The Free Market 13, no. 2 (February 1995) When anti-socialist, post-Soviet reformers of the Baltic states sought to reign in government power, they looked to solve the money problem first. Moscow held unlimited power to flood their economies with cheap money, and to fund itself as an imperial power lording it over other peoples. That had to end
The Free Market 6, no. 4 (April 1988) The Federal Reserve—the U. S. government’s central bank—was schemed at a secret meeting in 1910 at J. P. Morgan’s hunting club on Jekyll Island, Georgia. The participants—who claimed, as they boarded a private railroad car in Hoboken, New Jersey to be going on a hunting trip—were: Senator Nelson W. Aldrich
Speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations, President Clinton proposed more spending, regulating, and monetary manipulation as the keys to fixing up the world economy. More ominously, he called for the creation of a new international financial “architecture,” which, he implied, would be a permanent bailout fund for deadbeat governments the world
Losses are an integral part of the capitalist process. But you wouldn’t know it from the way some big boys are treated by the Federal Reserve. It seems that if your losses are big enough, and your connections good enough, you can rely on a permanent line of credit to shield you from the consequences of your mistakes. The new rule is gleaned from
In 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order demanding that any American holding gold was to turn it over to the banks and the government. In 1999, a Federal Reserve has floated official has floated the idea of doing the same thing (in effect) to paper dollars. It’s proof that the economic ignorance and disregard for liberty is
With so many Americans invested to the hilt, falling stocks can inflict serious financial pain. But far more damaging to long-term economic prospects will be the largest avalanche of economic nonsense to tumble out since the 1987 crash. Hordes of crackpot financial thinkers are already calling for draconian government measures to stop the
Sometimes it’s painful to read the business press, and never more so than during an economic slump. Reporters flail about for explanations. They quote stock analysts, politicians, day traders, other journalists, and even, from time to time, academic economists. But they never seem to arrive at anything approaching an explanation. And what,
This speech by the president of the Mises Institute was given before students, professors, trustees, and others at an awards dinner sponsored by the Adam Smith Club, Campbell University, Buies Creek, North Carolina, April 4, 2002 . Rockwell and entrepreneur Lewis Fetterman received the club’s Free Enterprise Award . Free-market economics, of which
Somehow, someway, it always comes back to the central bank. With economic anxiety growing, trouble in Latin America , frustration at the length of the recession, suspicions that matters are going to get worse before they are better, and, above all, terror that stock prices could fall ever further, Alan Greenspan is letting it be known that rate
Let’s say you set out on a Saturday shopping trip, drive up to the mall, and see a sign that says “50% off everything!” That’s great news, right? Or let’s say you are in the market for a new car, and the sticker shock you experience is that cars are cheaper than they used to be. Amazing and wonderful! Or let’s say you are paying for your
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.