09-30
When Silicon Valley Bank and other banks failed earlier this year, the debate over the sustainability of fractional reserve banking resurfaced. Under fractional reserve banking, banks keep only a fraction of customers’ deposits in reserve. The difference is bank credit, such as government debt, mortgages, business loans, and many other kinds of loans. This practice leaves the bank open to a run, in which panicky depositors attempt to withdraw their funds from the bank en masse but the bank doesn’t have the cash on hand. The following FRED graph gives an idea of the extent of the mismatch between deposits and reserves.
[embedded content]
But we shouldn’t worry about bank runs because the government is here to help. In the US, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) insures checking
1 comment
Ludwig von Mises-Institutet i Sverige
2016-11-09 at 16:06 (UTC 2) Link to this comment
Tyckte du om avsnittet? Varför inte gilla, dela och kommentera.
Senaste från Mises-Institutet hittar du på vår hemsida: http://www.mises.se
Besök gärna våran Facebook: goo.gl/uyhT19 eller Twitter: goo.gl/J9mmu2