Too Much Inflation? Just Raise the Inflation Target!
In late August, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell suggested that the Federal Reserve would begin tapering before the end of the year admit an admission that price inflation was rising above the two-percent target. Nonetheless, the Fed took no immediate action in the
Is an Educated Population Really Necessary for Innovation and Growth?
Lamentations that the waves of innovation are receding have engulfed policy circles. Distinguished economist Robert Gordon avers that the days of transformative innovations are over. Like Peter Thiel, he is disappointed at the incremental nature of modern-day inventions. The declinist
Should War Be Made “Humane”?
Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented Warby Samuel MoynFarrar, Straus and Giroux, 400 pp. Samuel Moyn is a distinguished intellectual historian who teaches both history and law at Yale. His earlier books were written for an academic audience,
“The Great Reset” Is the Road to Socialism Mises Warned Us About
Through the sheer power of his intellectual output, Ludwig von Mises established himself as one of the most important intellectuals of the twentieth century. His work Human Action remains a foundational text of the Austrian school. His critique outlining the impracticality of
Before a Bust, There Is Always a Boom (and Malinvestment)
For most commentators lending is associated with money. However, is this the case? When a saver lends money, what he/she in fact lends to a borrower is final consumer goods that he/she did not consume. Therefore, what a lender lends to
Ford’s Exit from India: Reasons and Implications
US auto giant Ford has become the latest of many auto companies to cease operations in India. The company had set up shop in the country in 1995, after a failed attempt in 1953 when they had to pull out
Europe Faces a Fragile Economy as the Merkel Era Ends
As Angela Merkel prepares her exit from the chancellery in Berlin, a false alarm is ringing in Europe about an imminent danger of “stagflation.” This phenomenon, like dragons, belongs to mythology rather than real historical or present circumstances. The noise will
The Prospects for Soft Secession in America
1930, Columbia professor Karl Llewellyn published The Bramble Bush, his famous tract on how to think about and study law. Llewellyn urged readers to consider both law and custom when seeking to understand a society, to recognize the difference between the
Why Bureaucrats Are Sitting on So Much Money-Losing Real Estate
The very size and scope of the United States federal government is likely something that Ludwig von Mises could not have imagined, despite writing the book which foretold the results of such a behemoth, Bureaucracy. Early on Mises wrote, “Congress
Max Hillebrand on Free Software Entrepreneurship with Bitcoin
Entrepreneurs are developing a new world of innovative business models far from regulated markets, crony capitalism, and corporate control. It’s a new world of cyber security, free software, value-for-value exchange, integrated with bitcoin. Max Hillebrand operates in this new world,