Mises Institute

One has to wonder if somewhere deep down a change is occurring in America. While stock prices soar to record highs, it is clear a growing number of 'real' people are realizing the nonsense that watching a 'market' as anything indicative of reality has become. The latest 'shift' is the appearance on New Orleans local TV of a two-minute primer on an "alternative" school of economic thought - Austrian Economics. While the anchor is careful to add the caveat that the mainstream economists think the world would be a terrible place if they didn't help us along, the brief clip begins with some useful common sense, "the market alone should decide the value of products and services. If a company is not successful, it should go bankrupt." Indeed...

The whole fulcrum of the bloated American state is beyond ready for a radical deconstruction. The same goes for most nation-states in the West. The continual borrowing, serviced indiscreetly by an accommodating central bank, has made an entirety of the populace fat and happy off of debt. This is no realistic method for operating any institution. Something has to give eventually. Any conservative who places high value on civil society over the intrusion of government should balk at the prospect of a higher debt load. It makes certain that the ruling political class will not cease in their effort to infiltrate private life. Unfortunately it appears as if some otherwise sharp minds have fallen prey to the liberal device of alarmism.

It’s a Myth that the U.S. Has Never Defaulted On Its Debt

There are two characteristics of a currency that make it useful in international trade: one, it is issued by a large trading nation itself, and, two, the currency holds its value vis-à-vis other commodities over time. These two factors create a demand for holding a currency in reserve. Of course, psychological factors entered the demand for dollars, too, since the US was seen as the military protector of all the Western nations against the communist countries for much of the post-war period. Today we are seeing the beginnings of a change. The Fed has been inflating the dollar massively, reducing its purchasing power in relation to other commodities, causing many of the world’s great trading nations to use other monies upon occasion. President Obama’s imminent appointment of career bureaucrat Janet Yellen as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board is evidence that the US policy of continuing to cheapen the dollar via Quantitative Easing will continue.  As we noted before, nothing lasts forever...  (especially in light of China's earlier comments)

At the time of publication, the United States government is shut down. That does not mean the gears of the state have come to a thankful halt. Over three-quarters of Washington’s global hegemony remains fully functional. Tax dollars are still being redistributed. Wars continue to be waged. The public at large is going about its day unbothered by the furlough of tens of thousands of government employees. For once, apathy has paid off. The only poor souls bemoaning the shutdown are the ones sitting at home. The United States government is not going away anytime soon. The same government workers kicked out of their day-job will go crawling back once given the green light. Being called the equivalent of worthless will be of no consideration. The paycheck is paramount to their dignity. They have our sympathy, but there would be more to share if the state didn’t thrive off the fat of the rubes.

Our grandparents believed in the value of thrift, but many of their grandchildren don’t. That’s because cultural and economic values have changed dramatically over the last generations as political and media elites have convinced many Americans that saving is passé. So today, under the influence of Keynesian economists who champion government spending and high levels of consumption, thrift has been devalued (and is even punished).  It is the government’s role, Keynes’s followers believe, to keep the boom going through spending. So it is consumption, not supply, that makes a successful economy, they say. Mainstream media rehashes the message that the consumer, not the producer, is the biggest part of the economy. Politicians agree... But, despite the Keynesian sentiments of much of our political and media elites, we owe it to our grandparents to re-learn the lessons of thrift.

If you listen to TV commentators, you’ve been told the worst is behind us. Growth is picking up, and Europe is coming out of its slumber. No one seems to be concerned that this tepid below-2-percent growth is being entirely fed by the central bank’s massive money printing. It’s a “growth at any price” policy. How quickly we forget. We currently fear Fed tapering, as we should. Yet, we should be even more fearful that it doesn’t taper. Today, we really have a dreaded choice of losing an arm now or two arms and a leg tomorrow. Because the price distortions have been massive, the adjustment will be horrendous. Government policy makers and government economists simply do not understand the critical role of prices in helping discovery and coordination.

The last two years have been disappointing for gold investors and what happened this week to the yellow metal epitomized the frustrating price movement. Yet the case for investing in gold does not depend on the market’s reaction to the Fed’s latest doings. For the investor, whether or not to buy gold necessarily entails forming a judgement about the larger and more enduring forces that impinge on its price. Is our politico-economic system, in other words, congenitally disposed to the cheapening of the currency? Those who invest in gold basically answer yes. And they have very solid grounds for that stance. Over the past forty two years, one would have been better off holding what Keynes called the barbarous relic than what are commonly described as the safest securities in the world. Unless there is a tectonic change in our politico-economic structure - such as a return to a hard money standard - it’s hard to see how this will change.

"We’re diverted totally from what this bill is about. Why? Because the anarchists have taken over. They’ve taken over the House and now they’ve taken over the Senate... People who don’t believe in government - and that’s what the Tea Party is all about - are winning, and that’s a shame." - Harry Reid on the Senate Floor earlier today.

The best thing about inept, crony, powerful politicians is that when they realize they are losing the battle for the hearts and minds of the public they simply don’t know what to do. We suppose it’s also anarchic to want to not start World War III, right Harry? Enjoy!

Reading the financial press, one gets the impression there are only two sides to the austerity debate: pro-austerity and anti-austerity. In reality, we have three forms of austerity. There is the Keynesian-Krugman-Robert Reich form which promotes more government spending and higher taxes. There is the Angela Merkel form of less government spending and higher taxes, and there is the Austrian form of less spending and lower taxes. Of the three forms of austerity, only the third increases the size of the private sector relative to the public sector, frees up resources for private investment, and has actual evidence of success in boosting growth.

The president gave a speech on August 22 in Buffalo outlining his proposal to “reform” the student loan program. He acknowledged that the program has some problems, but assured the audience they are easily fixed. Just take the principles behind Obamacare and apply them to education. The president personally “guaranteed” that his proposals would make college more affordable. Here’s the plan..

With US President Obama now seeking authorization from Congress to attack Syria, the already spirited debate surrounding the advisability of such military action is bound to get even more lively in the coming days.

Whenever the state decides to remove the mask of decency and show its true, violent self, there is a positive outcome to the predation. Many finally catch a glimpse of the true force that backs monopoly government. Very few will allow this image to change their preconceived notions of the viability of institutionalized mass representation. The targeted harassment of dissenters is indicative of the state’s brash reaction to all challenges. It’s a task of extreme difficulty to pinpoint where the downward slide began. The rise of statism, moral relativism, and total war has undeniably had a negative effect on how individuals view themselves in civilized society. The degree of degeneration varies between areas, but it’s not hard to recognize the causal effect.

The economic theory behind why minimum wage hikes are not good for prosperity is so simple and has been repeated so many times, it’s almost not worth addressing anymore. Yet every year, some ill-informed politician comes out loudly proclaiming that higher wages mandated by the government will help the poor and reduce income inequality, so apparently we have to keep going down this road until it sinks in.

As Western economies start to regress in earnest following decades of failed and destructive monetary inflation and debt accumulation, yield-starved investors are allocating real capital to the one industrially untapped continent in the world: Africa. However, we’re not seeing industry moving to Africa to set up shop. Rather, politically-directed capital flowing into the African resources sector is fueling and financing the strongest consumer boom in the world. It’s a vendor financing model for Asia, and it portends a major boom and bust cycle for the African continental economy.