A gentleman who does work for us sent me a text recently saying the price of his supplies has increased 20 percent, so he wants to increase his monthly fee 10 percent. It was a nice way to ask, and I said sure, especially given that he’s willing to take a haircut on his labor to make the increase more palatable. Chairman Jerome Powell would be
It’s hard to crack the headlines of the financial pages, what with GameStop, bitcoin, Tesla, and squeezes of one sort or another. There is a squeeze in commercial real estate that won’t shock anyone, or shouldn’t. That squeeze is tenants unable to pay owners and owners unable to pay lenders. It’s possible the pandemic will fizzle, someone will
Back in the wild west days of the housing boom, say 2004-2005, there was a mortgage loan officer who used to pitch an idea to us he called wealthbuilder. He would trot out a spreadsheet and plug in a person’s mortgage amount, and assume a variable rate loan with the low teaser rates that were being marketed at the time. He then would subtract
Listen to the Audio Mises Wire version of this article. The Clark County Commissioners voted recently to rename McCarran Airport to Harry Reid International Airport. The vote was unanimous among those who rule the Las Vegas Strip. The public doesn’t understand why Las Vegas International Airport wouldn’t do if McCarran’s past is so perturbing.
Listen to the Audio Mises Wire version of this article. If there is anything Wall Street banks crave is relief. Primarily relief from the potential for failure and, next, relief from holding much, if any, equity capital. These banks like their capital tiny and their profits huge. Losses should be socialized. After all, we want the ATMs to keep
Popes normally stick to their bailiwick, faith and worship. But Pope Francis’s criticisms of capitalism came early and often, escalating since the beginning of the covid pandemic. The pontiff describes free market thinking as “magic theories.” “The fragility of world systems in the face of the pandemic has demonstrated that not everything can
Listen to the Audio Mises Wire version of this article. There is likely no more loathsome federal bureaucrat than the aptly named Louis DeJoy, who, despite supposedly being a successful businessman, has the surefire winner of a business plan to resurrect the United States Postal Service (USPS)—raise prices and slow service. Sounds perfect.
Listen to the Audio Mises Wire version of this article. Banks and accounting trickery go together. Last year, as I remember back to my banking days, financial institutions followed the advice once proffered by one of our board members, “If we’re going to the dump, let’s take a full load.” When the pandemic struck, banks dumped plenty in their
Listen to the Audio Mises Wire version of this article. May is on its way, and the old investment saw, “Sell in May and go away,” will be tested once again. Jared Blikre, writing for Yahoo Finance , provides the history behind what may or may not be good advice. “The full axiom was originally, ‘Sell in May and go away, and come on back on St.
Listen to the Audio Mises Wire version of this article. Summerlin, the suburb of west Las Vegas creeping ever closer to the mountains, looks to be crowded with fully paved streets, streetlights, block walls, and blue top lots. With lumber, labor, and other materials in short supply, home construction can’t keep up. However, Ali Wolf, chief
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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.