Euphoria about the economic boom is nearly universal. We are living through a record economic expansion, brought on by factors both real (technological improvements and the opening of new international markets) and unreal (the Fed’s loose money policy and regulatory subsidies to the stock market). How long it will last, no one knows. But it will
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
The anti-capitalism of college professors is legendary even if its genesis and basis is somewhat mysterious. If anything should be clear to those who care about evidence, it’s that the market economy is superior to all forms of economic planning. Even minimal amounts of government intervention produce sector-specific stagnation. Compare Fed-Ex,
The stories are now legendary: internet hotshots going from riches to rags in a period of months, infallible stock-pickers with their reputations in tatters, and stock prices of established companies off 75 percent from their highs. The business press is now talking openly about the possibility that the bull market is over. We may be in for a long
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,
Webvan, the cockamamie scheme to provide groceries over the Internet, has gone belly-up. Maybe that was in the cards regardless, but it is a paradigmatic case. Owners of dot-com stock funds regret ever having heard of the Internet. Webmasters who dropped out of school to get rich quick are crawling back to their guidance counselors to be
It is conceivable that stocks might have come back after September 11, just as so many people had hoped. But the meddlers in DC seemed to be doing everything in their power to make sure that it would not happen. As a result, the government has compounded the destruction wrought by the terrorists, and added to the economic miseries of the moment.
Everyone is at work on a “stimulus plan” for doing something about the recession. But the much-publicized disagreement between the Republicans and Democrats is not about economic theory as such. There has been no critical thinking applied to the subject of why the recession, the longest in the postwar period, continues. Rather, the disagreement is
Walsh College Economic State of the Union How inevitable is the continuing expansion of the domestic and international economy? Barring a major war and a major depression, and a policy response that repeats the errors of traditional countercyclical policies, I would say that continued world economic expansion is likely. For an Austrian all too
Nostalgia for a lost but better world is what one feels when following the growing state-pension scandal. The San Diego, California, case is the most famous, but the details are the same in every state: whistle blowers, broken promises, mismanagement, graft, and corruption, followed by toppled politicos, lawsuits, a clamor to raise cash, and
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.