A new gold standard?
byThe US Republican Party recently announced its intention to set up a “gold commission”, to examine the feasibility or not of returning to a…
Fed’s new monetary plan runs the risk of severely damaging the US economy
byThe US central bank announced on Thursday September 13, 2012 that it will expand its holdings of long-term securities with open-ended purchases of $40…
Stimulus, to infinity and beyond
byThere was a beautiful symmetry to last week’s policy announcement by the Fed. Precisely a week after the ECB had pledged its commitment to…
Socialism and decivilization
byOn pages 33–35 of my book Socialism, Economic Calculation, and Entrepreneurship, I examine the process by which the division of practical entrepreneurial knowledge deepens…
The hope of Osborne and the error of Osborne
byThe following quote is taken from page 155 of Capital and Production by Richard von Strigl, which you can download in PDF format from…
Money, twisted: caught in the devil’s bargain
byIn this world, what isn’t lacking, somewhere, though? Sometimes it’s this, or that: here what’s missing’s gold. – Goethe, Faust, Part II, translated by…
Central bankers and politicians are running out of ideas
byMy father, who at one time was an education minister in the Kenyan government, used to tell a story of a long-forgotten crisis when…
Has US monetary policy reached a dead end?
byIn his various speeches and comments the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke has given the impression that the central bank’s monetary policy…
Here be Draghis
byIn an impassioned article carried in the FAZ last week, Otmar Issing bewailed the ongoing ‘Crisis and Leviathan’ push towards a greater centralization of…
Brian Micklethwait on propaganda
byIn this podcast, Brian and I discuss the difficulties in making the case for Austrian economics, the difficulties in reading the case for Austrian…