My big takeaway from Money (McGraw Hill, 2014) is that Steve Forbes is no James Dean. Forbes is a rebel with a cause. Free-markets and sound money, please. In what follows, I will briefly mention 11 other takeaways from my reading of Money by Steve Forbes and Elizabeth Ames.
Category: Economic Theory
The analysis published under this category are as follows.Thursday, August 04, 2022
What is our Real Economic and Financial Prognosis? / Economics / Economic Theory
According to Webster’s dictionary, the definition of prognosis is a forecast, or a prediction of a probable course of a disease in an individual, and the chances of recovery. In this article, we apply this definition of prognosis to our inanimate, yet seemingly “living and breathing” economy, and project its chances of recovery.
The world is filled with intelligent and highly experienced economists, and thousands of financial market observers who can give us a lucid and convincing interpretation of our economy and health of our financial markets. As a result, you can find widely recognized professionals who will diagnose and predict the direction of our economy and financial health as to support our own personally biased view of reality – regardless of what that may be. But independent of our own personally preferred views, what is the most probable reality we are likely to experience? What is the real economic and financial prognosis?
Government agencies and media are increasingly filled with unjustifiably adjusted and manipulated economic data, directed and misdirected propaganda, and outright lies, such that it is nearly impossible to judge the real strength or direction of the economy and the health of our financial markets. Since small and developing nations are quickly learning these “tricks of the trade”, international media and government agencies are universally now also dispensing politically favorable rhetoric rather than truth. So what measures can we review to accurately evaluate the health of our economy?
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Wednesday, July 20, 2022
What’s with all the Pretend Economists all of a Sudden? / Economics / Economic Theory
Is everyone an economist now?These days, everyone I speak with has a strong opinion on the economy.
Most are convinced things will get worse.
They think the US economy is headed off a cliff, and that inflation is here to stay.
As a result, they also want nothing to do with stocks. They’re certain that the entire market is about to collapse.
I see things differently…
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Monday, May 03, 2021
MMT: Medieval Monetary Theory / Economics / Economic Theory
Peter Krauth of Gold Resource Investor provides his take on MMT and explains why he believes its effects will drive precious metals and commodities much higher.
Modern Monetary Theory or MMT, as it's better known, is a recurring theme that's not likely to go away. However, there's nothing modern about it, it's not about money (it's about currency), and it's no longer a theory.
We've certainly not heard much about it in mainstream economics or investment publications. But I do think it's gaining traction.
In my view, MMT is a very big deal because of its massive implications to our economic future. And so, I think it's worthwhile having at least a basic understanding of the concept.
In fact, if you're reading this, odds are good you've at least heard of MMT and you may have some idea of what it's about. If that's the case, you probably understand better than most the importance of investing in hard assets that can't be inflated at the whim of central planners.
And right now, the two most undervalued hard assets remain gold and silver.
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Thursday, September 17, 2020
Peak Financialism And Post-Capitalist Economics / Economics / Economic Theory
The protracted malaise of the 1970s, with high price inflation and GDP recession, signaled the advent of Peak Industrial Capitalism.
The maturation of the industrial sector of the economy and the onset of demographic growth challenges required the offsetting growth of the financial sector.
The standard of living has declined under Financialism, but the technology revolution has offset some of the negative associated trends.
Financialization has increasingly skimmed Economic Value out of the economic system into the pockets of a smaller and smaller group of elites as larger and larger percentages of the population have become more and more dependent on government programs.
What comes after Peak Financialization? Where do we go from here? As I have said in previous segments in this series, an Information-Based Economic System, Technocracy, Structural Unemployment and Universal Basic Income are some of the likely outcomes we can expect.
This article is part of an ongoing related series that explores an ongoing long-term secular systemic shift in markets, economics, politics and society. Readers might also like to read:
- Information Is The New Capital
- Understanding The Apparent Mismatch Between Current Economic Conditions and the Financial System
- Debt Financialization, Gross Domestic Product And The Systemic Paradigm Shift
The protracted malaise of the 1970s, with high price inflation and GDP recession, signaled the advent of Peak Industrial Capitalism. The creation of Economic Value from the transformational processes of industrial production (manufacturing, mining, utilities) began to reach its limits of expansion and growth.
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Sunday, September 13, 2020
Is this the End of Capitalism? / Economics / Economic Theory
If one looks at the facts of rampant government money printing to monetize government debt, permanent deficit spending on an epic scale, debt to GDP north of 100% all to finance social projects such as the UK government paying 80% of furloughed employee salaries, with similar or even greater government interventions in nations such as Germany. We'll this begs the question, how can our economies still be labeled as capitalist?
We are not living in capitalist nations, the slogans might be all about free market economies, capitalism, and theories preached of the boom bust cycle in the financial press and taught at universities, instead we tend to have the booms without the busts! Because we are NOT really living in capitalist economies!
Then what are we living in?
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Saturday, April 11, 2020
The Invisible Hand of Capitalism / Economics / Economic Theory
The Fed is more or less doing modern monentary theory (MMT) as we speak.
But rather than giving printed dollars to the Treasury, it’s using the bond market as a conduit. Trillions in bond issuance, financed by trillions of dollars of printed money.
Don’t get me started on the pathetic levels of assistance we are offering American citizens in favor of financially irresponsible corporations.
What we are practicing here is not capitalism. In order for capitalism to work, we must allow corporations to fail. The bankruptcy process works just fine. Sure, shareholders and creditors would experience losses, and this would teach them to be more careful next time.
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Thursday, April 09, 2020
Redefining Political Economy, Globalization & Business Models Consequent on Corona Virus Pandemics / Economics / Economic Theory
Corona Virus Pandemics, spread across the world, necessitates the redefining of Economics & Political Economy, Globalization, Business, Enterprises, Business Models, Education and Technology associated with Business, especially Information Technology. All our concepts of the Economy, Development, Business Enterprises, Globalization, Education, Healthcare, Science and Technology have become meaningless along with the wisdom of the great masters, including Nobel Laureates overnight. UN, World Bank, IMF and WEF have been struggling hard to find a justification for their very identity, existence and relevance./p>
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Saturday, December 28, 2019
Hacking The Economy To Determine An Election: Is It Happening? / Economics / Economic Theory
On August 27th, 2019, in an editorial published in Bloomberg, William Dudley, the former president of the Federal Reserve Bank Of New York, did what had previously been considered unthinkable. The foundation premise of the Federal Reserve is that it is supposed to be completely nonpartisan, insulated from all political considerations. However, Dudley wrote that Donald Trump was a threat to the Federal Reserve and the nation, and urged Fed officials to make decisions that would take into account the need to keep Trump from being reelected.
The freezing up of the repurchase agreement (repo) market had nearly collapsed the U.S. financial system as one part of the financial crisis of 2008, however, the market had enjoyed 11 years of relative calm since then. Three weeks after Dudley's editorial, during the week of September 16th, 2019, the repo market returned to crisis mode and was likely saved only by emergency interventions on the part of the Federal Reserve. A contributing factor was some major mistakes that were made by career officials at the New York Fed - Dudley's former staff.
If the current related crises in the repurchase agreement market and with the funding of the national debt continue and get worse (which is far from certain at this time), crossing over into the wider markets, interest rates and the economy, it could become one of the defining political events of our lifetimes.
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Monday, November 18, 2019
Intellectual Property as the New Guild System / Economics / Economic Theory
The standard justification for intellectual property — i.e., patents and copyrights and trademarks — is that the creative process would be significantly reduced if such protection did not exist. The underlying assumption is that the financial reward must be augmented by a grant of exclusivity enforced by the coercive power of government. Because we can freely copy an invention, innovation or other creative ideas, a financial reward is viewed as necessary for these intangible ideas unlike a tangible object sold in the marketplace.
But did inventors or artists starve before IP laws? The answer is no because they benefited from the first-to-market advantage. Boldrin and Levine explain how during the 19th century British authors with IP protection in the UK would sometimes make more money off their non-IP protected US sales by reaching an agreement (a contract) with a US publisher and then flooding the US market with cheap original copies.1 Since any potential copycat will wait to see if an idea is successful, the gains of being first-to-market could be substantial. Many drug makers retain important market share on a drug even though their patent protection has expired and the market is awash with cheaper generic alternatives. There are also many other indirect ways to profit from creative ideas. Many artists make more money off concerts and other appearances than from the original digital sales of their song.
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Thursday, October 03, 2019
Economics Is Like Quantum Physics / Economics / Economic Theory
I often say a writer is nothing without readers. I am blessed to have some of the world’s greatest. Your feedback never fails to inspire and enlighten me.
My last week’s That Time Keynes Had a Point letter brought many more comments than usual. Apparently Keynes is still provocative 73 years after his death, no matter what you say about him.
But my real point was about the twisted economic thought that is having dangerous effects on us all. And we can’t blame it just on Keynes.
Today I want to share some of the feedback I received, add a few thoughts, and then show you some real-world consequences that are only getting worse. But first, let me wax philosophic for a minute.
Thursday, September 26, 2019
Economist Mad Men in Authority - That Time Keynes Had a Point / Economics / Economic Theory
John Maynard Keynes once said:
“Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.”
While true, it doesn’t go far enough. The problem isn’t simply defunct economists or “scribblers of a few years back.”
We are in the grip of economists who, far from being defunct, hold great power. Whether they hear voices in the air (or Twitter), I can’t say, but they are indeed madmen in authority.
Monday, September 09, 2019
Government Spending - The High Price of a "Free Lunch" / Economics / Economic Theory
One of the Ten Commandments is “thou shalt not steal,” and theft is generally condemned in most religions, yet our religious leaders and followers have essentially turned a blind eye to government theft.
Based on a policy of envy, Bernie Sanders, for example, has bluntly stated he intends to tax the rich to fund his programs, as though the word rich itself justifies theft. The current crop of other democratic candidates is offering a beehive of free programs without any real discussion on how to pay for them.
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Friday, August 30, 2019
The Key to a Sustainable Economy Is 5,000 Years Old / Economics / Economic Theory
We are again reaching the point in the business cycle known as “peak debt,” when debts have compounded to the point that their cumulative total cannot be paid. Student debt, credit card debt, auto loans, business debt and sovereign debt are all higher than they have ever been. As economist Michael Hudson writes in his provocative 2018 book, “…and forgive them their debts,” debts that can’t be paid won’t be paid. The question, he says, is how they won’t be paid.
Mainstream economic models leave this problem to “the invisible hand of the market,” assuming trends will self-correct over time. But while the market may indeed correct, it does so at the expense of the debtors, who become progressively poorer as the rich become richer. Borrowers go bankrupt and banks foreclose on the collateral, dispossessing the debtors of their homes and their livelihoods. The houses are bought by the rich at distress prices and are rented back at inflated prices to the debtors, who are then forced into wage peonage to survive. When the banks themselves go bankrupt, the government bails them out. Thus the market corrects, but not without government intervention. That intervention just comes at the end of the cycle to rescue the creditors, whose ability to buy politicians gives them the upper hand. According to free-market apologists, this is a natural cycle akin to the weather, which dates all the way back to the birth of modern economics in ancient Greece and Rome.
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Tuesday, July 23, 2019
U.S. Recession Watch: The Six-Cycle Forecast / Economics / Economic Theory
It’s usually a bad idea to stand too close to something—whether an object, a problem you’d like to solve or any number of other things—which could mean seeing all of the pixels but none of the patterns. That’s why we populate albums, frames and holiday cards with bird’s eye views and sweeping vistas. It’s why every city that aspires to “destination” status advertises this or that Tower, Arch, Needle or Eye.
But if we look from too far away, we run a different risk of missing important information. That’s why we send probes, ships and occasionally scientists into outer space. It’s why we don’t Facetime our doctors, we hop on the examination table and show them exactly what’s bothering us.
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Sunday, July 14, 2019
The Problem with Keynesian Economics / Economics / Economic Theory
In The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, John Maynard Keynes wrote:
“The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.”
I think Lord Keynes himself would appreciate the irony that he has become the defunct economist under whose influence the academic and bureaucratic classes now toil, slaves to what has become as much a religious belief system as an economic theory.
Friday, July 05, 2019
Modern Monetary Theory – Applications in the 21st Century / Economics / Economic Theory
Perhaps one of the biggest frauds perpetrated on the citizens of the world in the 20th century was Keynesianism. For those of you who are new to the discourse, Keynesianism was essentially the ramblings of a well-respected (at the time) economist named John Maynard Keynes and it dealt with deficit spending at the level of the federal government. It was a justification for something governments around the world were beginning to do anyway. The point of Keynes’ work was to give this very dangerous and ill-advised practice legitimacy. Sadly, it worked, and 85 years later, the developed nations of the world are mired in debt the likes of which the world has never before seen and may well never see again.
Before we get to the true purpose of this paper: an analysis of MMT, we must lay some foundational work. Please bear with us. If you have been an active reader of our previous articles and research, feel free to proceed directly to the portion where MMT is addressed.
Interestingly enough, the topic of this paper; (another consequence of treating economics as a debating society instead of a science) the foundations of modern monetary theory (hereafter MMT) actually originated long before Keynes wrote his seminal work in 1936. MMT as it is being rehashed today was actually first described by a German economist name Georg Friedrich Knapp in 1905. Originally coined ‘chartalism’ by Knapp, this perversion of economics was pushed in Knapp’s 1905 ‘State Theory of Money’. The term comes from the Latin root charta, which means ‘token’ or ‘ticket’.
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Sunday, June 16, 2019
Why Hedge Fund Manager Ray Dalio Is Wrong on Capitalism / Economics / Economic Theory
Ray Dalio is the thoughtful, somewhat controversial founder of the world’s largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, which he started in 1975.
While much of his writing is private, I (and many others) peruse every word we can of his and the Bridgewater team’s thinking. I find it to be some of the most interesting market commentary I read.
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Thursday, May 30, 2019
This Is Why US Monetary Policy Is So Ineffective / Interest-Rates / Economic Theory
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, many people thought excessive government spending and the resulting debt would bring inflation or even hyperinflation.
We wanted a hawkish Federal Reserve or, better yet, a gold standard to prevent it. Reality turned out differently.
Federal debt rose steadily, inflation didn’t. Here’s a chart of the on-budget public debt since 1970:
Thursday, May 23, 2019
Capitalism Works, Ravenous Capitalism Doesn’t / Economics / Economic Theory
For more than a century, capitalism has proven to be successful in expanding the efficient manufacture of goods and agricultural products, increasing jobs and incomes, promoting technological innovation, decreasing poverty and improving the general welfare of humans globally. By contrast, socialism and communism with its centrally planned economy and collectivism historically have produced misery, war, need and poverty through oppressive totalitarian governments.
Super hedge fund manager Ray Dalio, the president of Bridgewater Associates, the very successful and largest hedge fund in America recently released a thoughtful and timely report stating that “capitalism is broken” - pointing to, among other things, the gross income disparity between high and low earners. Ray Dalio’s judgment of broken capitalism relates to his observation that the vast majority of wages going to the top 5% wage earners does not benefit the overall economy, destabilizes society and is destructive to capitalism. The fact that a true-blue capitalist wrote the article should alert industrialists, globalists, bankers and all capitalists that perhaps “capitalism with American characteristics” has veered off its previously successful course. Capitalism does work; but ravenous capitalism is indeed self-destructive. The bounty of capitalism must be shared not only with its owners or investors, but also with its other “significant partners” – the nation’s workers.
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Wednesday, May 08, 2019
How Fed Interest Rate Cycles Exponentially Reduce Long Term Wealth Creation / Interest-Rates / Economic Theory
The most historically reliable way to create long term wealth is the reinvestment of cash flows over time, as earnings are earned on earnings, which are earned on earnings.
Compound interest is the best known example, but the same principle of compounding cash flows is also the most powerful and stable source of wealth with the stocks and real estate over the long term as well.
Reinvested (and increasing) dividends are a more important and stable source of stock market wealth than price gains. Reinvested (and increasing) net cash flows are the most stable and important source of wealth with real estate and REIT investments as well.
However, what was taken for granted for many decades - is no longer available. As a result of Federal Reserve policies, only a small fraction of the historically average power of this wealth building engine still remains. In this analysis we will examine the mathematical implications of publicly stated Fed intentions if there is another recession, and look at the extraordinary implications for investors.
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Friday, May 03, 2019
Universal Basic Income Would Be a Social and Economic Disaster / Economics / Economic Theory
I am never going to retire. Oh sure, I say that now, but what about when I am 80? No. I will never stop working.
Every morning, I get out of bed when the alarm goes off, take a shower, put on dress clothes (a suit, usually), and drive 35 minutes to work in an office that I rent in an office building.
I write newsletters. I can just as easily do that on the couch, in a pair of gym shorts, with a cup of coffee. Why spend over an hour a day commuting and dealing with all the brain damage of putting on a suit and going to work?
Friday, April 12, 2019
America Has a Monopoly Problem / Economics / Economic Theory
Without realizing it, we’ve become a nation of monopolies. A large and growing part of our economy is “owned” by a handful of companies that face little competition.They have no incentive to deliver better products or to get more efficient. They simply rake in cash from people who have no choice but to hand it over.
This would be impossible if we had true capitalism.
Even if we admit some businesses are natural monopolies, most aren’t. Most of them found some non-capitalistic flaw to exploit.
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Wednesday, March 27, 2019
The Fed Broke This Economic Cycle—and It’s a Game Changer for Investors / Economics / Economic Theory
Here’s a quote from my friend Peter Boockvar that has drawn an enormous amount of interest:“We no longer have business cycles, we have credit cycles.”
Let’s cut that small but meaty sound bite into pieces. What do we mean by “business cycle,” exactly? Well, it looks something like this.
A growing economy peaks, contracts to a trough (what we call “recession”), recovers to enter prosperity, and hits a higher peak. Then the process repeats.
Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Here’s Why The Left’s New Economic Policies Are Just Stupid / Politics / Economic Theory
Somewhere in the last 30–40 years, we have become economically illiterate.Elizabeth Warren wants wealth taxes that would impose asset forfeitures of 2–3% on households with more than $50 million in assets.
There are practical and legal problems with their implementation. But she wants to implement them anyway.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wants a 70% income tax rate on incomes over $10 million. This would be the highest income tax rate in the OECD. And yet, it would affect only 16,000 households and only return marginal rates to historical levels, anyway.
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Thursday, February 14, 2019
Capitalism Isn’t Bad, It’s Just Broken / Economics / Economic Theory
The Soviet Union’s collapse ended the socialism vs. capitalism argument.
Semi-free markets spread through Eastern Europe. Collectivist economies everywhere began turning free. Capitalism seemingly won.
Even communist China adopted a form of free market capitalism. Although, as they say, it has “Chinese characteristics.”
With all its faults and problems, capitalism generated the greatest accumulation of wealth in human history. It has freed millions of people from abject poverty.
Wednesday, July 11, 2018
Yield Curve Inversion a Remarkably Accurate Warning Indicator For Economic & Market Peril / Economics / Economic Theory
Would you have appreciated a single number that could have given you a clear and unmistakable warning before the tech stock bubble collapsed? How about an unequivocal mathematical warning in 2006 that major financial trouble was on the way, well before the problems of 2007 and 2008?
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Sunday, June 17, 2018
The Corruption of Capitalism / Economics / Economic Theory
I call it “killing the golden goose.”David Stockman, a speaker at this year’s Irrational Economic Summit, calls it “the corruption of capitalism.”
Andrew O’Hehir, a contributor for Salon, recently interviewed Yanis Varoufakis about the story behind Greece’s financial crash. He was the prime minister during the height of the Greek crisis, elected in early 2015 in response to the Greece debt default crisis.
And in July of 2015, Varoufakis resigned after the ECB (European Central Bank) and IMF (International Monetary Fund) forced a bailout package that went against what he and his SYRIZA party had promised the Greek people.
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Wednesday, June 06, 2018
Who Finances America's Borrowing? Recession Indicator for Independent Thinkers Part 2 / Economics / Economic Theory
Have you ever lacked for information about America’s various debt burdens? Twenty-odd years ago, if you paid any attention to debt, you might have relied on original source data to stay current. But the times they are-a-changing, aren’t they? In today’s high-tech, data-rich world, anyone who follows financial news should know roughly where we stand with our borrowings. Whether you’re a mainstream media addict or a blog junkie, your daily dose includes more commentary than ever before on which types of borrowers are increasing their leverage and by how much.
For example, don’t bother to sit down and ready yourself before reading the following observations about debt ratios, they should come as no big surprise (but note that we’re comparing debt to the highest prior GDP reading, or peak GDP):
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Monday, May 21, 2018
5 Effects Of Currency Fluctuations On The Economy / Economics / Economic Theory
Currency fluctuations are some of the most analyzed aspects of any economy. Slight changes in the value of a currency can send reverberations across the economy. In fact, some currency fluctuations levels can have drastic effects on the health of an economy. Markets like forex and other trading sectors are heavily reliant on how strong or weak a particular currency is. The strength of a currency can also determine how a particular country handles international trade. Indeed, five of the strongest currencies in the world are so influential in the world that many aspects of the global economy are almost tied to them. There are several effects of fluctuations of currencies. Below are some of the most important.
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Monday, February 05, 2018
The Meaning of Economic Philosophy / Economics / Economic Theory
Dr. Gero Jenner writes:In ‘The Open Society and its Enemies’, Karl Popper strongly defended the position that major interventions in the economy, especially when ideologically motivated, are usually disastrous and should therefore be avoided. Popper wrote his famous work towards the end of the thirties. On the one hand, he saw the devastating effects of textbook-based economies, where the working masses were tied into an economic strait-jacket by a Politburo, on the other hand, Popper was well aware of the dangers of that kind of capitalism, which tended to place the interests of a few monopolists above those of the general population. Against such aberrations, Popper propagated what he called ’social engineering‘, namely, a model of small steps, where every previous economic intervention is painstakingly scrutinized in view of its effects before any further action is embarked upon. Popper seemed to regard the economy in the same way as a highly complex machinery which a layman cannot tackle without causing the greatest damage.
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Tuesday, November 28, 2017
Why a Corporate Tax Cut Won’t Boost Economic Growth / Economics / Economic Theory
BY PATRICK WATSON : The House and Senate are considering tax legislation that will add $1.5 trillion to annual deficits over the next 10 years, according to their own numbers.
This is okay, we're told, because the tax cuts will stoke economic growth, delivering added tax revenue that offsets the rate reductions.
Note the bigger point here.
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Thursday, September 28, 2017
The Koyaanisqatsi Economy / Economics / Economic Theory
The film Koyaanisqatsi was released in 1982. The title means ‘life out of balance’ in the language of the Hopi, a Native American tribe who live(d) mainly in what is now north-east Arizona. It is directed by Godfrey Reggio with music by Philip Glass and cinematography by Ron Fricke. There are no actors, and no dialogue. Philip Glass’s music underlies a series of film fragments that contrast the beauty of American nature with the noise and pollution mankind has added to it. Wikipedia:
Read full article... Read full article...The film consists primarily of slow motion and time-lapse footage of cities and many natural landscapes across the United States. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and music. Reggio explained the lack of dialogue by stating “it’s not for lack of love of the language that these films have no words. It’s because, from my point of view, our language is in a state of vast humiliation. It no longer describes the world in which we live.”
Monday, July 17, 2017
Too Much Capital / Stock-Markets / Economic Theory
Henri Schneider writes: Truisms and banalities: Investors must be able to assess the productivity of their capital. This is done by comparing returns to interest rates. But what, if all interest rates are rigged? What if they are artificially lower than they should be? Then, not only too much capital is invested, but it is invested in the wrong places. Even more pressing: what if there is simply too much capital in the financial system?
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Monday, July 17, 2017
Why Jobs Growth No Longer Induces Wage Growth in America / Economics / Economic Theory
Or The Eclipse of the Phillips Curve in AmericaWhile the Fed’s continued tightening may suppress growth in emerging economies, US labor market may not be as strong as recent reports suggest.
US experienced strong job growth in June, when the economy created 222,000 net new jobs, which exceeded analyst expectations. At the Federal Reserve, the jobs report boosted confidence US economy is on the track for new rate hikes in the fall.
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Thursday, February 09, 2017
Retroeconomics – Global Challenge for Economic Development / Economics / Economic Theory
Vladimer Papava writes: In many and mostly poor countries, their economies have been using obsolete technologies. As a result, all of these countries do not have a real chance to be successful in any long-term economic growth. The usage of obsolete technologies by any company can create the illusion that this or that business is prosperous. At the level of international competition, however, it is obvious that these types of companies do not have any chance for success.
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Monday, February 06, 2017
Why the Fed Gets Economics Wrong / Economics / Economic Theory
Economics (in general) is populated at its core by a lot of bad ideas. And these bad ideas have come to be accepted as the correct interpretation of how the economy functions and thus have become the basis for economic policy. This news shouldn’t come as a shock since I’ve written about this many times over the years in Thoughts from the Frontline.
Economics is an enormously useful tool for those of us who are trying to understand business and investments and government policy. But to paraphrase Dirty Harry, “An economist has to know his limitations.”
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Sunday, January 08, 2017
In a Lawless World, Rules STILL Matter / Economics / Economic Theory
While economics is a science and should be treated as such, economic forecasting is both a science and an art at the same time. However, anyone can forecast. Just like anyone can forecast the weather. To do so accurately and furthermore to do so frequently is a true talent. We think of it along the lines of the ability to hit a major league fastball; a gift granted to maybe 1 in 500 or a thousand babies each year. Then add to that the ability to hit a major league fastball for an average of .300 over an entire career and we’re talking a few babies in an entire generation.
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Wednesday, November 23, 2016
Krugman's Aliens Have Arrived - They Are Called "Trumponomists" / Economics / Economic Theory
Gordon T Long, Co-Founder of MATASII.com sat down with John Rubino to get his views on what the new Trump Administration and its "Trumponomics" policies will mean to the markets and investment strategies in 2017. Here are a few of John's current views on some of the Key Economic headwinds facing "Trumponomics":
A NEW ELECTORAL CLASS
The reason anti-establish politicians like Trump are gaining popularity according to John is because people, more and more, are feeling "the big systems no longer works for the people anymore!"
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Wednesday, November 16, 2016
What Exactly is True Capitalism? / Economics / Economic Theory
We’ll begin with this truth: We cannot snap our fingers and have “wants” immediately transformed into “satisfactions.” We are born having to struggle to survive. We must take atomic elements, which are provided gratuitously by nature, and transform them into the goods and services that give us satisfaction. Everything used to build an Italian sports car is provided by nature, but not in a form that can be used directly without modifications. The raw material must be combined by our labor and know-how. Wants require efforts to obtain satisfaction. Man is constantly striving to reduce these painful efforts that consume so much of his energy and time. Unfortunately, the history of mankind has been one of pillage: A plan for less efforts. It is far easier to steal a sack of corn than take the effort to grow it.
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Wednesday, October 19, 2016
The Limits of Empirical Economics / Economics / Economic Theory
Two separate economic developments over the last 100 years have caused macroeconomics to regress instead of progress. The first is the Keynesian, or more accurately Malthusian, notion of aggregate demand. The second is Friedman’s positive empiricism emphasising the importance of empirical verification of economic theory.
According to positive empiricism, adherence to economic facts is the only way to validate economic theories.
Sunday, October 16, 2016
End of Economic Growth Sparks Wide Discontent / Economics / Economic Theory
Former British diplomat and MI6 ‘ranking figure’ Alastair Crooke quotes my September 26 article “Why There is Trump” so extensively in this article for Consortium News that I thought I might as well post the whole thing here at the Automatic Earth too. The other sources he also quotes -John Gray, Stephen Hadley among them- help to put my points in a solid perspective, which is nice to see. I can only hope that this will open more people’s eyes to the fact that in the end of growth and centralization, we are witnessing the “most important global development in decades.”
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Monday, September 19, 2016
Fascist Business Model: Reich Economics / Economics / Economic Theory
The Fascist Business Model incorporates all the worse elements of Keynesian economics, a broken fallacious school of thought. The model also integrates a vast system of economic heresy, put forth as public address dogma. All their messages are wrong. They are instead aligned with support of the power structure where big banks conduct self-dealing and print money for themselves.
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Sunday, September 18, 2016
American Economics / Economics / Economic Theory
Over the years, we have written multiple times about the system of Keynesian economics, its dysfunction, and the fact that it is a pure lie. This has all been well-documented from studies, observations, right down to remarks made by Keynes himself regarding the long-term viability of his new faux economics.
However, from Keynesian economics, there has morphed another type of economics. A more ignorant and destructive type of scarce resource allocation – which is what economics really is after all – and this type is no respecter of persons, intellect, position, or influence. We could easily call it the economics of entitlement, but that would be misleading because when most think of entitlements, they think about Social Security, Medicare, and other government programs. No, that’s not where the sense of American (and global) entitlement ends. It ends with the average working stiff who is paying 20% on a $40,000 / 7 -year truck loan with a balloon payment because his buddies told him he wasn’t cool if he didn’t have such a truck. There are zillions of other such examples of financial stupidity, however, nobody is bothering to tell these folks that they’re committing financial suicide. The banks certainly aren’t going to tell them. The government? Talk about the kettle and the pot. Or maybe there is too much legal pot. We certainly can’t legislate common sense, but we sure try to legislate away the consequences of foolish behavior.
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Friday, September 09, 2016
Money and The Rats of NIHM / Economics / Economic Theory
“When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion; when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing; when you see money flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors; when you see that men get richer by graft
and pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you; when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice you may know that your society is doomed.”– Ayn Rand
Saturday, September 03, 2016
John Maynard Keynes’ “General Theory” Eighty Years Later / Economics / Economic Theory
To the economic and political detriment of the Western world and those economies beyond which have adopted its precepts, 2016 marks the eightieth anniversary of the publication of one of, if not, the most influential economics books ever penned, John Maynard Keynes’ The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. Sadly, even to this day, despite its thorough refutation by lights such as Henry Hazlitt and other eminent scholars, The General Theory, which spawned “Keynesianism” and its later variants, remains supreme in academics, financial markets, and public policy.
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Wednesday, August 24, 2016
Proof Positive the Economic Recovery Is a Myth / Economics / Economic Theory
For years, I’ve been warning that all claims of economic “recovery” in the US are complete fiction.
We now have definitive proof in the form of tax receipts.
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Friday, August 19, 2016
Big Policies, Bigger Failures / Economics / Economic Theory
Economics is far simpler than most in academics or government would have you believe. To make accurate predictions all you really need is an honest appreciation of the self-interest that is at the heart of free market transactions and an ability to understand how regulations that attempt to "correct" these realities don't work. This is certainly the case with the completely predictable slow-motion train wrecks that are the signature U.S. domestic policy experiments of the last eight years: Obamacare and Federal Reserve stimulus. From the start, I issued countless commentaries on why both would fail spectacularly. The jury has started to come back on Obamacare, and the results are a disaster. And while the verdict on the Fed's policies has yet to arrive in similarly stark terms, I believe that its failure is just as certain.
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Friday, August 12, 2016
How the Frankfurt School Changed American Culture / Economics / Economic Theory
Dear Parade-Goer,
How many times have you heard someone lament how much the world has changed from the good old days? You know, the simpler pre-PC period when the world operated according to fairly predictable principles.
But then we woke one day in a world with every bastion of what some might called normalcy under attack. Institutions that 100 years ago appeared unassailable—marriage, for example—are increasingly seen as antiquated. Even the idea of a national character is viewed as wrong-minded and, in the successful societies of the West, as exclusionary and even racist.
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Monday, June 13, 2016
Keynesian Economics Versus Austrian Economics - Video / Economics / Economic Theory
hi it's monday jun 13 2016
home of alternative economics and contrarian views
this morning I want to talk about the difference between the cannes in school
of economics and the Austrian School of Economics because you might be thinking
what is alternative economics and in my view that's what alternative economics
is today is the Austrian School of Economics Austrian School of Economics
is based on the studies of Austrian scholars from the 19th century and it
was followed through by economist's like ludwig von mises Africa
friedrich hayek Murray Rothbard from the US and yeah that's the are strange
school that the proponents of the Austrian school usually while not
usually the proposer ask our school argue that economics is not a science
economics is based on human action and of course human action is not predictable
Tuesday, May 03, 2016
Just Look to the Middle-Class for Proof of Trickle-Down Economics / Economics / Economic Theory
Politicians and economists get many things wrong, but right now, the one thing that really gets up my… let’s keep this clean and just say, nose… is how clueless they are about “trickle-down economics.”
Republicans believe it. (They just don’t realize how long it takes and that it isn’t happening yet from the information revolution.)
Wednesday, March 30, 2016
Price Controls May Be On the Way / Economics / Economic Theory
Paul-Martin Foss writes: If you thought negative interest rates were as bad as it could get with central banks, you might be in for a surprise. Central banks have been so spectacularly unsuccessful with their accommodative monetary policies that they are discussing pulling out all the stops to get the results they want. They fail to realize that the reason prices aren’t rising is because they really want and need to fall. Bad debts weren’t liquidated during the last financial crisis, the debtors were merely bailed out. Overpriced assets weren’t allowed to be reduced in price. Central banks pumped trillions of dollars into the economy to attempt to paper over the recession. Market forces want to drive prices down, while central banks attempt to prop them up. So what to do when central banks aren’t getting their way?
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Monday, March 21, 2016
Unemployment vs Inflation - May the Phillips Curve Rest in Peace / Economics / Economic Theory
In 1958, economist William Phillips claimed there was a historical inverse relationship between the rate of unemployment and the corresponding rate of inflation. His conclusion was that full employment (whatever that means) was inflationary. He illustrated his claim through a chart referred to as the Phillips Curve.
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Monday, March 07, 2016
Free Trade Is the Path to Prosperity / Economics / Economic Theory
Georgi Vuldzhev writes: The political circus of the 2016 presidential election has revived and reinvigorated popular belief in age-old protectionist fallacies. Currently both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, are both in favor of expanding protectionist trade policy, with both of them arguing that free trade “destroys” jobs and hurts domestic workers and producers by exposing them to foreign competition. Both candidates espouse an utterly misguided zero-sum view of economics, in which one side to an exchange wins only when the other side loses. Both men are, of course, completely wrong.
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Thursday, February 04, 2016
TPP is Economic Warfare, Trade Can Make Everyone Worse Off / Governments are Stupid / Economics / Economic Theory
Professor Yoram Baumun’s comedic retake of the Principles of Economics appropriately translates “Trade can make everyone better off” to “Trade can make everyone worse off.” Moreover, he translates “Market are usually a good way to organize economic activity” to “Governments are Stupid”.
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Monday, December 14, 2015
Why Gold-Backed Money Doesn’t Bring Economic Booms and Busts / Commodities / Economic Theory
According to popular thinking, not every increase in the supply of money will have an effect on economic activity. For instance, if an increase in supply is matched by a corresponding increase in the demand for money, we are told, then there won’t be any effect on the economy. The increase in the supply of money is neutralized, so to speak, by an increase in the demand for money, or the willingness to hold a greater amount of money than before.
What do we mean by demand for money? And how does this demand differ from demand for goods and services?
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Friday, November 27, 2015
Economics Is About Scarcity, Property, and Relationships / Economics / Economic Theory
Michael J. McKay writes: The other day I was having coffee with a new friend, a retired businessman who had customized luxury cars in California. I mentioned I had recently retired from owning an investment firm and had studied economics for many years, especially Austrian economics.
Like so many people, he said, “I really don't understand economics and always have been confused by it.”
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Thursday, October 29, 2015
The Financialization of the Economy / Economics / Economic Theory
Roger Bootle once wrote:
The whole of economic life is a mixture of creative and distributive activities. Some of what we ‘‘earn’’ derives from what is created out of nothing and adds to the total available for all to enjoy. But some of it merely takes what would otherwise be available to others and therefore comes at their expense.
Successful societies maximise the creative and minimise the distributive. Societies where everyone can achieve gains only at the expense of others are by definition impoverished. They are also usually intensely violent….
Much of what goes on in financial markets belongs at the distributive end. The gains to one party reflect the losses to another, and the fees and charges racked up are paid by Joe Public, since even if he is not directly involved in the deals, he is indirectly through costs and charges for goods and services.
The genius of the great speculative investors is to see what others do not, or to see it earlier. This is a skill. But so is the ability to stand on tip toe, balancing on one leg, while holding a pot of tea above your head, without spillage. But I am not convinced of the social worth of such a skill.
This distinction between creative and distributive goes some way to explain why the financial sector has become so big in relation to gross domestic product – and why those working in it get paid so much.
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Wednesday, October 21, 2015
Why Star Trek Is Wrong: There Will Always Be Scarcity / Economics / Economic Theory
Jonathan Newman writes: With the recent successes and announcements of sci-fi movies and TV shows like The Martian, Interstellar, and new incarnations of Star Trek and Star Wars, no one can deny that we crave futurism and stretching our imagination on what advanced technology can accomplish. Many look to the example of these fictional worlds as an indication of what life might be like when technology can provide for all of our basic needs, a condition some call “post-scarcity.”
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Thursday, September 10, 2015
Confusions About Interest Rates Part 2 / Interest-Rates / Economic Theory
Following the 2001 dot-com crisis, interest rates were lowered to 1% and then slowly raised to 5% over a 4-year period. This timid policy still created a massive bubble in housing that finally bust in 2008. Instead of learning from the past, we doubled down on this same failed policy. Interest rates were then lowered to 0% and have been held there with little political will to raise them one iota.
We are now on the eve of another major financial crisis, yet economists (except Austrians) still don’t really understand the role played by interest rates in a capitalist economy. To avoid repeating economic mistakes of the past, we must understand the faulty logic that led us to these errors.
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Thursday, September 10, 2015
Confusion About Interest Rates Part 1 / Interest-Rates / Economic Theory
Since 2008, central banks have rushed to lower interest rates to spur growth. This has induced mal-investments in almost all asset classes. For example, with oil prices below $50 a barrel and trending lower, the shale oil industry is in serious trouble as is the banking industry that lent it over $1 trillion.
Of course, economists and faulty economic theory are 100% responsible for what is to come. The professional economist today is like the doctor of the past whose prescription to bleed the patient was considered state-of-the-art medicine; the cure, of course, being much worse than the disease.
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Tuesday, September 01, 2015
Weapons of Economic Destruction / Economics / Economic Theory
“Measurement theory shows that strong assumptions are required for certain statistics to provide meaningful information about reality. Measurement theory encourages people to think about the meaning of their data. It encourages critical assessment of the assumptions behind the analysis.
Sunday, August 23, 2015
Economics is Dead, and Economists Killed It / Economics / Economic Theory
Per L. Bylund writes: What we have seen over the course of the last eighty years is a systematic dismantling of the contribution of economics to our understanding of the social world. Whatever the cause, modern economics is now not much more than formal modeling using mathematics dressed up in economics-sounding lingo. In this sense, economics is dead as a science, assuming it was ever alive. Economics in mathematical form cannot fulfill its promises and neither the scientific literature nor advanced education in the subject provide insights that are applicable to or useful in everyday life, business, or policy.
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Wednesday, August 12, 2015
Closing the Sausage Factory - The New Normal / Economics / Economic Theory
“Bureaucracy destroys initiative. There is little that bureaucrats hate more than innovation, especially innovation that produces better results than the old routines. Improvements always make those at the top of the heap look inept. Who enjoys appearing inept?”
– Frank Herbert, Heretics of Dune
“Economies naturally grow. People innovate as they go through life. They also look around at what others are doing and adopt better practices or tools. They invest, accumulating financial, human and physical capital.
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Tuesday, July 21, 2015
Worker Productivity and Modern-Day Horse Manure / Economics / Economic Theory
“They just use your mind and they never give you credit. It’s enough to drive you crazy if you let it.”
– Dolly Parton, “Working 9 to 5”Almost everyone wants to be more productive. I include myself in that group – there are lots of ways I could be more productive. When I have conversations with people I think are very productive, they almost always tell me they wish they were more productive. What more could anyone expect from them?
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Friday, July 10, 2015
Labour Productivity Misconceptions / Economics / Economic Theory
In the media warm-up for Wednesday's UK budget, we were told of Britain's poor productivity and Chancellor Osborne subsequently confirmed that his priority is to address it. Comparative figures for Europe quoted by the BBC were sourced from the OECD and are replicated in the chart below.
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Tuesday, July 07, 2015
The Uber Economy / Economics / Economic Theory
On a recent trip to the D.C. area, I needed a ride to the Baltimore airport. I dreaded calling a cab, since I knew the ride would be over $100 and the cab itself might make the 30-minute ride less than pleasant. So I took the occasion to hail an Uber car.The car arrived at 6:10am, and I had a very pleasant ride to the airport in a recent model Volvo S60.
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Thursday, June 18, 2015
Gold and Economic Inequality / Economics / Economic Theory
Inequality is a top news items for 2015 driven largely by the Baltimore riots, the minimum wage debate, Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, and now the entry of socialist Bernie Sanders into the race for US president.
The Left wants more welfare, better schools, free college, enhanced job training, and more. The Right, in contrast, wants welfare reform, charter schools, tax reform — not to be confused with tax cuts — and use of the negative income tax.
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Wednesday, June 10, 2015
Fact Checking Paul Krugman's Claim To Be "Right About Everything", Krugtron the Invincible! / Economics / Economic Theory
Andrew Syrios writes: But can the debate really be as one-sided as I portray it? Well, look at the results: again and again, people on the opposite side prove to have used bad logic, bad data, the wrong historical analogies, or all of the above. I’m Krugtron the Invincible!
Thus wrote the great Paul Krugman. A man so modest as to proclaim that “I think I can say without false modesty, a huge win; I (and those of like mind) have been right about everything.”
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Tuesday, June 09, 2015
A Six-Point Plan to Restore Economic Growth and Prosperity / Economics / Economic Theory
Three weeks ago I co-authored an op-ed for the Investor’s Business Daily with Stephen Moore, founder of the Club for Growth and former Wall Street Journal editorial board member, currently working with the Heritage Foundation. Our goal was to present a simple outline of the policies we need to pursue as a country in order to get us back to 3–4% annual GDP growth. As we note in the op-ed, Stephen and I have been engaging with a number of presidential candidates and with other economists around the topic of growth.
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Monday, June 08, 2015
Technology Needs Capital To Produce Economic Growth / Economics / Economic Theory
In his article “The Big Meh” Paul Krugman complains that despite all the information technology advances the effect so far has been negligible as far as economic growth is concerned.
Krugman writes “That the whole digital era, spanning more than four decades, is looking like a disappointment. New technologies have yielded great headlines but modest economic results. Why? ... The answer is that I don’t know — but neither does anyone else.”
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Monday, June 01, 2015
The Meaning of Financial Repression / Economics / Economic Theory
Mark Thornton writes: We live in a world of massive monetary inflation and extremely low interest rates. Mortgage rates are near historic lows and yet it seems that people cannot get loans. Home sales are up, but with a near record percentage of sales made with cash, rather than a mortgage. The unemployment rate is nearing “full employment” and yet a record number of people do not have jobs.
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Thursday, May 28, 2015
Austerity, Economics and Religion / Economics / Economic Theory
There are many things going on in the Greece vs Institutions+Germany negotiations, and many more on the fringe of the talks, with opinions being vented left and right, not least of all in the media, often driven more by a particular agenda than by facts or know-how.
What most fail to acknowledge is to what extent the position of the creditor institutions is powered by economic religion, and that is a shame, because it makes it very difficult for the average reader and viewer to understand what happens, and why.
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Wednesday, May 27, 2015
Why Economic Growth Is Impossible / Economics / Economic Theory
The quandary of the economic dilemma continues. A globe suffering from a deflationary financial impact, while consumer prices rise well above the reported cost of living increases, does not bode well that prospects of commercial growth can rescue the world economy. What changes can overcome this predicament? Well, some academic scholar’s offers serious concern that a long term rebound towards prosperity is no longer possible.
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Tuesday, May 26, 2015
The Bait-and-Switch Behind Economic Populism / Politics / Economic Theory
Nicolás Cachanosky writes: Argentina will hold elections this year, and a number of provinces will be electing governors. Buenos Aires, the capital city, is holding elections for mayor, and Mauricio Macri, who is stepping down as mayor, is a favorite to become the next president. Toward the end of the year, a presidential election will be held and Cristina Kirchner, after two consecutive mandates, will have to step down because she cannot be re-elected.
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Thursday, May 14, 2015
Is the Keynesian Output Multiplier a Real Thing? / Economics / Economic Theory
It is accepted by most economists that initial increases in consumer spending or other outlays tend to set in motion a reinforcing process which supposedly strengthens the economic growth by a multiple of initial spending.
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Monday, April 27, 2015
Economic Stagnation - Let's Blame The Savers / Economics / Economic Theory
Just like in the world of fashion, economic terminologies come in and out of vogue. One such economic term trending recently is Secular Stagnation. First proposed by Keynesian economist Alvin Hansen back in the 1930s, Secular Stagnation was coined to explain America's dismal economic performance -- in which sluggish growth and employment levels were well below potential.
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Sunday, April 19, 2015
Michel Chevalier’s Case Against the Patent System / Economics / Economic Theory
Louis Rouanet writes: Michel Chevalier (1806–1879) was a very influential French economist during the second half of the nineteenth century. He is still widely known in France for being the architect of the Cobden-Chevalier Treaty of 1860 which was the free-trade agreement between France and Great Britain. Michel Chevalier is, however, less known for his major contribution to the intellectual property debate.1 Contrary to Jean Baptiste Say, Gustave de Molinari, and many other French economists, Chevalier fiercely opposed the patent system. As Fritz Machlup remarked: “Among French economists, Michel Chevalier was probably the most emphatic in the joint antagonism to tariffs and patents, declaring that both ‘stem from the same doctrine and result in the same abuses.’”
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Saturday, April 18, 2015
Inflation, Central Banks, and Business Cycles / Economics / Economic Theory
Jonathan Newman writes: The word “inflation” means different things to different people. One popular conception of inflation focuses on prices — all prices, actually. For these people, including some economists, “inflation” means a rise in the general price level, i.e., the goods and services we buy have higher price tags.
The other conception of inflation focuses on the money supply. Economists with this focus think of inflation as an increase in the amount of money in the economy. We’ll see that viewing inflation as a rise in prices can be misleading and ambiguous especially compared to viewing inflation as an increase in the money supply.
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Friday, April 10, 2015
How an Artificial Economy Collapses Organically / Economics / Economic Theory
One of the biggest news stories, almost too perfect not to be timed, was released on a day when markets closed early: Good Friday.
Conveniently not factored into major world markets was last week's horrible jobs report.
From the timing of the news, to the revisions and the real story, these numbers tell about the underlying economy. It says everything one needs to know about the broken monetary system.
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Thursday, April 09, 2015
How Easy Money Drives the Stock Market / Stock-Markets / Economic Theory
In a market economy a major service that money provides is that of the medium of exchange. Producers exchange their goods for money and then exchange money for other goods.
As production of goods and services increase this results in a greater demand for the services of the medium of exchange (the service that money provides).
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Wednesday, April 08, 2015
Economists in Glass Houses / Economics / Economic Theory
For many economists, the chicken and egg question is, which came first, consumption or production? What drives growth? Let’s continue with our series on debt, in which I have been contrasting my views with those of Paul Krugman.
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Monday, March 23, 2015
U.S. Economy and the Illusion of Prosperity / Economics / Economic Theory
President Obama and Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen have recently been crowing about improving economic conditions in the U.S. Unemployment is down to 5.5% and economic growth in 2014 hit 2.4%.
Journalists and economists point to this improvement as proof that quantitative easing was effective. They seem to have political blinders on. The boom is artificial and has been built by adding debt on top of excessive debt. Total household debt increased 2.5 % in 2014 – the highest level since 2010. Mortgage loans increased 1.5%, student loans jumped by 6.6%, and auto loans swelled a hefty 9.6%. The improving auto sales are based on a bubble of sub- prime borrowers. Auto sales have been brisk because of a surge in loans to individuals with credit scores below 640. Auto loans to individuals with strong credit scores, above 720, have barely budged.
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Sunday, March 22, 2015
The "Natural Interest Rate" Is Always Positive and Cannot Be Negative / Interest-Rates / Economic Theory
Some economists have been arguing that the “equilibrium real interest rate” (that is the “natural interest rate” or the “originary interest rate”) has become negative, as a “secular stagnation” has allegedly caused a “savings glut.”1
The idea is that savings exceed investment, and that a negative real interest rate is required for bringing savings in line with investment. From the viewpoint of the Austrian school, the notion of a “negative equilibrium real interest rate” doesn’t make sense at all.2
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Thursday, March 12, 2015
Sub-Zero Interest Rates as an Endless Daylight Saving Time / Interest-Rates / Economic Theory
Brendan Brown writes: We all know about Milton Friedman’s money helicopter idiom and how President Obama’s architect in chief of Quantitative Easing used it to justify his “Great Monetary Experiment.” Less well known is Friedman’s idiom about daylight saving time, how he used this to illustrate the case for flexible exchange rates, and how it is now apparently justifying the plunge of money market rates in Europe to sub-zero levels.
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Wednesday, February 25, 2015
From London to China - Where is Today's Skyscraper Curse? / Economics / Economic Theory
Super tall buildings, or skyscrapers, are being built at an astonishing rate. Ninety-seven buildings that exceed 200 meters (656 feet) high were constructed in 2014, setting a new record. The previous record was eighty-one buildings completed in 2011. The total number of skyscrapers in existence now is 935, a whopping 350 percent increase since the year 2000.
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Friday, February 20, 2015
Employment Does Not Drive Economic Growth / Economics / Economic Theory
For the head of the Federal Reserve Board Janet Yellen — and most economists — the key to economic growth is a strengthening in the labor market. The strength of the labor market is the key behind the strength of the economy. Or so it is held. If this is the case then it is valid to conclude that changes in unemployment are an important causative factor of real economic growth.
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Wednesday, February 18, 2015
Why the Austrian Understanding of Money and Banks Is So Important / Economics / Economic Theory
Jörg Guido Hülsmann writes: The classical economists had rejected the notion that overall monetary spending — in current jargon: aggregate demand — is a driving force of economic growth. The true causes of the wealth of nations are non-monetary factors such as the division of labor and the accumulation of capital through savings. Money comes into play as an intermediary of exchange and as a store of value. Money prices are also fundamental for business accounting and economic calculation. But money delivers all these benefits irrespective of its quantity. A small money stock provides them just as well as a bigger one. It is therefore not possible to pull a society out of poverty, or to make it more affluent, by increasing the money stock. By contrast, such objectives can be achieved through technological progress, through increased frugality, and through a greater division of labor. They can be achieved through the liberalization of trade and the encouragement of savings.
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Sunday, February 15, 2015
How Truly Free Markets Help the Poor / Economics / Economic Theory
Ryan McMaken writes: Discussing poverty as an advocate of free markets is tricky business in today’s world. If one takes poverty seriously and points out the very real plight of the impoverished, it is often assumed that one must therefore be advocating for government “solutions” to the problem. The knee-jerk reaction of many defenders of free markets is to simply deny that poverty exists much at all, or that if the poor just try a little harder, or aren’t so lazy, they won’t be poor anymore.
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Friday, February 13, 2015
Bad Economic Idea of Devaluing Currency to Help Exporters / Economics / Economic Theory
Frank Hollenbeck writes: The European Central Bank's (ECB) decision to shortly print over 1 trillion euros has reignited concerns over currency wars. The euro has dropped almost 20 percent over the last six months after endless hints from the ECB.
We are in a currency war, and have been since 2008. Our current global monetary system is deeply flawed in spite of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which was supposedly created to foster monetary cooperation and financial stability. Yet, the IMF has been eerily silent lately, which has not gone unnoticed by those who butter the IMF’s bread.
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Tuesday, February 03, 2015
Why the Government Hasn’t Yet Managed to Destroy the Economy / Economics / Economic Theory
John P. Cochran writes: Pierre Lemieux wrote an indispensible book (Somebody in Charge: A Solution to Recession) for anyone who wishes to understand the before, during, and immediate aftermath of the “Great Recession.”
The book’s importance is greater than just his analysis of the crisis. He thoroughly exposes the underlying weaknesses and fallacies of the whole Keynesian policy-activism agenda driven by the “animal spirits,” the irresistible urge to action of those who wrongly deem themselves in charge.
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Tuesday, January 27, 2015
Austrians and the Mainstream Economists / Economics / Economic Theory
John Cochran writes: Mises Institute: You recently retired after a long time at Metropolitan State University of Denver, where you were both an economics professor and the dean of the Business School. How did you end up there, and end up as dean?
John Cochran: I had a good guardian angel who helped me come to Metro State. I’m not sure about that on becoming dean, though. I received my undergraduate degree in economics from Metro State. Gerald Stone, then chair of the econ department, and Ralph Byrns were two of my professors there. As I worked on my graduate degrees at University of Colorado-Boulder, I would occasionally stop by Metro just to touch base. In spring 1981, I was just completing teaching my first principles course at UC-Boulder and had just completed the requirements for an MA in economics. The first edition of the Byrns and Stone principles book would be available for fall 2001. Metro had an open visiting position and had offered the job to a recent CU PhD. He had told them he would take their job, but wouldn’t use their book. Ralph and Jerry were talking it over and Ralph said to Jerry, “We can’t hire him.” Jerry said, “We can’t not hire him just because he said he won’t use our book.” Ralph replied, “But he is telling us he will be a ‘lunch tax’.” Jerry said, “Yes, but who else can we get?” [A “lunch tax” is a high-maintenance employee. — Ed.]
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Monday, January 26, 2015
Why Private-Sector Services Seem to Be More Expensive / Economics / Economic Theory
Predrag Rajsic writes: Imagine you are a promising car mechanic who wants to open a new car repair shop. You would like to provide basic services to low-income citizens at affordable prices. You would charge a bare minimum for your labor, and you would buy used (but decent) replacement parts. This service would be great for people who just want to keep their cars running for a couple more years — nothing fancy, just bare functionality.
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Sunday, January 25, 2015
The Private Equity Boom, Easy Money, and Crony Capitalism / Economics / Economic Theory
Brendan Brown writes: Amongst the big winners from the Obama Fed’s Great Monetary Experiment has been the private equity industry. Indeed this went through a near-death experience in the Great Panic (2008) before its savior — Fed quantitative easing — propelled it forward into new riches. There is no surprise therefore that its barons who join the political stage (think of the last Republican presidential candidate) have no interest in monetary reform. And the same attitude is common amongst leading politicians who hope private equity will provide them high-paid jobs when they quit Washington.
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Sunday, January 04, 2015
The "Dog-Eat-Dog" Economic Delusion / Economics / Economic Theory
Gary Galles writes: When people want to add extra “oomph” to negative depictions of self-owners acting without coercion — that is, market competition under capitalism — they turn to name-calling. One of the most effective forms is describing such competition as dog-eat-dog. When that characterization is accepted, the mountain of evidence in favor of voluntary social coordination can be dismissed on the grounds that it involves a vicious and ugly process so harmful to people that it outweighs any benefits.
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Friday, January 02, 2015
How Reducing GDP Increases Economic Growth / Economics / Economic Theory
Recently, the Financial Times published an article containing charts displaying the correlation between government spending and real GDP growth.1 Based on these correlations, the author of the article, Matthew Klein, comments: “It’s no secret that spending cuts (and tax hikes) have retarded America’s growth for the past four years.” He goes on to argue that from mid-2010 to mid-2011, the reduction in government spending in the US shaved 0.76 percent off of the economic growth rate. Klein conjectures that this slowdown in the growth rate caused a level of real GDP today that is 1.2 percent less than it would have been in the absence of this exercise in “austerity.” He also points out that since 2012 almost all of the depressive effect on real GDP growth of government austerity was the result of the reduction in military spending. While some of the reduction was beneficial, Klein opines, “some of it represents a self-inflicted wound.” Indeed it may represent a self-inflicted wound on the Federal government, but in that case it benefits the private economy.
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Thursday, December 25, 2014
A Capitalist Christmas / Economics / Economic Theory
Dale Steinreich writes: Halloween has a socialist tenor. Menacing figures arrive at your door uninvited, demand your property, and threaten to perform an unspecified "trick" if you don't fork over. That's the way the government works in a nutshell.
Thanksgiving has been reinterpreted as the white man, after burning, raping, and pillaging the noble Indian, trying to make amends with a cheap turkey dinner. New Year's can be ruined as the beginning of a new tax year, and the knowledge that the next five or six months will be spent working for the government.
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Wednesday, December 24, 2014
Correcting Scrooge’s Economics / Economics / Economic Theory
Ryan McMaken writes: As Charles Dickens himself admits, Ebenezer Scrooge is a thoroughly peaceful man, guilty of no true crime, who has robbed no one. Therefore, we must conclude that his wealth is a sign of his ability to please at least some people, and as Michael Levin notes: “Dickens doesn't mention Scrooge's satisfied customers, but there must have been plenty of them for Scrooge to have gotten so rich.”
But as he is a person with bad manners and a disagreeable personality, many have conflated Scrooge’s personality traits with his business practices, although the two are unrelated phenomena. As a miser and businessman, Scrooge provides numerous valuable services to the community including, as Walter Block has shown, driving down prices and making liquidity available to those who, unlike the wrongly maligned misers, have been either unwilling or unable to save in comparable amounts.
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Sunday, December 21, 2014
The Social Function of Economic Inequality / Economics / Economic Theory
Mark Tovey writes: The unhampered market creates economic inequality. Free marketeers tend to concede this fact as an unfortunate defect in an otherwise laudable system. F.A. Hayek, however, in a chapter from The Constitution of Liberty, argued that inequality is fundamental to a society's progress. Hayek explained how, by purchasing luxuries unimaginable to the average man, the rich unwittingly perform a vital public service. Indeed so fundamental is inequality to economic progress that egalitarian societies, Hayek concluded, would be faced with no choice but to deliberately re-inflict upon themselves the very class systems they had sought to escape, should they wish to achieve well-directed economic advancement.
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Wednesday, December 17, 2014
An Unorthodox Solution to the World’s Economic Problems / Economics / Economic Theory
We currently face a monumental dilemma. How do we extract ourselves from all this excessive debt without crashing the world economy? There is a solution which is totally counterintuitive: print even more money. In other words, to get out of the deep, deep hole we are in, dig even deeper.
It is called the Chicago plan. With a stroke of a pen, money would be substituted for debt, without the negative consequences of printing money. Banking would be restructured so that it never again leads to boom and bust cycles, and most debt, public and private, could be cancelled. It’s basically a “one time” get out of jail card for the world economy.
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Wednesday, November 12, 2014
The Economics of Tipping / Economics / Economic Theory
Ken Zahringer writes: My dinner companion sounded indignant. “It’s a shame we have to tip the waitress,” she said. “The restaurant owner ought to pay the staff enough to live on.”
I imagine that is a common attitude among those steeped in our current cultural climate of envy and dislike of economic success — the anti-capitalist mentality, as Mises put it. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that we tip waiters out of sympathy, due to their misfortune of having to work in an industry full of greedy restaurant owners who won’t pay a “living wage.” In fact, tipping is an elegant market solution to a particular set of circumstances, often present in service jobs, that makes determining an appropriate wage extremely problematic. The practice of tipping used to be more common, applying to many more service positions than at present, when it is largely restricted to waitstaff and skycaps. Part of the reason for its partial demise is just the wandering course of economic change, but many jobs that used to be paid primarily by tips came to be covered by minimum wage legislation and simply disappeared.
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Sunday, November 09, 2014
Why The Theory of Money and Credit Is More important Than Ever / Economics / Economic Theory
Richard Ebeling writes: Eighty years ago, in the autumn of 1934, Ludwig von Mises’s The Theory of Money and Credit first appeared in English. It remains one of the most important books on money and inflation penned in the twentieth century, and even eight decades later, it still offers the clearest analysis and understanding of booms and busts, inflations, and depressions.
Mises insisted that the economic rollercoaster of the business cycle was not caused by any inherent weaknesses or contradictions within the free market capitalist system. Rather, inflationary booms followed by the bust of economic depression or recession had its origin in the control and mismanagement by governments of the monetary and banking system.
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Thursday, November 06, 2014
The Errors in Liquidity Preferences / Economics / Economic Theory
The theoretical construct of Keynes’s monetary view of the world is known as the liquidity preferences theory of money. This theory is the foundation of many macroeconomic models and stands in stark contrast to the classical view of interest rates, the loanable funds theorem.
Much of Keynes’ work, including this theory, disproportionately elevated the importance of holding cash as a key economic variable. Income can be consumed, saved or held in cash. Consumption is for personal satisfaction. Saving is a transfer of claims on goods and services from consumers to investors. Holding cash, or hoarding, is the equivalent of stuffing money in your mattress.
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Tuesday, October 28, 2014
Functional Economics - Getting Your House in Order / Economics / Economic Theory
Old Habits Reappear
Fighting the Fear of Fear
Growing Conspiracy
Myself Is after Me
Frayed Ends of Sanity
Hear Them Calling
Frayed Ends of Sanity
Hear Them Calling
Hear Them Calling Me
- Frayed Ends of Sanity, Metallica
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
The Last Days Of The Economic Growth Story / Economics / Economic Theory
I am thinking about the similarities between a financial crisis and for instance a family crisis, the death of a loved one or close friend, a divorce, or a personal bankruptcy.
And I wonder why in the case of our recent (aka current) financial crisis, we allow nothing to enter our communications, and our train of thought, but the idea of recovery and a return to growth. Has everyone always reacted that way after earlier financial crises – history is full of them -, or is something else going on?
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Monday, October 20, 2014
Challenge to Keynesians 'Prove Rising Prices Provide an Overall Economic Benefit' / Economics / Economic Theory
The ECB has been concerned about falling consumer prices. I propose that's 100% stupid, yet that's the concern.
When the euro declined vs. the US dollar, the ECB was happy that inflation would inch back up. The fear now is that falling oil prices will take away the alleged gain of a falling euro.
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Tuesday, October 14, 2014
Price Deflation and Price Inflation Are Always “Optimal” / Economics / Economic Theory
Mateusz Machaj writes: Recently, the Polish economy experienced its first price deflation since the 1980s, which sparked in the country deflationphobia (or, as Mark Thornton calls it, apoplithorismosphobia).
Media sources and many economists focus on price inflation and price deflation as the source of various economic ills, but, contrary to much of the rhetoric, price inflation and price deflation are always “optimal” in the economic sense. At first, such a claim may seem controversial, since virtually all economists have something negative to say about either inflation or deflation. This concerns almost all schools of economic thought, mainstream and heterodox, including the Austrians.
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Monday, October 13, 2014
When The Economy Went Ponzi / Economics / Economic Theory
Adam Smith and the Ponzi Economy
Like the archetypal images of love that were handed down by early Greek philosophers, of Erotic love, Parental love, and what later became Christian or Dutiful love towards fellow persons and living things of all kinds, the supposed “classic image” of the economy is the “Wealth of Nations”. Taken by the “Neolibs” of the 1980s and their surviving throw-offs as a timeless ode to invisible but all-powerful “market forces”, this classic model was handed down by their guru – Adam Smith.
Thursday, October 09, 2014
The Truth About Economic Boom And Bust Cycles - Video / Economics / Economic Theory
Claudio Grass writes: Most believe that expansionary monetary policy helps ease crises. Austrian School economists argue that central banks don't help in smoothing the amplitude of the cycles, but rather are the cause of cycles. In this microdocumentary video, we look back at four major busts in the last 100 years and explain how central banks created them. We also clarify why we believe the next bust is just around the corner. This video will not explain the mainstream view, but rather the view of the Austrian Business Cycle Theory (ABCT).
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Tuesday, September 30, 2014
Economists Economic Atonement / Economics / Economic Theory
This Friday is Yom Kippur, the day when Jews around the world ask forgiveness for their transgressions from the year past. Rabbis remind the penitent to dwell on their sins of omission, in which they did nothing when a more thoughtful and proactive action was needed, and sins of commission, in which they actively participated in an unjust action. And while not all economists are Jewish, Gene Epstein the economics editor at Barron's, offered his thoughts on how this applies to the group.
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Friday, September 26, 2014
Where’s the Economic Growth? / Economics / Economic Theory
In 1633 Galileo Galilei, then an old man, was tried and convicted by the Catholic Church of the heresy of believing that the earth revolved around the sun. He recanted and was forced into house arrest for the rest of his life, until 1642. Yet “The moment he [Galileo] was set at liberty, he looked up to the sky and down to the ground, and, stamping with his foot, in a contemplative mood, said, Eppur si muove, that is, still it moves, meaning the earth” (Giuseppe Baretti in his book the The Italian Library, written in 1757).
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Wednesday, September 24, 2014
The Poison Eating at the Heart of Macroeconomics / Economics / Economic Theory
Mario Draghi, in one of his latest speeches, prodded governments to ease austerity to spur aggregate demand (an oxymoron). The IMF director, Christine Lagarde, recently urged the ECB to continue its easy monetary policy until aggregate demand picks up. U.S. Treasury Secretary, Jack Lew, has, for years, suggested government actions to boost aggregate demand. He has in turn lectured Germany, Japan, and China on the need to encourage demand. It is sad that such economic nonsense is constantly promoted by some of the world’s most influential people, including many leading economists, and that this continues to serve as the foundation of much of contemporary macroeconomic theory.
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Tuesday, September 23, 2014
Regime Uncertainty Weighs on U.S. Economic Growth / Economics / Economic Theory
Shortly after the current Great Recession started, I wrote a Globe Asia column, “A Great Depression?” (December 2008). In it, I stressed the findings contained in Robert Higgs’ important book Depression, War and Cold War: Studies in Political Economy (Oxford University Press, 2006). Higgs concluded that, because of regime uncertainty, investors were afraid to commit funds to new projects. They simply didn’t know what President Roosevelt and the New Dealers would do next.
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Sunday, September 14, 2014
The Ethics of Entrepreneurship and Profit / Economics / Economic Theory
Hans-Hermann Hoppe writes: In the most fundamental sense we are all, with each of our actions, always and invariably profit-seeking entrepreneurs.
Whenever we act, we employ some physical means (things valued as goods) — at a minimum our body and its standing room, but in most cases also various other, “external” things — so as to divert the “natural” course of events (the course of events we expect to happen if we were to act differently) in order to reach some more highly valued anticipated future state of affairs instead. With every action we aim at substituting a more favorable future state of affairs for a less favorable one that would result if we were to act differently. In this sense, with every action we seek to increase our satisfaction and attain a psychic profit. “To make profits is invariably the aim sought by any action,” as Ludwig von Mises has stated it. (Mises, 1966, p. 289)
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Monday, September 08, 2014
Why Economic Growth Is Finished / Economics / Economic Theory
By Pure Economic Decision
Firstly Tweeted by journalist Peter Spiegel, late Sunday, September 7, a leaked copy of proposed and agreed new EU28 sanctions against Russia, dating from September 5 confirmed that Russia's energy giants Rosneft, Gazprom and Transfeft will all be hit by European capital market bans:
Friday, September 05, 2014
Two Questions for Krugman / Economics / Economic Theory
Paul Krugman is at it again. That is, Mr. Krugman continues to myopically attack anyone who has warned that money printing could lead to 'inflation'.
Read full article... Read full article..."...as I have written many many times, this inflation paranoia has proved remarkably resilient, enduring despite five-plus years of utter empirical failure." Three Roads to Hard Money
Tuesday, September 02, 2014
The Wages Fuel Economic Demand Fallacy / Economics / Economic Theory
In recent months talking heads, disappointed with the lack of economic recovery, have turned their attention to wages. If only wages could grow, they say, there would be more demand for goods and services: without wage growth, economies will continue to stagnate.
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Monday, September 01, 2014
Marx And The Capitalist Cancer Of Overproduction / Economics / Economic Theory
Thomas Piketty Tried
Unremarked by most reviewers of Piketty's book “Capital” earlier this year, he also tried to “square the circle” on this longstanding subject. Marx argued that capitalist blind faith in ever-growing markets on the back of ever-growing populations in ever-growing economies could and would try to increase industrial production “until the last moment”. To do this, not only would they need more credit at lower interest rates – harming their pure financial banker brethren – but they would have to pay ever-lower real wages to their slavish workers. With lower real incomes, unsurprisingly, their workers would buy less - but the capitalists “could not understand”. So crisis was hard-wired into the system.
Tuesday, August 26, 2014
A Nation of Shopkeepers - Supply-Side (Voodoo) Economics? / Economics / Economic Theory
“To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people of customers may at first sight appear a project fit only for a nation of shopkeepers. It is, however, a project altogether unfit for a nation of shopkeepers; but extremely fit for a nation whose government is influenced by shopkeepers.”
– Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
Wednesday, August 20, 2014
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and Austrian Capital Theory / Economics / Economic Theory
Mark Tovey writes: During an early scene of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, in which the hyper-intelligent apes were depicted hunting for deer in the forestsurrounding their settlement, someone behind me interjected “if those apes are so smart, how come they’re hunter-gatherers?” While a decent question, he received nothing but a shush from his more etiquette-conscious companion for raising it. While there are many factors other than intelligence that are relevant to a society’s choice of an agricultural or hunter-gather economy, Austrian capital theory can go a long way in helping to explain why the apes featured in the film can be both highly-intelligent and hunter-gatherers.
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Sunday, August 17, 2014
Time Decay And No Escape For Abenomics / Economics / Economic Theory
Abenomics Does Not Work
So-called Abenomics is also (so) called Pure Keynesian. Two physics-related analogies help explain why neither Abenomics nor Keynesian economics will work. There is the concept of escape velocity – that is escape from recession - and the time rate of decay of plenty of things, for example of prices if deflation sets in. As we know, economists like to dress up their works on what is a subject that can never be scientific – economics – using mathematical formulae purporting to show neat functional relationships between “key aggregates”, but in several science domains, from astrophysics to subatomic physics firstly these terms have a real meaning. Secondly, ambiguity has to be allowed into the party. Multiple outcomes are perfectly possible.
Friday, August 15, 2014
Don’t Assume What Is “Unseen” Doesn’t Exist / Economics / Economic Theory
Gary M. Galles writes: The use of the ceteris paribus, or “other things equal” assumption is an essential aspect of economic education. It is an important caveat that helps make sense of a complicated world by clarifying the incentive stories that comprise the core of economics.
Unfortunately, the often unthinking acceptance of that phrase has also provided an opening for misrepresenting economic reality in analyzing government interventions. That is because governments cannot change just one incentive. As a result, assuming certain “other things equal,” when those other things inherently cannot remain equal, provides cover for omitting adverse effects.
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Wednesday, August 13, 2014
High Frequency Failure Economics / Economics / Economic Theory
High Frequency Failure
Japan's most recent GDP data showing a 6.8% annual rate of contraction was quickly shrugged off by the markets as only a signal for more handouts from the Japanese government and the BOJ. But Shinzo Abe's government has to admit the failures are coming faster all the time. In the global finance industry we can move on from the easy explanation why we have HFT, Dark Pools, Libor rigging, FX rigging, oil and gold market rigging and the rest – that they deliver large easy profits to insiders, fixers and riggers. These fail-sure (rather than fail-safe) processes are also essential to maintaining an appearance of real economies with real markets. They serve this additional basic function.
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
Anne Elk’s Theory On Brontosauruses / Economics / Economic Theory
By Grant Williams
Though they reunited this past month for a series of concerts at London’s O2 Arena, the cast of Monty Python last assembled onstage together at London’s Drury Lane Theatre a staggering 40 years ago.
As they took to the stage at the O2 in early July, the surviving members of perhaps the most famous comedy troupe in history (sadly, Graham Chapman died in 1989) boasted a combined age of 357.
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Monday, July 28, 2014
Time to Put a New Economic Tool in the Box / Economics / Economic Theory
[E]conomists are at this moment called upon to say how to extricate the free world from the serious threat of accelerating inflation which, it must be admitted, has been brought about by policies which the majority of economists recommended and even urged governments to pursue. We have indeed at the moment little cause for pride: as a profession we have made a mess of things.Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, July 03, 2014
Remarks on Money: How the Destruction of the Dollar Threatens the Global Economy / Economics / Economic Theory
— and What We Can Do about It by Steve Forbes and Elizabeth Ames
Thursday, July 03, 2014
Why the Mainstream Fails to Understand Recessions / Economics / Economic Theory
Hal W. Snarr writes: In a 2010 Bloomberg Television interview, Alan Greenspan said, “The general notion the Fed was propagator of the bubble by monetary policy does not hold up to the evidence. ... Everybody missed it — academia, the Federal Reserve, all regulators.”
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Sunday, June 15, 2014
The Busted Myth Of War And Economic Growth / Economics / Economic Theory
A strange point of view is expressed in George Mason University economics professor Tyler Cowen’s NY Times article ‘The Lack of Major Wars May Be Hurting Economic Growth’, strange in more ways than just the obvious ones. Of course we find it counterintuitive to link growth to warfare. And of course we don’t like to make a link like that. But there’s a lot more here than meets the eye. For one thing, the age-old truth that correlation does not imply causality, something Cowen hardly seems to consider at all. Which is curious, and certainly makes his arguments carry a whole lot less weight, and interest. It makes his whole article just about entirely one-dimensional.
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Friday, June 13, 2014
The Great Myth of Money Velocity / Economics / Economic Theory
The missing variable in the great monetary equation is money velocity. We hear it over and over again, "There is no money velocity." And therefore, inflation cannot be a problem and is not.
Yet, there is a great divergence between the conventional financial media and the public who goes to the supermarket. The financial media swallows whole the official artifice that inflation is near-zero while ‘J.Q. Public’ sees his/her grocery costs, health insurance, etc. rising by leaps and bounds.
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Wednesday, June 11, 2014
Debunking The Velocity Myth Once And For All / Economics / Economic Theory
Ed Bugos writes: - “Things are not what they appear to be: nor are they otherwise”
At TDV we demonstrate this truth almost every day – in our blog, our tweets, and in our newsletters.
Just last week Jeff discussed the fallacy of GDP, comparing our lot to that of Jim Carey’s as Truman Burbank, the unaware mark in the Truman Show. In that blog, Jeff discussed one of the main problems with relying on GDP (Gross Domestic Product) as a measure of economic growth.
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Tuesday, June 10, 2014
Orbital Teapot Syndrome And Success-Bias Economics / Economics / Economic Theory
Doctor Les Woodcock Says
The former NASA consultant scientist, Dr Les Woodcock of Manchester University UK says he has had enough of Global Warming hysterics. His argument that an unsubstantiated hypothesis cannot rule supreme in climate science also applies to the flagrant and mindless meddling with the economy, for example by 'Super' Mario Draghi of the ECB using his Keynesian spin doctors for the chorus line.
Friday, June 06, 2014
The Slope Of Hope Economy And The Persistence Of History / Economics / Economic Theory
The Faith Based Slope of Hope
Writing on the website The Slope of Hope, June 4, Tim Wright in 'The Persistence of Memory' said that: “....honestly, I don’t have visions of a group of thirty rich men sitting around a gigantic table at the top of a skyscraper, smoking cigars, chortling villainously and plotting humanity’s path. I do, however, firmly believe that the central bankers and political leaders of the largest countries were shocked at what happened late in 2008 and vowed Never Again”.
Wednesday, June 04, 2014
The Federal Reserve versus Hyman Minsky / Economics / Economic Theory
The Fed itself has stated many times over the past years that it intends to keep interest rates low. And now it starts complaining about low volatility. It looks like Yellen et al want to have their cake and eat it too. Perhaps they should have paid a little more attention to Hyman Minsky. Who long ago wrote – paraphrased – that if and when markets are perceived as being stable, it’s that very perception will make them unstable, because stability, i.e. low volatility, will drive investors into riskier asset purchases. The Fed’s manipulation-induced ultra-low rates have achieved just that, and now they’re surprised?
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Sunday, June 01, 2014
Decline And The Art Of No Economic Growth / Economics / Economic Theory
The Oxymoron of Permanent Growth
One of the starkest non-surprises is that economic growth declines as well as advances. Why this should be “extraordinary” and a shock to civilization is hard to understand – for normal persons. Taking the case of Japan and the Asian Tigers, their miracle growth epochs or eras lasted about 30 – 40 years and then it was over. Taking the case of China and India, their period of extreme high annual growth lasted less than 20 years. In the case of the US and western European economies, high growth was commonplace for about 25 years.
Friday, May 30, 2014
Crony Capitalism - Crony Economic Growth / Economics / Economic Theory
Tuesday Markets and IMF Forecasts
Almost any Tuesday, financial markets are up. Yes it happens but no, the “Tuesday blip” is pure market manipulation and nothing whatsoever to do with the real economy. Likewise any IMF forecast of economic growth, for any country in the world is always revised down from the previous forecast, but always shows a magnificent recovery “coming soon”.
Thursday, May 29, 2014
Impending Economic Downturns and the New Skyscraper Curse / Economics / Economic Theory
From CNN to Barron’s to Le Monde, Mark Thornton has been featured as an authority on how record-setting skyscrapers signal impending economic downturns. Last month, Dr. Thornton spoke with us about the Skyscraper Index and the Skyscraper Curse.
Mises Institute: The Skyscraper Index, which shows a correlation between the construction of the world’s tallest buildings and economic busts, was created by economist Andrew Lawrence in 1999. In 2007, you used the index with Austrian business cycle theory to identify the economic downturn that followed. How does Austrian business cycle theory explain the index?
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Thursday, May 29, 2014
Piketty's 'Capital in the 21st Century' Book Envy Problem / Economics / Economic Theory
There can be little doubt that Thomas Piketty's new book Capital in the 21st Century has struck a nerve globally. In fact, the Piketty phenomenon (the economic equivalent to Beatlemania) has in some ways become a bigger story than the ideas themselves. However, the book's popularity is not at all surprising when you consider that its central premise: how radical wealth redistribution will create a better society, has always had its enthusiastic champions (many of whom instigated revolts and revolutions). What is surprising, however, is that the absurd ideas contained in the book could captivate so many supposedly intelligent people.
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Thursday, May 29, 2014
Why Keynesians Should Not be so Careless with Terminology / Economics / Economic Theory
Should we print, not print? Stimulate, not stimulate? Is austerity the right or wrong policy? Is government spending or printing effective? If we ask two economists these questions, we will likely get three opinions for each question. Economists seem confused, yet these questions are more important today than ever. Where does this confusion come from? Doesn’t economic theory give us clear cut answers? It does, but poor terminology and a lack of focus have muddied the waters. Many macroeconomic disagreements can be elucidated with a better understanding of the role played by holding cash, or hoarding, in economics.
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Tuesday, May 27, 2014
Natural Disasters Don’t Increase Economic Growth / Economics / Economic Theory
Hurricane season is nearly upon us, and every time a hurricane strikes, television and radio commentators and would-be economists are quick to proclaim the growth-boosting consequences of the vicissitudes of nature. Of course, if this were true, why wait for the next calamity? Let’s create one by bulldozing New York City and marvel at the growth-boosting activity engendered. Destroying homes, buildings, and capital equipment will undoubtedly help parts of the construction industry and possibly regional economies, but it is a mistake to conclude it will boost overall growth.
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Tuesday, May 20, 2014
Banking Buffoonery, Modeling Mysticism and Why Paul Krugman Should Be Sweatin’ Bullets / Politics / Economic Theory
We have a few things to say about the recent debunking of established monetary theories.
In case you missed it, the Bank of England issued a report in March explaining that standard textbooks get money and banking all wrong.
The authors point out that banks don’t wait for deposits before making loans, as often claimed by academics. It’s the other way around. Banks create new deposits when loans are made, for this is how loan proceeds are delivered to the ultimate recipients. The fact that deposits then slosh around from bank to bank has no bearing on future loan issuance, which is always matched with newly-created, not old, deposits.
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Tuesday, May 20, 2014
The General Theory Of Unknowing / Politics / Economic Theory
The Project
I am presently developing and testing the several hypotheses structuring this theory, which at present is only at the descriptive, not predictive stage. I am actively seeking research collaborators and funding to continue the works needed to achieve a defined theory with possible predictive capabilities. The theory concerns a wide range of disciplines, ranging from semantics, information and general systems theory, to economics and finance, political science, geopolitical and military studies, sociology, ethics and philosophy, social anthropology, and the general history of western civilization. Other disciplines are certainly concerned, notably the theory of governance and government.
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
Balcerowicz’s Polish Big Bang versus Ukraine / Politics / Economic Theory
On May 21, 2014, Leszek Balcerowicz will receive the 2014 Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty during a dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. The prestigious annual award by the Cato Institute carries with it a well-deserved check for $250,000.
For those who might have forgotten the accomplishments of my long-time friend, allow me to suggest that, in Balcerowicz’s case, a picture is literally worth a thousand words.
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Tuesday, May 20, 2014
The Successor to Keynes - Capital in the Twenty-First Century / Economics / Economic Theory
By Jeff Thomas, International Man
Europe is abuzz with Capital in the Twenty-First Century by French economist Thomas Piketty, released in Europe in March of this year and now a best-seller. It has since crossed the Atlantic and is already the number-one best-seller for booksmith Amazon. It has been called a “blockbuster” of a book, and many reviewers believe that it has the ability to revolutionise the study of economics.
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Monday, May 19, 2014
How Fractional Reserves and Inflation Cause Economic Inequality / Economics / Economic Theory
Andreas Marquart writes: Mises Institute:How would you translate your new book’s title into English?
Andreas Marquant: I would like to say The State Causes the Poverty It Later Claims to Solve. This is the title of my article on mises.org last December. An even better title could be The Austrian Answer to Thomas Piketty.
MI: Your book addresses the issue of income inequality. Is income inequality a bad thing?
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Saturday, May 17, 2014
How the Free Market Ends Discrimination / Politics / Economic Theory
When Branch Rickey integrated major league baseball in 1947 by hiring the great Jackie Robinson to play first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers, he did not do so because he was forced into it by any “civil rights” law. The federal civil rights laws at that point were almost twenty years into the future. Nor was he motivated by a sudden enlightenment on the issue of race. As the president and general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Rickey was paid to make the Dodgers as profitable as possible. In order to do that, he had to recruit and develop the best baseball players he could find, regardless of skin color or anything else. He succeeded immediately with the hiring of Robinson, as the Dodgers went to the World Series in that year, in no small part due to the efforts of Jackie Robinson.
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Thursday, May 15, 2014
What Bugs University Academic Economists / Economics / Economic Theory
For over 40 years, I have watched university economists attack Murray Rothbard in print. They never laid a glove on him.
They had certain things in common. They never published anything comparable to his book, Man, Economy, and State (1962). They never published anything comparable to America’s Great Depression (1963). They did not publish widely in any mainstream scholarly journals. Their existence was not acknowledged by Keynesians. But they knew Rothbard was a second rater, and some of them even said so.
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
Feudalism and Cronyism in Machiavelli’s Italy / Economics / Economic Theory
Jo Ann Cavallo writes: Although liberty is a recurring concern in Machiavelli’s writings, there is no consensus regarding either the definition of the concept or its relevance for his overall political thought. One direction of Machiavellian interpretation that has gained prominence in recent decades has focused on the concept of “libertas” in relation to a republican mode of government, even though Machiavelli’s use of liberty cannot be simply equated with republicanism. In tracing the various occurrences of the term in Machiavelli’s political works, Marcia Colish has pointed out that in the context of internal affairs “Machiavelli often connects libertà with certain personal rights and community benefits that characterize free states regardless of their constitutions.” She specifies, in fact, that “he clearly identifies freedom with the protection of private rights.”[1]
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Monday, May 12, 2014
How Consumers Rule In a Free Economy / Economics / Economic Theory
One of my favorite economists in the history of economic thought is the great Austrian, Carl Menger (1840-1921). While the mainstream of the economics profession acknowledges Menger’s place due to his contribution to the Marginalist Revolution in the 1870s, it otherwise ignores him because his theoretical framework does not lend itself to policy prescriptions. In an era in which the economics profession largely views itself as a shadow branch of government which is itself charged with managing the economy, thinkers like Menger (and those who work in his tradition) are not going to be extolled or studied in the same way that thinkers like Irving Fisher, John Maynard Keynes, Milton Friedman, or Paul Krugman have been.
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Friday, April 18, 2014
Cognitive Dissonance on Minimum Wages and Maximum Rents / Economics / Economic Theory
Gary Galles writes: “Many cities are pricey places to live.” That was the opening line and major premise of a recent Los Angeles Times opinion piece advocating that high-cost cities raise minimum wages to mitigate the problem. I was struck by the fact that for years, the exact same basis was used by the same left liberal groups to justify rent controls. Apparently, high costs of living, largely caused by a panoply of government taxes, regulations, and restrictions, justify still more government-imposed coercion in both the labor and housing markets. Unfortunately, those government “solutions” are not only based on flaws in basic economic logic, but they are mutually contradictory.
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Friday, April 18, 2014
The Sad State of the Economics Profession / Economics / Economic Theory
It is not an exaggeration to say the current reputation of economists is probably just below that of a used car salesman. The recent failures of economic policies to boost growth or employment have tarnished this image even more. This, however, is in sharp contrast to the past when economists were seen as the intellectual roadblock to popular misconceptions, bad ideas, or more importantly, government policies sold to the public on false assumptions. Popular slogans such as “protecting American jobs” play on nationalism, but in reality only serve special interests. The economist of the past would never have hesitated to highlight the fallacies in such reasoning.
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Thursday, April 10, 2014
For More Jobs and Stability, Set the Economy Free / Economics / Economic Theory
John P. Cochran writes: The headline in the print edition of theDenver Postof an associated press story on the nominationof Janet Yellen highlights a quote from President Obama, “She understands the human cost when people can’t find a job.” This statement about then-new Fed Chair Yellen, which emphasizes Yellen’s Keynesian-based commitment to the unemployment prong of the Fed’s dual mandate, underlies why some economists feared that no matter how bad policy might have been during Bernanke’s tenure, policy is likely to get worse rather than get better from a sound money perspective during a Yellen reign. Her empathy for the unemployed was clearly present in her remarks following her first official policy meeting which as reported by the Wall Street Journal “were a notable affirmation of her commitment to low rates until the economy is much stronger.” She emphasized, “The recovery still feels like a recession to many Americans, and it also looks that way in some economic statistics.” She then chose to support her remarks not with usual econ jargon and statistics, but“Ms. Yellen instead exhibited a personal touch ... by coloring her comments with experiences of three people who had struggled to gain full-time work.”
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Thursday, April 10, 2014
Entrepreneurship: The Driving Force of the Economy / Economics / Economic Theory
Author of The Capitalist and the Entrepreneur, Peter Klein has published numerous books and articles on entrepreneurship from an Austrian perspective. Dr. Klein, who is executive director and Carl Menger Research fellow at the Mises Institute, was interviewed in late 2013 by eTalk’s Niaz Uddin on the topic of entrepreneurship:
Niaz Uddin: Tell us about entrepreneurship. What are the different contexts of entrepreneurship?
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Monday, April 07, 2014
How Minimum Wage Laws Increase Poverty / Politics / Economic Theory
An Open letter to Thomas Perez, U.S. Secretary of Labor
Dear Secretary Perez:
Raising the minimum wage is a formula for causing unemployment among the least-skilled members of society. The higher wages are, the higher costs of production are. The higher costs of production are, the higher prices are. The higher prices are, the smaller are the quantities of goods and services demanded and the number of workers employed in producing them. These are all propositions of elementary economics that you and the President should well know.
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Sunday, April 06, 2014
We Don’t Need “Animal Spirits” to Understand Economics / Economics / Economic Theory
Per L. Bylund writes: A recently published article at The Week, titled “How can we unleash positive animal spirits into the economy? Change the narrative,” provides a clear example of what’s wrong with the perception of economics and why modern economic approaches, possibly aiming to amend the shortcomings“identified” by this perception, is at a loss of explaining anything important.
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Wednesday, March 26, 2014
We Do Not Live in a Post-Scarcity World / Economics / Economic Theory
Jeremy Rifkin long has perfected the art of adding two and two and getting five. In the 1980s, he claimed that entropy made it impossible for a free economy to exist, and therefore Rifkin concluded the state needed to plan and run things. How the state would triumph over the second law of thermodynamics is anyone’s guess. He later declared that a new “hydrogen economy” was just around the corner — government just needed to engage in central planning and order hydrogen to be our new fuel of choice.
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Wednesday, March 26, 2014
Minsky’s Financial Instability Hypothesis / Economics / Economic Theory
Looking back, I see that I have mentioned the name Hyman Minsky in no fewer than ten Thoughts from the Frontline letters in just the past two years; and his name has popped up in all four letters so far this month, most notably on March 1, when we brought back one of my most popular pieces, “Black Swans and Endogenous Uncertainty” (the “sandpile” letter) and last week, when the letter was titled “China’s Minksy Moment?”
I wasn’t consciously aware of how often I had trotted Minsky out as I sat (somewhat unstably, I have to admit) atop a headstrong horse in the foothills of the Argentine Andes the other day; but my precarious situation did somehow get me thinking of Minsky’s Financial Instability Hypothesis, and it occurred to me that both you and I might learn something by going right back to its source, which turns out to be a rather unprepossessing five-page paper Dr. Minsky published at Bard College in 1992.
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Sunday, March 16, 2014
Why Government Cash Hand Outs Does Not Help Alleviate Poverty / Economics / Economic Theory
The current rise in the cost of living in Malaysia can be attributed to the past policies of our Government. It can be traced back to the Global Financial Crisis in 2008. During that time a lot countries are badly affected and Malaysia is not spared either. The prices of commodities plunged due to reduced demand in the global marketplace. Since Malaysia’s economy depended much on commodity exports especially palm oil and rubber, it is badly affected. Malaysia’s economy recorded a 7.5% GDP growth at the beginning of 2008 but has since deteriorated to negative growth of 6.2% in 2009. This can be shown by the following graph.
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Thursday, March 13, 2014
John Rawls and Market Anarchy / Politics / Economic Theory
Gary Chartier in this impressive book has put readers doubly in his debt. Chartier strikes at the heart of the vastly influential political philosophy of John Rawls. Libertarians can only applaud him for this, but we have even more reason to be grateful to Chartier. Having neatly dispatched Rawls, Chartier goes on to offer a strong defense of market anarchy.
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Thursday, March 13, 2014
Inflating Assest Prices - Why the Wealth Effect Doesn’t Work / Economics / Economic Theory
Chris Casey writes: Higher equity prices will boost consumer wealth and help increase confidence, which can spur spending. — Ben Bernanke, 2010[1]
Across all financial media, between both political parties, and among most mainstream economists, the “wealth effect” is noted, promoted, and touted. The refrain is constant and the message seemingly simple: by increasing people wealth through rising stock and housing prices, the populace will increase their consumer spending which will spur economic growth. Its acceptance is as widespread as its justification is important, for it provides the rationale for the Federal Reserve’s unprecedented monetary expansion since 2008. While critics may dispute the wealth effect’s magnitude, few have challenged its conceptual soundness.[2] Such is the purpose of this article. The wealth effect is but a mantra without merit.
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Sunday, March 09, 2014
Robert Johnson: New Perspectives For Economics / Economics / Economic Theory
Some of Johnson's remarks are extraordinarily insightful.
I enjoyed his comments on the modern preoccupation with modeling. But I do think his looking back to the Thirty Years War for the trend towards abstract theory over the empirical method in general is a bit of a stretch. But it was kind of cool to think about it.
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Sunday, March 09, 2014
Economic Myth Busters – The Minimum Wage / Economics / Economic Theory
It has been quite some time since we did a ‘Myth Busters’, even though there obviously remains quite a bit of mythology. So we’re going to chop away at it piece by piece and demonstrate once again that the media, government, and what I like to the call the ‘establishment’ (which is the concatenation of the aforementioned and the banksters) couldn’t give a rip about the truth. The establishment only cares about what is expedient and convenient for itself.
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Wednesday, March 05, 2014
Bastiat's Paradox, Broken Windows, Deficit Spending And War / Economics / Economic Theory
Frederic Bastiat's early 19th century paradox is easy to recycle today. If the West, we mean a certain small number of gung-ho steroid-fed European politicians and their lookalikes in the USA, decided to borrow and spend what it takes to “call a war” with Putin's Russia to defend the Crimea against the violation of Ukraine's territorial integrity, would the net economic result be win-win or lose-lose?
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Monday, March 03, 2014
Anti-Logic and the Keynesian Economic “Stimulus” / Economics / Economic Theory
American political culture always seems to be “celebrating” the anniversary of something, be it JFK’s assassination (we just passed the 50th anniversary of that sad event) or the signing of some (mostly bad) legislation. The latest political activity to be enshrined with an anniversary is the so-called stimulus, the $800 billion monstrosity passed five years ago ostensibly to “put America back to work.”
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Monday, February 17, 2014
The Economic Singularity - Stuck in a Liquidity Trap / Economics / Economic Theory
I fully intended to write today about a recently released academic paper that illustrates nearly every bad idea currently being bandied about in the field of economics. The insidious part is that the paper is considered mainstream and noncontroversial. Simply reading it required me to up my blood pressure medicine dosage. It is going to take me a little longer to finish that letter, and I realized that it needs a certain setup – one that coauthor Jonathan Tepper and I conveniently wrote a few months ago and included in the book Code Red.
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Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Lowlife Keynesian Morons in Power / Politics / Economic Theory
As the scene opens, lights swirl in the eerie black background, crazily careening in a whirling kaleidoscope of disjointed light and dark. In the distance, sirens dimly wail. My face half-hidden in the gloom, I am mindlessly wiping the gleaming barrel of what appears to be a machinegun when I dully look up into the camera lens.
Staring directly into the camera, my narrowed, bloodshot eyes darting from side to side like the frightened little rat that I am, I feverishly say in a hoarse whisper “The Federal Reserve is monetizing the debt! We’re Freaking Doomed (WFD)!”
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
The Broken Limb and Burst Pipe Economic Fallacies / Economics / Economic Theory
Economics is haunted by more fallacies than any other study known to man. This is no accident. While certain public policies would in the long run benefit everybody, other policies would benefit one group only at the expense of all other groups. The group that would benefit by such policies, having such a direct interest in them, will argue for them plausibly and persistently. It will hire the best buyable minds to devote their whole time to presenting its case. And it will finally either convince the general public that its case is sound, or so befuddle it that clear thinking on the subject becomes next to impossible.
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Monday, February 03, 2014
The Keynesian Multiplier – Does it Exist? / Economics / Economic Theory
Dan Lieberman writes: Can someone clarify a significant economic and well accepted proposition that bothers me?The notion that the Keynesian multiplier means that “an exogenous increase in spending, such as an increase in government outlays, increases total spending by a multiple of that increase,” is troublesome. Is it possible to add one dollar to the money supply and magically turn it into more dollars? I don’t think this is possible. I believe economists have misinterpreted the multiplier. To me, it is not a multiplier. It is a divider.
Thursday, January 30, 2014
Minimum Wage Laws Kill Jobs / Economics / Economic Theory
President Obama set the chattering classes abuzz after his unilateral announcement to raise the minimum wage. During his State of the Union address, he sang the praises for his action, saying that “It’s good for the economy; it’s good for America.”[1] Yet this conclusion doesn’t pass the economic smell test; just look at the data from Europe.
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Monday, January 27, 2014
Economic Growths False Paradigm / Economics / Economic Theory
Raymond Matison writes: With pressing economic, banking, and systemic financial problems the world over, leaders of advanced nations both in Europe and in America are calling for programs to resume growth. President Obama in a recent State of the Union message proposed to reinvigorate growth in the US by doubling exports over the next several years. Prime minister Abe of Japan was a keynote speaker at the World Economic Forum in Davos his January outlining the need to rejuvenate growth. Japan has been vigorously increasing its money supply and depressing interest rates in order to promote the growth of its exports and GDP. Government leaders seek growth as the universal answer for maintaining government solvency as well as citizen prosperity, and it seems that no government leader anywhere in the world seeks less growth. Yet few have really considered recently whether growth is the promised panacea of nations and its citizens. This article raises reasonable questions regarding such policy and its desirability.
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Thursday, January 23, 2014
More of the Same From the Keynesians in 2014 / Economics / Economic Theory
Harry Goslin writes: The first rule I teach my economics students is that when the economy fails, it’s usually safe to blame the government. To paraphrase Winston Smith in 1984: If we accept that the state is the source of economic misery, “all else follows.”
As a science, economics is really not that difficult because it encompasses decisions we make every day that impact our well-being and the well-being of those around us.
Thursday, January 09, 2014
Knowledge and Power - The Need for a New Economics / Economics / Economic Theory
In last week’s Thoughts from the Frontline I talked about the Age of Transformation, attempting to refute Robert’s Gordon rather stark and gloomy view of the future growth potential of the economy. That letter generated a rather significant amount of reader response, both pro and con, as not everyone agrees with my decidedly optimistic long-term view of the future. It might be fun and thought-provoking, in fact, to do a letter that deals with some of the issues you raised. I really do have some of the smartest readers of any economics and investing letter out there.
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Sunday, January 05, 2014
The Minimum Wage Forces Low-Skill Workers to Compete with Higher-Skill Workers / Economics / Economic Theory
The efforts underway by the Service Employees International Union, and its political and media allies, to raise the minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 per hour would, if successful, cause major unemployment among low-skilled workers, who are the supposed beneficiaries of those efforts.
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Tuesday, December 24, 2013
Economic Illiterate Proposal: Inflation Creates Jobs / Economics / Economic Theory
Those looking economically illiterate proposals can have a field day reading Ezra Klein's "Wonkblog" on the Washington Post.
In Full Employment Gives People Jobs Klein states (citing two others) "The Federal Reserve Bank's focus on keeping inflation below 2 percent effectively sacrifices the other half of its dual mandate: full employment."
It's difficult to know where to start debating such economic lunacy, but let's briefly discuss the notion of a "dual mandate".
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Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Economic Lessons from Nazi Germany - Starvation and Military Keynesianism / Economics / Economic Theory
Julian Adorney writes: Many Americans, from the Glenview State Bank of Chicago to author Ellen Brown assume that the Nazi economic regime was successful, but closer examination tells a tale of rationing, shortages, and starvation. Learning why their economy failed can teach us how to avoid the same fate.
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Friday, November 29, 2013
Ron Paul vs Paul Krugman: True Prophet vs False Prophet / Economics / Economic Theory
Isn’t it strange? We are living in the 21st century, a period of time in which people buy land on the moon, humanity has dozens of satellites providing GPS services and real time traffic information, internet brings people and information as close as one click, science and technology are making historic break throughs … but economists cannot agree on the real cause of the latest financial crash (2008).
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Sunday, November 17, 2013
New York's Skyscraper Curse Signaling Economic Crisis / Economics / Economic Theory
It is now official! New York City has won the title of having the nation’s tallest structure. The heated controversy between New York and Chicago was settled recently when the Council of Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (based in Chicago) decided that the 408-foot spire sitting atop the One World Trade Center could be included in the total height of the building.
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Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Expendable People as a Result of Murderous Academic Economics / Politics / Economic Theory
The English who settled America brought English culture with them. The colonies were nothing but little Englands. When the colonists revolted, they were merely trying to get free of the tyrannical English monarchy, not trying to change the culture. They were perfectly happy with the English way of life. They carried on its practices and adopted the English system of common law.
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Monday, October 28, 2013
Economies are Not Destroyed in a Day / Economics / Economic Theory
Nicolás Cachanosky writes: Earlier this month, Argentina's leading conservative paper, La Nación published an unsigned editorial comparing the economies of Argentina and Venezuela. The editorial concluded that as economic freedom declines in Argentina, and as Argentina adopts more of what Chavez called “twenty-first century socialism,” it is becoming increasingly similar to Venezuela. Is this true? Will Argentina suffer the same fate as Venezuela where poverty is increasing and toilet paper can be a luxury?
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Saturday, October 19, 2013
To Save Europe, Free the Markets / Economics / Economic Theory
Frank Hollenbeck writes: The current European economic strategy is to kick the can down the road. Debt levels in almost all European countries continue to rise and growth seems to be a long forgotten memory. The day of reckoning is around the corner, as Rudi Dornbush once warned, “[t]he crisis takes a much longer time coming than you think, and then it happens much faster than you would have thought, and that’s sort of exactly the Mexican story. It took forever and then it took a night.”
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Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Robert Shiller’s Egalitarian, Regulated, and Subsidized “Good Society” / Politics / Economic Theory
What defines a “good society” and how can we use finance to achieve it? Robert Shiller takes the former question as settled, and dedicates his 2012 book Finance and the Good Society to the latter: what is wrong with modern finance, and how should it be restructured to reach this ideal?
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Monday, September 30, 2013
Free Immigrants, Free Capital, Free Markets / Economics / Economic Theory
Early this year, the Saudi Arabian government decided to crack down on foreign workers. Writing for The Globe and Mail, Martin Dokoupil and Marwa Rashad argue that this will lead to a “stronger, more diverse economy.” In particular, they focus on the plethora of businesses open at the moment — more than they think is necessary — and the resultant reduction in both “unnecessary” labor and businesses that would be possible if these foreign workers were forced to leave.
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Wednesday, September 25, 2013
The American Economy is Not a Free-Market Economy / Economics / Economic Theory
Those of us who favor the free market must confront a problem. The virtues of the market, and the vices of socialism and interventionism, have been made incontestably clear by Mises, Rothbard, Hazlitt and others. The case for the free market, as these great figures explain it, can readily be grasped and demands no esoteric knowledge. Yet many academics reject the market. They condemn capitalism for leaving many in poverty and for glaring inequalities. How can so many academics fail to grasp what seem to us obvious truths?
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Monday, September 23, 2013
Fear the Boom, Not the Bust / Economics / Economic Theory
Frank Hollenbeck writes: 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.
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Sunday, September 22, 2013
Intellectual Property is Not True Property / Companies / Economic Theory
David D'Amato writes: As the legal melee between Apple and Samsung continues, the “patent wars” are again front-page news. During August of this year, the International Trade Commission, successor to the Progressive Era-founded Tariff Commission, announced that Samsung can no longer import into the U.S. certain mobile devices. The Commission found that the subject products infringe on a number of Apple’s patents, but the president may still veto its decision regarding importation. As it happens, when the reverse scenario came about in June, and the Commission banned Apple from importing products infringing on Samsung patents, Obama did wield his veto. The legal and political drama at hand is just the latest installment in an ongoing string of lawsuits aimed at protecting, in the words of The New Yorker’s Nicholas Thompson, “patents that are often either inscrutable or mundane.”
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Thursday, September 19, 2013
The End Of Economics And The Last (Stock)Man / Politics / Economic Theory
DENY AND OBLITERATE HISTORY
“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their understanding of their own history.” ~ George Orwell.
In George Orwell‘s “Nineteen Eighty-Four”, written in 1948, the Ministry of Truth is responsible for all needed falsification of historical events, and the obliteration of all preceding interpretation of these events.
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Wednesday, September 18, 2013
The Need for a New Economics / Economics / Economic Theory
In today's Outside the Box, my good friend George Gilder, the well-known techno-utopian, attempts with some success to turn economics on its ear. "The economy is not chiefly an incentive system," he asserts, "it is an information system." And information, truly understood, is about the introduction of novelty, or "surprise," into a system. In the case of the economy, it's about invention and entrepreneurship. The new information that is injected gets converted into knowledge; and thus, says George, it is accumulated knowledge, rather than money or material, that constitutes true wealth.
And thus the economy is driven not so much by powerful people and institutions wielding the levers of the economic machine as it is by the ever-increasing power of information and knowledge. Economists and the governments they work for often appear to prefer a deterministic, no-surprises (and too-big-to-fail) economy, but that way lies economic stagnation. If determinism worked, socialism would have thrived.
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Sunday, September 15, 2013
Understanding the Cancer Stage of Capitalism / Politics / Economic Theory
Giorgio Baruchello writes: Review of John McMurtry‘s Book - While US President Barack Obama bangs loud drums of war, the Pope (the first of the Catholic Church to choose the name of Francis) accuses “the great ones of the earth [to] want to solve” the world’s crises “with a war… Because, for them, money is more important than people! And war is just that: it is an act of faith in money, in idols” (“Pope Francis: War is the suicide of humanity”, Vatican Radio, 2 June 2013).
The Church of Rome itself rejects “the magic of the market” and it sees that the “invisible hand” has got fingers that pull triggers.
Sunday, September 01, 2013
Savings Glut vs. Low Interest Rates / Economics / Economic Theory
Five years after the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, economists are still starkly divided as to its causes. Perhaps this is not too surprising as we are now more than 80 years past the Great Depression with little end in sight to the debate surrounding the causes of that downturn.
Most economists fall into one of two camps when explaining where the imbalances originated that led up to the current crisis. Austrian School economists are in the unique position of being able to reconcile these two camps, even while favoring the first explanation to the second.
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Monday, August 26, 2013
Debt, Inflation and Economy - Trying To Stay Sane In An Insane World / Economics / Economic Theory
In Part 1 of this article I documented the insane remedies prescribed by the mad banker scientists presiding over this preposterous fiat experiment since they blew up the lab in 2008. In Part 2 I tried to articulate why the country has allowed itself to be brought to the brink of catastrophe. There is no turning back time. The choices we've made and avoided making over the last one hundred years are going to come home to roost over the next fifteen years. We are in the midst of a great Crisis that will not be resolved until the mid-2020s. The propagandists supporting the vested interests continue to assure the voluntarily oblivious populace the economy is improving, jobs are plentiful, inflation is under control, and housing is recovering. Bernanke and his band of merry money manipulators, Obama and his gaggle of government apparatchiks, and their mendacious mainstream media mouthpieces have enacted radical measures in the last five years that reek of desperation in their effort to give the appearance of revival to a failing economic system. Stimulating the net worth of bankers and connected corporate cronies through engineered stock market gains has not trickled down to the peasants. Our owners try to convince us it's raining, but we know they're pissing down our backs. Our Crisis mood is congealing.
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Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Economic Future - The Blip! / Economics / Economic Theory
This week's Outside the Box does not make me feel good, but author Benjamin Wallace-Wells does explain Robert Gordon’s views better than anyone I have seen. (And of course the whole point of Outside the Box is to yank us out of our comfort zones from time to time.)
Dr. Robert Gordon is a professor of economics who has held a named chair at Northwestern University for decades; but as the author of this piece says, "[T]he scope of his bleakness has given him, over the past year, a newfound public profile." Gordon offers us two key predictions, both discomfiting. The first pertains to the near future, when, he says, our economy will grow at less than half its average rate over the last century because of a whole raft of structural headwinds.
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Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Socialism - Appeasing Envy / Politics / Economic Theory
Any attempt to equalize wealth or income by forced redistribution must only tend to destroy wealth and income. Historically the best the would-be equalizers have ever succeeded in doing is to equalize downward. This has even been caustically described as their intention. “Your levellers,” said Samuel Johnson in the mid-eighteenth century, “wish to level down as far as themselves; but they cannot bear levelling up to themselves.”
And in our own day we find even an eminent liberal like the late Mr. Justice Holmes writing: “I have no respect for the passion for equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy.”[1]
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Sunday, July 21, 2013
Inflation or Deflation? / Economics / Economic Theory
By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method, they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth. Those to whom the system brings windfalls . . . become 'profiteers', who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie, whom the inflationism has impoverished not less than the proletariat. As the inflation proceeds . . . all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless…. – John Maynard Keynes
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Sunday, June 30, 2013
Market Monopoly Through Austrian Economics Lenses / Economics / Economic Theory
Jonathan Newman writes: A recent 60 Minutes piece by Lesley Stahl cut into an extremely urgent problem of our day: expensive sunglasses. The report identified a possible monopoly in the market for glasses, a firm called Luxottica, which owns almost all the leading brands of eyewear, four large retailers of glasses, and even a popular vision insurance provider.
Stahl interviewed the CEO of Luxottica, Andrea Guerra, and questioned his business practices, the prices of his products, and Luxottica’s growth over the years. At times, she almost seemed to scold the successful CEO for, well, being so successful.
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Wednesday, June 26, 2013
Current U.S. Economic Climate According to The Prince of Darkness / Economics / Economic Theory
As long-time readers know, I have a very eclectic group of friends and associates. Colorful, opinionated, generally both fun and funny, they make for interesting times and discussions wherever I go. I am not certain why they associate with such a mild-mannered, soft-spoken, Muddle-Through Texan like me, but most agree that I am at least good for comic relief. Next week I will be in the midst of some unabashed bulls, but today I offer up for your reading pleasure a note from a friend who is on the Dark Side of the fence, though he is hardly what you could call a conventional bear. He is Rich Yamarone, Chief Economist for Bloomberg.
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Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Without Knowledge of the Past There is No Future / Economics / Economic Theory
Wim Grommen writes: Current problems associated with the end of the third industrial revolution
Humanity is being confronted with the same problems as those at the end of the second industrial revolution such as decreasing stock exchange rates, highly increasing unemployment, towering debts of companies and governments and bad financial positions of banks. Every production phase or civilization or other human invention goes through a so called transformation process, a transition.
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Sunday, June 23, 2013
Keynes And The Cult Of Economic Doom / Economics / Economic Theory
FERGUSON APOLOGIZES
Iconic history don and bestselling author Niall Ferguson apologised "unreservedly" for "stupid and tactless" remarks in which he implied that John Maynard Keynes did not care about future generations – “in the long run we are all dead” - because Keynes was a childless homosexual. As we know to our present and future cost, Keynes was more concerned about ultra low short-term interest rates and vast government handouts, financed by borrowing. Ferguson claims his disagreement with Keynes, his opposition to deficit spending and the economic philosophy called “Keynesianism” was nothing to do with Keynes' sexual orientation. Ferguson said his real point was: “The point I had made in my presentation was that in the long run our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren are alive and will have to deal with the consequences of our economic actions." On that score we can only agree.
Thursday, June 20, 2013
Is GDP Economic Growth a Hoax? What are they Hiding? / Economics / Economic Theory
There is always an assurance from our Government that the economy is doing fine, jobs are recovering, wages are going up and prices are under control. We are never been told what actually happened behind the scene or problems our economy is facing. Through propaganda by the media we are persuaded that everything is in the safe hands of the Government.
Even when economies around us are collapsing we are led to believe that our economy is the strongest, our share market is the best performing, our economic fundamentals are the best or in short we are the best managed economy. We are given the impression that our economy is ‘invincible and different from others’. But the problem is whether our economy is living up to what was preached by our Government. Is there a way to gauge the real performance of our economy other than relying on figures published by them?
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Sunday, June 16, 2013
Revenge of the Minsky Moment, Economists Are Still Clueless / Economics / Economic Theory
Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is past the ocean is flat again. - John Maynard Keynes, A Tract on Monetary Reform
There can be few fields of human endeavor in which history counts for so little as in the world of finance. Past experience, to the extent that it is part of memory at all, is dismissed as the primitive refuge of those who do not have insight to appreciate the incredible wonders of the present. - John Kenneth Galbraith
Hitler must have been rather loosely educated, not having learned the lesson of Napoleon's autumn advance on Moscow. - Sir Winston Churchill
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Wednesday, June 12, 2013
The Risk of Government Economic Policies and the Rationing of Retirement / Economics / Economic Theory
In addition to our own, there is another conference I normally go to every spring; but sadly, I missed it this year. Rob Arnott of Research Affiliates indulges me and lets me attend the annual Research Affiliates Advisory Panel he conducts at some exclusive location (usually but not always) in Southern California, in close proximity to one or more fabulous gourmet establishments. And he is an oenophile of the first rank, a pastime that at one time in my life was a huge attraction. I now just live vicariously when he orders wine.
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Tuesday, June 11, 2013
The Nonsense Behind State Economic Intervention / Economics / Economic Theory
Both Keynesians and monetarists believe that increased government spending, or more money injected into the economy, is sometimes necessary. The intervention is in the form of unfunded government spending, artificially low interest rates to boost demand for money and bank credit, or a drive to make the currency “competitive” by lowering it. These methods have been tried unsuccessfully time and again, and they must be denounced if we are to understand our true economic condition.
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Friday, May 31, 2013
Euro-zone Keynesian Economic Dogmatism / Economics / Economic Theory
Lest I be accused of picking on US-centered media outlets, we’re going to spend a bit of time this week dissecting a Eurozone Reuters article which puts on full display the completely absurd rationale of the Keynesian economic model. This folks is truly the stinker of the year (so far) right here. Unfortunately, it also lays bare the dogmatic nature of economic thinking. It should be no surprise really; the same dogmatism exists in the political and religious arenas as well. Dogmatism was once explained to me as ‘clinging to a particular belief or beliefs in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary’. While this is not the ‘official’ Webster’s definition, it makes the most sense to the average person and is very fitting for this discussion.
Friday, May 31, 2013
Keynesian Insanity Defence Against Austrian Austerity / Economics / Economic Theory
I just finished reading The Smith/Klein/Kalecki Theory of Austerity by Paul Krugman and I believe it is the most disingenuous piece he has ever written.
Krugman comes out blazing with the statement "Noah Smith recently offered an interesting take on the real reasons austerity garners so much support from elites, no matter how badly it fails in practice."
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Economic Philosophy And The New Cycle / Economics / Economic Theory
DENY THE NEGATION
Unknown to many, the dominant political economic doctrine of today, certainly in the OECD countries is the "liberal market doctrine" was built on denial. Since the 2008 crisis, this doctrine has become a mix-and-mingle of 1980s Neoliberalism plus a rejuvenated or reycled 1940s Keynesianism. In other words there is non-intervention in markets, certainly when it concerns fighting near-total monopolies like Microsoft or Google or finding the populace a job, plus massive state borrowing and bail outs of Bad Banks, called too big to fail. The principle is:
Monday, May 20, 2013
Keynesian Phrenology - Our Rulers Are Nutty as Well as Evil / Politics / Economic Theory
I am getting more and more upset about the future of the economy, especially the part where I will probably still be alive to suffer through it, instead of being safely dead and gone, laughing disdainfully from whatever circle of Dante’s hell that is reserved for us lousy fathers, worthless husbands, lackluster employees and all-around lazy bastards.
“Hahaha!” I will bellow. “Now suffer! Suffer, you morons who actually believed that the idiocy of Keynesian economics would NOT end in disaster! From the heart of hell I strike at thee!”
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Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Anti Economic Growth, De-growth, Re-growth / Economics / Economic Theory
DECRECIMIENTO POSTWACHSTUM
Anti-consumerism is steadily advancing and gaining political visibility in Europe, as a Lost Decade opens up for Europe's present 29 million unemployed persons. Europe's huge ranks of youth unemployed, sometimes over 50% of the 16-25 year age group in the worst affected countries, know they have No Future. In some countries like Greece, they have been simply and officially told by the government that their only chance is to get out of the country. In others like Spain, the depth of crisis has forced the state to seize some foreclosed properties, simply to prevent the country's ever growing number of homeless families becoming too socially explosive, but its youth has No Future.
Monday, May 06, 2013
Keynes - Two Sides of the Same Debased Coin / Economics / Economic Theory
Hunter Lewis writes: In the beginning of The General Theory, John Maynard Keynes says that his ideas will no doubt be rejected because they are so novel and revolutionary. Toward the end of the same book, he seems to have forgotten this because now he says he is reviving the same centuries-old ideas that he had once dismissed as the most absurd fallacies. At least he acknowledges that he is changing his position, although he does not explain how his ideas can be new, revolutionary, and also centuries old.
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Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Paul Krugman - The Most Dangerous Man in the World / Economics / Economic Theory
Keith Fitz-Gerald writes: When it comes to spending or saving, it's always a contentious debate.
But the risks are rarely as high as they are now for the U.S. and most major industrial nations. Such fundamental economic decisions will move a country forward (or backward) for decades, not months, and can't be undone quickly.
So let's choose the "winner" and "loser" of this debate carefully.
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Thursday, April 25, 2013
The Commanding Heights Of Keynesian Nonsense / Economics / Economic Theory
KRUGMAN'S BLUES
American singer Loudon Wainwright III has a song with this line: "I read the New York Times, it's where I get the news. Paul Krugman's on the op-ed page, that's where I get the blues".
Every era needs its gurus and sages, we are told. Keynes was in fact only an elite-approved guru right at the end of his life, but managed to do a lot of damage before quitting this world, leaving us the IMF as well as the already long-dead Bretton Woods agreement.
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Tuesday, April 23, 2013
What Do Economies Grow Into? / Economics / Economic Theory
"The world’s leading economies acknowledged on Friday that 'further actions are required' to put the global economy on track for strong, stable and balanced growth.", writes the FT. The torture never stops. Not that we had expected it to just today.
Well, alright then, you can make a point that the biggest news in economics last week was the revelation of the errors in Rogoff and Reinhart's "debt over 90% is deadly" paper. Personally, I think what is still much bigger is the - renewed - revelation that actual policies executed by actual politicians have been based on that paper. Talk about poverty of ideas and imagination. But maybe that shouldn't be surprising. If anything's the core of economics it's such poverty. And that politicians in turn base their policies on that poverty is only fitting. As an old Buddhist adage says: If and when everyone is mindlessly stupid, will anyone notice?
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Saturday, April 13, 2013
What Was Wrong with Thatcher's Poll Tax / Economics / Economic Theory
Riots in the streets; protest against a hated government; cops arresting protesters. A familiar story these days. But suddenly we find that the protests are directed, not against a hated Communist tyranny in Eastern Europe, but against Mrs. Thatcher's regime in Britain, a supposed paragon of liberty and the free market. What's going on here? Are anti-government demonstrators heroic freedom-fighters in Eastern Europe, but only crazed anarchists and alienated punks in the West?
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Friday, April 12, 2013
Why Paul Krugman is Wrong About Margaret Thatcher / Politics / Economic Theory
As the top Keynesian gadfly, Paul Krugman's recent attack on Margaret Thatcher wasn't very surprising.
In a blog post on the very day she passed, he questioned whether or not Margaret Thatcher had actually made any difference to the performance of the British economy.
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Friday, April 12, 2013
Seoul the New Capital of Capitalism / Economics / Economic Theory
Picture a mono-racial New York metropolitan area with a fraction of the murders, if you can. Add in unreadable signs and buildings and infrastructure completed in 1960 or later. Then you might have a picture of Seoul, the capital of the Republic of Korea and, quite possibly, the new center of global capitalism. At least, that is my conclusion after spending several days there on academic and professional pursuits.
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Friday, April 12, 2013
The Keynesian Endgame / Economics / Economic Theory
David Stockman writes: Even the tepid post-2008 recovery has not been what it was cracked up to be, especially with respect to the Wall Street presumption that the American consumer would once again function as the engine of GDP growth. It goes without saying, in fact, that the precarious plight of the Main Street consumer has been obfuscated by the manner in which the state’s unprecedented fiscal and monetary medications have distorted the incoming data and economic narrative.
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Friday, April 12, 2013
Is Austrian Economics a Cult? / Economics / Economic Theory
I have experienced not one but two cases where eminent mainstream economists characterized Austrian economics as a cult. I told a friend and colleague of mine who is also an Austrian economist that I would be writing about this. He was worried that to mention the fact that two leading economists held the opinion that Austrian economics is cultish would place the praxeological school in a bad light. Well, maybe it will. However, I strongly believe that "sunlight is the best disinfectant." If these two dismal scientists strongly believe this, they can hardly be the only ones. My goal in writing this present essay is to attack this view as the pernicious and false doctrine that it is. I want to confront it, not run and hide from it.
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Monday, April 08, 2013
The Economic World According To Stockman / Economics / Economic Theory
RIPELY CONSIDERED
In a review of main points from David Stockman's troublesome new book for peddlers of the mantra "We are all Keynesians now", in an economic world that Keynes wouldn't even be able to recognize, William Anderson listed the ways that "Neo Keynesians" not only hobble the fragile booms their basically schizophrenic policies produce, but also the fake recoveries that follow in their wake. In particular Anderson looks at Stockman's argument that when an economic boom crashes, the proper response of governments and monetary authorities should be to restore sound money and not try to prop up enterprises that failed in the crash. http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article39835.html
Friday, April 05, 2013
The Stockman Backlash / Economics / Economic Theory
This week, while economists should have been closely considering the implications of the actual bankruptcy of Stockton, California, they instead heaped scorn on the perceived ideological bankruptcy of David Stockman. In other words, Stockman trumped Stockton.
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Thursday, March 21, 2013
Grant Williams's Economic Theory of Disconnectivity / Economics / Economic Theory
Grant Williams writes: On March 14, 1879, in Ulm, a tiny town on the banks of the river Danube in the German state of Baden-Württemberg, a boy was born to a Jewish electrical engineer and his wife.
Hermann and Pauline Einstein had no idea that their first-born son would one day change the way humans look at the world around them.
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Saturday, March 16, 2013
Profitably (& Properly) Understooding Libertarian Economics / Economics / Economic Theory
Libertarians commendably focus on maximizing Economic Freedom and Individual Liberty. Who, after all, wants not to be economically and politically free?
But there is considerable dispute even among libertarians about what freedom does, or should entail regarding a variety of crucial issues such as “free trade,” immigration, and the proper role of government.
A profitable (and proper) understanding of Freedom is essential to maximizing Individual and Political Freedom, and to Protecting Economic Freedom and thus enhancing Wealth and Prosperity.
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Saturday, March 09, 2013
The New Limits To Economic Growth / Economics / Economic Theory
HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE
In a recent post Brian Bloom gave a list of reasons why he thinks politicians, worldwide, are spitting in the wind by turning their prayer wheel of "reform and recovery" to "relaunch the economy", which for major sectors like carmaking in Europe are facing an endgame scenario. In the recent high profile spat between the CEO of Titan International, who totally rejected any idea of taking over Goodyear's unprofitable tyre factory in Amiens, and France's minister of Industrial Recovery, Arnaud Montebourg, Titan's CEO said he could buy a tyre factory in either China or India where at most he would need to pay the workers 1 euro per hour: say $250 per month. Nobody in Europe can even eat and buy clothes and shoes to put on their backs and feet, let alone buy a house, electricity and water, a car, cellphone, Internet access and all the rest, for that pay. Starvation wages to "relaunch the economy" !
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Degrowth, Limits To Economic Growth And The Real World / Economics / Economic Theory
40 YEARS OF DEGROWTH
More than 40 years ago, in 1972, the MIT researcher Dennis Meadows and his team published "Limits to Growth", a report paid for by the Club of Rome. The study created a massive wave of interest, in part due to "environmentalism" only having just begun as a major theme, at that time, marked by the first UN conference on the environment, in Stockholm, the same year.
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Ignore the Keynesian Axis of Evil / Economics / Economic Theory
Your points in the November 29 column on Paul Krugman and the Austrians makes good points, and I would like to make a few comments of my own.
I do believe that when one makes apocalyptic comments, one gets what he deserves if the predictions don't pan out. As you said, that does not mean the Austrians are wrong regarding money and inflation, but expansions of money, especially in the way that the Fed has gone about doing so, are going to have a number of effects, rising consumer prices being only one of them.
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Saturday, February 16, 2013
Zombinomics - Paul Krugman and Zombie Financial History / Economics / Economic Theory
Murray Rothbard liked to say that economists often tended to specialize in the area where their knowledge was the worst, and given Paul Krugman's butchery of the historical record, I'd say Rothbard had a good point. Regular readers of Krugman's columns and blog posts and other public statements would believe, for example, that World War II ended the Great Depression, that Jimmy Carter and Ted Kennedy (who were major forces in deregulation during the 1970s) were conservative Republicans, and that the only thing better than war to bring prosperity would be the nationwide preparation to fight an invasion of imaginary space aliens.
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Friday, February 15, 2013
From Shipping To Shopping: Rationing To Economic Austerity / Economics / Economic Theory
MODELS AND PRECEDENTS
When World War II started in September 1939 the UK's first rationed commodity was unsurprisingly petroleum. By January 1940 food was added to the list: bacon, butter and sugar were firstly rationed, followed by meat, tea, coffee, jam, biscuits, breakfast cereals, cheese, eggs, lard, milk, canned fruits and dried fruits. This, also unsurprisingly, produced a black market within the first 12 months.
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Politicians Waging War on Work / Economics / Economic Theory
Nicholas Freiling writes: Employment law is a mainstay of state economic policy. Few question its efficacy as a means to correct “market failures”—like unlivable wages for meaningful work—that would leave society in shambles. In fact, no serious debate exists among American policymakers about the benefits of such laws. Their utility is simply assumed.
But laws that restrict or stipulate the terms of voluntary employment contracts stifle economic progress and make life harder for everyone—even those for whom the laws were designed to aid.
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Sunday, February 10, 2013
The Economic Errors of Keynes / Economics / Economic Theory
[Los Errores de la Vieja Economía • Juan Ramón Rallo • UNIÓN EDITORIAL, S.A.; 1st edition]
The Austrian School of economics has provided the world with devastating critics of Keynes's magnum opus The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (TGT) for a long time. Friedrich A. von Hayek, Jacques Rueff, Henry Hazlitt, Murray Rothbard, Ludwig Lachmann, Ludwig von Mises, and William Hutt have already provided important arguments against Keynes and Keynesianism.
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Sunday, February 10, 2013
Fed’s Destructive Monetary Policies Expose Mainstream Economic Fallacies / Economics / Economic Theory
At the annual meeting of the American Economic Association in San Diego (January 4–6, 2013), Harvard professor of economics Benjamin Friedman said,
The standard models we teach … simply have no room in them for what most of the world’s central banks have done in response to the crisis.
Friedman also advises sweeping aside the importance of the role of monetary aggregates. On this he said,
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Saturday, February 09, 2013
Veblen's Prediction: The Triumph Of Capital Rent / Economics / Economic Theory
THEN AND NOW
As early as 1921 Thorstein Veblen felt able to predict that capital rentiers in the non-communist western economies would voluntarily abandon industry, like the rentiers of the recently founded Soviet Union who had been forced at gunpoint to abandon their control of industry, and the "super profits" that industry could deliver. His argument was that capital rentiers in the "free market" economies had already proven, during and after the long depression that started in April 1873 and tailed off by the end of the 1880s, that they could extract more rent, or super profits from the "pure play" of capital, than from classic or conventional economic rent extracting activities, like industry.
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Paul Krugman May Be the World's Last Flat Earth Keynesian Economist / Economics / Economic Theory
Keith Fitz-Gerald writes: Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Dr. Paul Krugman is at it again.
A favorite of the Keynesian crowd, he claimed earlier this week that fixing the deficit is important but added that "doing it now would be disastrous." He also observed that the 10-year U.S. debt situation isn't really all that bad.
At least he's consistent. I'll give him that.
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Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Keynes Said: Lets Euthanize The Rentiers, Instead, We Euthanized The Economy / Economics / Economic Theory
In the end notes to his 1936 'General Theory', John Maynard Keynes said that he looked forward to the "Euthanasia of the Rentier", to be replaced by “communal saving by the agency of the state; maintained at a level which will allow the growth of capital up to the point where it ceases to be scarce”.
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Wednesday, January 23, 2013
The Free Money Miracle? / Economics / Economic Theory
Jonathan Goodwin writes: The "Miracle of Wörgl," refers to the story of currency demurrage and the impact it had on the economy of Wörgl, a small town in Austria. For a bill of such currency to retain its face value, the currency holder must pay a regular, periodic payment (a tax) for a stamp or other marking. Wörgl is regularly touted by advocates of demurrage as a successful implementation of such a currency, one designed to encourage velocity due to the incentive to spend it in order to avoid the periodic tax.
The experiment at Wörgl was implemented by the town’s mayor, Michael Unterguggenberger in the midst of the Great Depression. Wörgl, like many towns throughout the world at the time, was suffering from high unemployment and low economic activity. The experiment began on the 31st of July 1932, with the issuing of "Certified Compensation Bills," a form of currency commonly known as Stamp Scrip, or Freigeld. It resulted in a boom in government projects, and a corresponding increase in employment and economic activity not just in the government sector, but throughout the town.
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Monday, January 14, 2013
Austrian Economics in 2013 / Economics / Economic Theory
Regular readers of my articles either have some knowledge of Austrian economic theory or at least suspect that Keynesian and monetarist alternatives are flawed. Their failures are becoming more evident, which suggests we will hear more of Austrian theory in 2013. So how is Austrian theory different? Consider the following simple propositions in accordance with Austrian theory, which we can confirm from personal experience:
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Monday, December 24, 2012
Present Crisis Pattern, End of the Third Industrial Revolution / Economics / Economic Theory
Wim Grommen writes: This paper advances a hypothesis of the end of the third industrial revolution and the beginning of a new transition. Every production phase or civilization or human invention goes through a so- called transformation process. Transitions are social transformation processes that cover at least one generation. In this paper I will use one such transition to demonstrate the position of our present civilization. When we consider the characteristics of the phases of a social transformation we may find ourselves at the end of what might be called the third industrial revolution. The paper describes the four most radical transitions for mankind and the effects for mankind of these transitions: the Neolithic transition, the first industrial revolution, the second industrial revolution and the third industrial revolution.
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Sunday, December 23, 2012
Government Spending is Not Economic Growth: Real GDPP 2000–2011 / Economics / Economic Theory
In the 1930s and 1940s, when the modern system of national income and product accounts (NIPA) was being developed, the scope of national product was a hotly debated issue. No issue stirred more debate than the question, Should government product be included in gross product? Simon Kuznets (Nobel laureate in economic sciences, 1971), the most important American contributor to the development of the accounts, had major reservations about including all government purchases in national product. Over the years, others have elaborated on these reasons and adduced others.
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Sunday, December 23, 2012
Bernanke Loosens Up, Fundementally Misunderstands How Weath is Created / Economics / Economic Theory
On Wednesday December 12, 2012 Fed policy makers announced that they will boost their main stimulus tool by adding $45 billion of monthly Treasury purchases to an existing program to buy $40 billion of mortgage debt a month.
This decision is likely to boost the Fed’s balance sheet from the present $2.86 trillion to $4 trillion by the end of next year. Policy makers also announced that an almost zero interest rate policy will stay intact as long as the unemployment rate is above 6.5% and the rate of inflation doesn’t exceed the 2.5% figure.
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Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Obama's Economic War on Women, The Free Market Punishes Discrimination / Politics / Economic Theory
With the re-election of President Barack Obama, it is increasingly evident that the tax eaters outnumber the taxpayers in America. From food stamps to free cell phones, President Obama has achieved significant political success by putting more and more Americans on the government dole. During his recent re-election bid, this effort included considerable pandering to women voters.
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Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Capital Formation and the Fiscal Cliff, Economic Perception Vs Reality / Economics / Economic Theory
In today’s economic environment, we often complain about volatility and uncertainty, but there is one thing I think we can be fairly certain of: taxes are going up. I constantly try to impress upon my kids, most of whom are now adults, that ideas and actions have consequences. In today’s letter we will look at some of the consequences of an increase in taxes. Please note that this is different from arguing whether taxes should rise or fall. For all intents and purposes that debate is over. As investors, our job is to deal with reality. We must play the hand we are dealt. Taxation is a complex issue, but let’s see if a few word pictures can help us understand what we face.
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Friday, November 23, 2012
Economics Can't Violate the Laws of Physics: Rising Systemic Risk and Multiple Black Swans / Economics / Economic Theory
In the aftermath of the colossal damage caused around the world by extreme weather induced floods, fuel and food shortages, questions are constantly being posed about the improbability of endless growth of human population and over consumption on a planet with finite resources. There are limits to growth and humanity is colliding with them head on. High fuel and food prices and floods caused by climate chaos are all symptomatic of those growth limits.
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Thursday, November 22, 2012
Ireland and Iceland : A Tale of Two PIIIGS / Economics / Economic Theory
There were a lot of commentaries regarding the Ireland and Iceland 2008–2012 financial crises. Most of the commentaries were confined to the description of the events without addressing the essential causes of the crises. We suggest that providing a detailed description of events cannot be a substitute for economic analysis, which should be based on the essential causes behind a crisis.
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Monday, November 12, 2012
Ron Paul In Praise of Price Gouging / Politics / Economic Theory
As the northeastern United States continues to recover from Hurricane Sandy, we hear the usual outcry against individuals and companies who dare to charge market prices for goods such as gasoline. The normal market response of rising prices in the wake of a natural disaster and resulting supply disruptions is redefined as "price gouging." The government claims that price gouging is the charging of ruinous or exploitative prices for goods in short supply in the wake of a disaster and is a heinous crime But does this reflect economic reality, or merely political posturing to capitalize on raw emotions?
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Monday, November 05, 2012
Abolition of Fractional Reserve Banking, Chicago, My kind of town / Economics / Economic Theory
Quite a bit of media attention has been devoted recently to a working paper by two International Monetary Fund economists that re-examines the “Chicago Plan”. First put forward by University of Chicago economists in 1933, this proposal calls for the abolition of fractional reserve banking and the replacement of bank credit with government money in order to do away with credit-induced business cycles.
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Thursday, November 01, 2012
The Economics of Dracula / Economics / Economic Theory
Peter C. Earle writes: Another Halloween is upon us, bringing its late autumnal burst of costumes, candy, and merriment. Ghosts, witches, mummies, zombies, Frankenstein's monster, film and television characters, and others will make appearances, as will the quintessential Halloween figure: Dracula.
Most people are familiar with Count Dracula's first literary appearance in Bram Stoker's 1897 Gothic horror novel Dracula. And many are also aware that the undead villain was loosely based on a real historical figure, Vlad Tepes III — "Vlad the Impaler" (sometimes "Vlad Dracula") — who ruled mid-15th century Wallachia, a region of modern day Romania.
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Thursday, November 01, 2012
The Conundrum of Malaysia's proposed Minimum Wage / Economics / Economic Theory
Due to the scarcity of resources such as labor it is common for the government at times intervenes into the markets with the objective to prevent prices from rising and dropping too much from the equilibrium price. The Government can influence the market supply and demand through setting the price floors and price ceilings in the market.
An example of price ceiling will be the rent controls on housing. By imposition of the rent control, the government hope to provide affordable housing for the lower income group. Similarly the imposition of minimum wage is another form of setting the price floor. This will help prevent wages from going below a certain level set by the government. The Government hope that such a move will help alleviate the income and also ease the burden of the lower income group.
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Monday, October 29, 2012
Measuring GDP, Economics of Assumptions and Investing in an Uncertain World / Economics / Economic Theory
“As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.” – Albert Einstein
“To trace something unknown back to something known is alleviating, soothing, gratifying and gives moreover a feeling of power. Danger, disquiet, anxiety attend the unknown – the first instinct is to eliminate these distressing states. First principle: any explanation is better than none… The cause-creating drive is thus conditioned and excited by the feeling of fear …"– Friedrich Nietzsche
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Friday, October 26, 2012
A New Model for Capitalism - How to Spark an Economic Boom Without Increasing Debt / Economics / Economic Theory
The UK and US economies are stagnating whilst much of the euro-zone economies are in the grips of an economic death spiral of ever greater economic austerity in response to ever increasing debt to GDP ratios as economies contract.
The solution as far as the west is concerned has been one of printing money (electronically) to monetize government debt via the bailed out banks which is highly inflationary as the money printing is not backed by any real economic activity and hence continues to drive an exponential inflation mega-trend resulting in real terms loss of purchasing power for all workers and savers.
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Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Why Estonia Is Beating the Eurozone Economy / Economics / Economic Theory
Against the background of a severe economic crisis in the eurozone, one is surprised to find a member of the euro area that is actually showing good economic performance. This member is Estonia. In terms of so-called real gross domestic product (GDP) the average yearly rate of growth in Estonia stood at 8.4 percent in 2011 against overall eurozone performance of 1.5 percent. So far in 2012 the average yearly growth stood at 2.8 percent in Estonia versus -0.2 percent in the eurozone.
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Saturday, October 20, 2012
The Growth Recession, Can the Fed Create Demand? / Economics / Economic Theory
The Hoisington Quarterly Review and Outlook is one of the cornerstones of my reading on where the economy is headed. Van Hoisington and Lacy Hunt do a masterful job of turning data points into cogent, well-argued themes.
This month they waste no time in dissecting the Fed’s recent move to QE3 and similar efforts in Europe, arriving at the conclusion that “While prices for risk assets have improved, governments have not been able to address underlying debt imbalances. Thus, nothing suggests that these latest actions do anything to change the extreme over-indebtedness of major global economies.”
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Friday, October 19, 2012
Another Numerologist Gets Nobel Economics Prize / Politics / Economic Theory
Witness the latest economist to win the Nobel Prize from the Swedes, who I’m certain lead the world in economic nonsense, for allegedly solving the unsolvable knowledge and calculation problems of central planners.
Huh?
Rather than explaining all that is wrong in their problem solving, in the interest of brevity let me just ask: did you mean you didn’t know Ludwig von Mises showed that this kind of thing was impossible almost 100 years ago?
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Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Counterproductive Minimum Wage Mandates / Economics / Economic Theory
Working for wages has never been the path for significant wealth. Most people are not equipped nor do they have the inclination to be engaged in business endeavors that will earn them a viable living. The reluctance that most workers bring to their occupation stems from their inability or unwillingness of properly understanding the related components that are essential in creating wealth. While many view work as a curse, the indispensable reconciliation for a practical and tolerable acceptance of universal plight is that no one is owed a living.
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Wednesday, October 03, 2012
What Parenting Teaches us About Economics / Economics / Economic Theory
Recent BBC documentaries on the great economists have created quite a buzz in the UK. No doubt the shows are proving popular on the BBC’s international channels too. The sorry state of the global economy and withered trust in economics today prompts another look at the giants of this social science. The usual names are re-examined, including John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich Hayek.
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Monday, September 24, 2012
Keynsian Animal Spirits / Economics / Economic Theory
The BBC is running a three-part series on notable economists, starting with Keynes. There were a number of errors made, but I shall ignore those and address two Keynesian fallacies. The first was that Keynes correctly anticipated the economic and political consequences of the Versailles Treaty, which inflicted punitive reparations on Germany: this was true. It was bizarrely extrapolated to the current situation, concluding that Germany must reduce its prosperity and economic power to a level closer to that of the other Eurozone countries in the interests of economic balance.
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Friday, September 21, 2012
Do Trade Deficits and Surpluses Matter? / Economics / Economic Theory
Why read: Because I believe that where a country runs continuous net trade deficits and increasing net cumulative trade deficits that is a bad thing in the context of the economic well-being of that country. Others disagree, and in the current economic environment where the United States - still the world's most important economy - continuously:
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Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Nazi Economics, a Lesson from History / Economics / Economic Theory
Adam Tooze, a British historian, has written a marvelous book on the Nazi economy, The Wages of Destruction. He shows that, far from illustrating the success of intelligent central planning, the German economy of the Third Reich was a disaster. The National Socialists – or “Nazis” – had their plans for Germany. They were determined to put them into practice, regardless of what the Germans may have wanted for themselves. They fiddled with one sector after another.
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Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Sandeep Jaitly, Ludwig von Mises, Ayn Rand and the Gold Standard Institute / Politics / Economic Theory
The Gold Standard Institute intends to bring truth into the open… and allow..people to make up their own minds…Far from us to try to impose our ideas on anyone!
Rudy Fritsch, Gold Standard Institute
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Monday, August 27, 2012
Dancing on the Grave of the Keynesian Economic System / Politics / Economic Theory
The collapse of the Soviet Union in December of 1991 was the best news of my lifetime. The monster died. It was not just that the USSR went down. The entire mythology of revolutionary violence as the method of social regeneration, promoted since the French Revolution, went down with it. As I wrote in my 1968 book, Marxism was a religion of revolution, and Marxism died institutionally in the last month of 1991.
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Wednesday, August 15, 2012
What We Can Learn from a Great Economist / InvestorEducation / Economic Theory
Although Leland Yeager calls himself a fellow traveler of the Austrian School (p. 100), rather than a full-fledged member of it — he is a fellow traveler of the Chicago School as well — no reader of his essays can fail to note one respect in which he resembles two quintessential Austrian economists, Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard. Like them, Yeager is a scholar of enormous learning, a fact in evidence in each of the 28 essays of his collected here. As an example, few of his colleagues, one suspects, would know that "Thomas Hobbes … suggested that one might test whether a piece of abstract philosophizing means anything by seeing how readily it could be translated from the original language into another" (p. 267, n. 2).
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Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Mind the Theory / Economics / Economic Theory
The saying that things may work nicely in theory, but do not necessarily work in practice is well known.[1] It is typically meant to disparage the importance of theory, suggesting it would be too far removed from practical matters to help in solving the issue at hand.
The Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), in his 1793 essay "On the Popular Judgment: 'This May Be True in Theory, But It Does Not Apply in Practice,'" responded to such criticism; in fact, he responded with his essay to criticism leveled against his ethical theory by the philosopher Christian Garve (1742–1798).
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Thursday, August 09, 2012
Why Keynesians Hate the Gold Standard / Economics / Economic Theory
Recently, the leftist London Guardian posted an article against the nineteenth-century gold coin standard. The author, who seems recently to have begun shaving, has provided a highly useful summary of the Keynesian case against the gold coin standard. His article is a fine mixture of familiar old canards and creative new errors. His name is Duncan Weldon.
Mr. Weldon has not written a book, so it is difficult for me to know exactly what his monetary theory is. He was the unknown Keynesian in the 2011 BBC debate between two teams of economists at the London School of Economics: The Keynes vs. Hayek debate. I assume that Robert Skidelsky, his partner, thought he was an up-and-coming economist. Skidelsky is the author of a multi-volume biography of Keynes.
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Monday, August 06, 2012
The Future of the Austrian Economic's School / Economics / Economic Theory
On Saturday, July 28, I spoke to a group of almost 150 mostly undergraduates at the Mises Institute. They had flown in from across the USA and from 20 foreign countries. It was a week-long seminar. I was the final speaker.
It is an amazing experience for an anti-Communist of my generation to speak with a Chinese student studying economics in the USA.
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Wednesday, August 01, 2012
Escape From Economics / Politics / Economic Theory
Readers ask me from time to time to recommend a book from which they can learn about economics.
The problem with reading a book to learn economics that is taught in the universities and practiced in Washington is that economics is now a highly formalized subject based on abstract models and assumptions and has been mathematized. It is not that the subject is totally useless and without any applicability to real world problems. Rather, the problem is that the discipline both lags an ever-changing world and got some things wrong at the beginning. Consequently, learning economics places one inside a box where some of the tools and understanding provided are outdated and incorrect.
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Monday, July 09, 2012
The Unseen Hand in Economic Progress / Economics / Economic Theory
The assessment of economic growth based on Gross Domestic Product is a fallacy, because GDP is merely a measure of the amount of money in an economy. The one thing it does not measure, which is central to economic progress (note progress, not growth), is the level of entrepreneurial activity. This has important implications for the efficacy of government interventions and solutions to the current economic crisis.
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Wednesday, July 04, 2012
Krugman's Icelandic Economic Miracle Debate, Round 2 / Economics / Economic Theory
Paul Krugman has long been an advocate of Keynesian economics, and a proponent of aggressive and expansionary fiscal policy drawing parallels between Japan's decade-long deflation and the current Great Recession. Krugman also has also been writing quite extensively using Iceland as the poster child on the benefits of currency devaluation. Krugman's latest endeavor on the so-called 'Icelandic Miracle' was when he posted on his NYT blog last month with the following chart showing the seemingly much better GDP growth from Iceland compared to Ireland, Estonia, Lativa, and Lithuania, the countries either in Euro or has a currency pegged to the Euro. He then rhetorically remarked:
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Tuesday, July 03, 2012
Notes On Mainstram Economics Is A Cult / Politics / Economic Theory
Mark Blair writes:
‘Such disdain for empirical verification is not found in the physical sciences.’
Washington’s Blog
Maternal instinct? ‘Probably imaginary. An excuse to justify and perpetuate sexism.’
Encyclopedia of Feminism, Tuttle, L.
Sunday, July 01, 2012
Free Markets, Libertarians, Trade Deficits,Economic Decline: Joseph Cotto Interviews Ian Fletcher / Politics / Economic Theory
Journalist Joseph Cotto interviewed me recently. Our conversation is below.
Q: Today, many people tend to confuse the concepts of free markets, free trade, and fair trade with one another. How would you describe each?
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Saturday, June 30, 2012
Mainstream Economics is a Cult / Politics / Economic Theory
Neoclassical Economics Is Based on Myth
Neoclassical economics is a cult which ignores reality in favor of shared myths.
Economics professor Michael Hudson writes:
Read full article... Read full article...[One Nobel prize winning economist stated,] “In pointing out the consequences of a set of abstract assumptions, one need not be committed unduly as to the relation between reality and these assumptions.”
Sunday, June 24, 2012
The Unseen Economic Hand / Economics / Economic Theory
The assessment of economic growth based on Gross Domestic Product is a fallacy, because GDP is merely a measure of the amount of money in an economy. The one thing it does not measure, which is central to economic progress (note progress, not growth), is the level of entrepreneurial activity. This has important implications for the efficacy of government interventions and solutions to the current economic crisis.
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Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Economic Growth Versus Austerity: A U.S. Dollar Perspective / Economics / Economic Theory
Austerity versus Growth? Which economic model is sustainable? If it weren’t for those pesky bond vigilantes, it may be only politics. Let’s not get too excited that either path will work. Let’s look at the implications for investors with a focus on the U.S. dollar.
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Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Krugman’s Greek Temple of Keynesianism / Economics / Economic Theory
A lot of people have weighed in on the Greek Morality Play, better known as the collapse of Greece's economy, and there is no shortfall of "wisdom" and advice. (For that matter, I made comments myself on the Greek situation during an interview on the RT network last March.)
Not surprisingly, Paul Krugman has weighed in again, and this time he not only claims that the problem is not enough inflation, but also deliberately ignores the real problem behind much of the Greek collapse: Greece's notorious and "bloated" (to use a term from Krugman's employer, the New York Times) bureaucracies led by its militant public employee unions. Instead, Krugman sets up other straw men and then claims that if only – If Only! – the Germans would crank up the monetary printing presses, Greece could be saved.
Before going into specifics, I would like to point out that Krugman is correct when he notes that a single currency union of many states indeed does impose certain fiscal restrictions. The examples he uses for the United States are dishonest, and even when explaining the European currency union, he does not tell the whole story, lapsing, instead, into his usual spate of accusations coupled with his demands for more inflation. (And, yes, I will explain my point later in this piece.)
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Monday, June 18, 2012
Krugman's Keynsian Economics, End This Nonsense Now! / Economics / Economic Theory
End This Depression Now! By Paul Krugman. Norton, 2012. Xii + 259 pages
Supporters of Keynesian economics sometimes claim it to be a crude caricature of the Master that he thought the government has only to spend more money to get us out of a depression and that getting us into debt doesn't matter because we owe it to ourselves. Keynes, it is alleged, was a vastly more sophisticated thinker than this caricature portrays him to be. These defenders may find End This Depression Now! disconcerting. Krugman, who whatever his faults certainly is not lacking in technical sophistication, defends pretty much the cartoon version of Keynesianism that we are told is oversimplified.
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Monday, June 18, 2012
You Don’t Need to be a Lefty to Support Krugman Just Economically Illiterate / Economics / Economic Theory
Financial Times writer Samuel Brittan says You Don’t Need to be a Lefty to Support Krugman.
Brittan kicks off with "The remedy for too little spending is more spending. Everything else is commentary."
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Inflation or Deflation? / Economics / Economic Theory
Why Read: Because whether we are going to be faced with inflation or deflation in the developed countries, and the world economy generally is a critical question - and one that affects not just investors, but everyone.
Featured Article: In a recently published article Michael Pento (Pento Portfolio Strategies), said to be an Austrian School of Economics specialist, says (among other things):
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Monday, June 11, 2012
Krugman’s Tax-Enhanced Economic Recovery Fantasy / Politics / Economic Theory
Paul Krugman apparently believes that he has struck the mother lode: He has declared that Ronald Reagan actually was more "Keynesian" than Barack Obama. Why? He writes:
O.K., by now many readers have probably figured out the trick here: Reagan, not Obama, was the big spender. While there was a brief burst of government spending early in the Obama administration – mainly for emergency aid programs like unemployment insurance and food stamps – that burst is long past. Indeed, at this point, government spending is falling fast, with real per capita spending falling over the past year at a rate not seen since the demobilization that followed the Korean War.
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Monday, June 11, 2012
Free Trade: The Litmus Test of Economics / Economics / Economic Theory
Free trade is the litmus test of economic reasoning. It has been ever since David Hume wrote his 1752 essay on commerce.
Read full article... Read full article...Foreign trade, by its imports, furnishes materials for new manufactures; and by its exports, it produces labour in particular commodities, which could not be consumed at home. In short, a kingdom, that has a large import and export, must abound more with industry, and that employed upon delicacies and luxuries, than a kingdom which rests contented with its native commodities. It is, therefore, more powerful, as well as richer and happier. The individuals reap the benefit of these commodities, so far as they gratify the senses and appetites. And the public is also a gainer, while a greater stock of labour is, by this means, stored up against any public exigency; that is, a greater number of laborious men are maintained, who may be diverted to the public service, without robbing any one of the necessaries, or even the chief conveniencies of life.
Thursday, June 07, 2012
The No Economic Growth Paradigm / Economics / Economic Theory
Western developed economies have been resorting to almost every possible trick they can conjure up to maintain financial stability and economic growth over the last few years. And while stimulus, interest rate cuts, monetary easing, currency swaps, liquidity operations, bailout/austerity programs, bank "re-capitalizations", loan guarantees, entitlement/welfare programs, data manipulation, etc. have kept them muddling through so far, the undeniable truth is that there will SOON come a time when none of those things makes the least bit of difference anymore.
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Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Deflation Isn't the Enemy / Economics / Economic Theory
We now live in a world where deflation has become public enemy number one. In this current economic environment, governments seek a condition of perpetual inflation in order to maintain the illusion of prosperity in the developed world. But in reality, deflation is the free-market approach to rectify a secular period of superfluous money supply growth, debt accumulation and asset price appreciation.
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Tuesday, May 22, 2012
The New York Times and the End of Simple Economic Logic / Politics / Economic Theory
Years ago, Murray N. Rothbard wrote that modern egalitarianism constituted a "revolt against nature," and Rothbard provided the intellectual ammunition to prove his point well. The modern Progressive "revolt against nature" is not limited to just egalitarianism, however, as Progressives long have tried to convince everyone that if they could just direct enough government resources at something, they could undo the very laws of economics.
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Tuesday, May 01, 2012
Economics Battle! Krugman vs. Ron Paul on Helicopters, Gold and More / Politics / Economic Theory
Sparks flew when Paul Krugman and Congressman Ron Paul faced off today on Bloomberg TV's "Street Smart" with Trish Regan and Adam Johnson....
Watch below to hear Ron Paul's ideas about staying in the Republican race...whether he would support Romney as nominee...how U.S. monetary policy is like the Roman Empire and why there should be legal competition to the U.S. dollar (yes, gold and silver).
Hear NYT columnist Krugman fire back on the role U.S. government should play in regulating the market economy...what economist Milton Friedman really thought about government stimulus...and what is the right level for debt for U.S. taxpayers (that's you).
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Thursday, April 19, 2012
Mark-to-Market: From David Hume to Adam Smith…From Ludwig von Mises to Hiroshima / Economics / Economic Theory
From Daniel James Sanchez of the Mises Institute (somewhat condensed):
According to Ludwig von Mises, the notion of money as a measure of value is an artifact of the "classical economics" of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and John Stuart Mill, who, by and large believed that value was an objective attribute of “goods”. Economic actors, according to classical theory, only exchanged goods if the respective values were equal.
Mises had another theory which he called the subjective-marginal-utility theory of value, where value is derived from utility and valuation is a matter of preferring one set of goods over another, according to the goods' respective utilities.
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Monday, April 16, 2012
Edgar the Entrepreneur Demonstrates Harm the Minimum-wage Inflicts on Workers / Economics / Economic Theory
Daniel James Sanchez writes: Edgar the Exploiter is a wonderful animated short by Tomasz Kaye that defends voluntary employer-employee relations and demonstrates the harm that policies like minimum-wage laws inflict on the very people they are supposed to help.
Edgar is a capitalist who hires Simon as an unskilled laborer, until a minimum-wage law impels Edgar to lay Simon off.
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Sunday, April 08, 2012
Savings, investment, and the Keynesian preference – a follow-up / Stock-Markets / Economic Theory
There is a general belief that government finances are somehow immune from the financial reality faced by everyone else – an illusion fostered by bond markets and supported by the public’s wishful thinking. Look no further than the plight of the eurozone for evidence of the reality. Not only that, but history tells us that countries regularly default, yet we continue to buy government bonds in the belief they are less risky than any private sector debt. And if we begin to question the status quo, we are even told by financial regulators that government debt is less risky than anything else. Banking regulation enshrines it in Basel Committee guidelines, and modern portfolio theory – which guides securities regulation – casts it in stone.
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Saturday, April 07, 2012
War Torn Iraq and Free Market Capitalism / Economics / Economic Theory
In the course of my deployments to Iraq I learned a great deal about economics, though I didn't realize it at the time. I hadn't yet been introduced to the Austrian School or a Rothbardian view of laissez-faire capitalism. Looking back, however, I can see quite clearly that in several important areas voluntary systems not only existed in that country but thrived.
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Saturday, April 07, 2012
Learning to Think in Multiple Scales and U.S. Jobs Creation / Economics / Economic Theory
Most politicians, bureaucratic officials, business "leaders", mainstream academics and media pundits in the world are stuck in a single-scale mindset. They approach every problem and issue from the perspective of a human being looking out into an increasingly inter-dependent global society. They take the structures of extensive trade, multinational corporations, global regulatory institutions, international treaties, etc. as irreversible truths that are embedded into the very fabric of existence.
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Sunday, April 01, 2012
Savings, investment, and the Keynesian preference / Stock-Markets / Economic Theory
Neo-classical economists underestimate the importance of the link between savings and investment. The two should be regarded as linked together: you need savings to be available for investment in new production for the future.
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Monday, March 26, 2012
Economic Forecasting: The Model Solution / Economics / Economic Theory
In their economic analyses economists utilize a range of statistical methods that vary from highly complex models to a simple display of historical data. It is generally held that by means of statistical correlations one can organize historical data into a useful body of information, which in turn can serve as the basis for assessments of the state of the economy. In short, it is held that through the application of statistical methods on historical data, one can extract the facts of reality regarding the state of the economy.
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Sunday, February 19, 2012
Ten Myths About Capitalism / Politics / Economic Theory
Capitalism in the neoliberal version has exhausted itself. Financial sharks do not want to lose profits, and shift the main burden of debt to the retirees and the poor. A ghost of the "European Spring" is haunting the Old World and the opponents of capitalism explain people how their lives are being destroyed. This is the topic of the article of a Portuguese economist Guilherme Alves Coelho.
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Wednesday, February 01, 2012
Decline of U.S. Economy is the Logical Outcome of Keynesian Economics / Politics / Economic Theory
The Unholy Alliance of John Maynard Keyne
Perhaps the greatest modern champion of central economic planning was the 20th century English economist John Maynard Keynes. Keynes, who was a political socialist and for a time a central banker, advocated the idea that the government should play a large, active role in the economy. Among the consequences of Keynes’ economic theories, whether intended or unintended, is the fact that Western economies today are characterized by large, central governments, central banks and massive debts.
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Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Solution to America's Economic Gridlock Crisis / Economics / Economic Theory
How do we resolve the current political gridlock over healthcare, the economy, and a myriad of other problems? It is clear that there are no easy solutions, and putting off making choices will just make the ultimate cost we pay that much more expensive.
This week for our Outside the Box we deal with just this question, in a piece from a master of logic and reasoning and one of my favorite writers. I absorb everything I can get my hands on from Dr. Woody Brock. He has written a new book, called American Gridlock: Why the Left and Right are Both Wrong" ( www.amazon.com/gridlock). I am doing something very unusual and giving him two back-to-back editions of Outside the Box, this week and next, to outline his own book in his own words. He generously agreed to do so, as he (and I) are passionate about the topic of getting to a solution. If we do not solve this crisis in the making, it will impair our future generations for a long time, not to mention its effects on our own lives.
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Friday, January 27, 2012
Is the United States in a Liquidity Trap? / Economics / Economic Theory
If nothing else, we've learned that the liquidity trap is neither a figment of our imaginations nor something that only happens in Japan; it's a very real threat, and if and when it ends we should nonetheless be guarding against its return — which means that there's a very strong case both for a higher inflation target, and for aggressive policy when unemployment is high at low inflation.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Premature U.S. Dollar Obituaries, Mainstream Economist Lessons from Great Depression Not Learned / Economics / Economic Theory
A pair of articles by Austrian economist professor Antal E. Fekete just might have one wondering who is more in the loony bin, mainstream economists like Krugman or those consistently chanting about the death of the dollar coupled with hyperinflation.
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Monday, January 16, 2012
Economic Crisis and the Theory of the Cycle / Economics / Economic Theory
Jesus Huerta de Soto writes: The three years that have passed since the world financial crisis and subsequent economic recession hit have provided Austrian economists with a golden opportunity to popularize their theory of the economic cycle and their dynamic analysis of social conditions. In my own case, I could never have imagined at the beginning of 1998, when the first edition of my book Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles appeared, that 12 years later, due undoubtedly to a financial crisis and economic recession unparalleled in the world since the Great Depression of 1929, a crisis and recession which no other economic paradigm managed to predict and adequately explain, my book would be translated into 14 languages and published (so far) in nine countries and several editions (two in the United States and four in Spain).
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Friday, December 30, 2011
Rising Systemic Risk and Multiple Black Swans, Gaping Chasm between Economics and Physics / Economics / Economic Theory
Violation of the Laws of Physics?
Does today's dominant economic and financial thinking violate the laws of physics? Mainstream finance and economics have long been inconsistent with the underlying laws of thermodynamics, which are fast catching up as a result of globalisation. At present, economics is the study of how people transform nature to meet their needs and it treats the exploitation of finite natural resources including energy, water, air, arable land and oceans as externalities, which they are not. For example, we cannot pollute and damage natural ecosystems and their local communities ad infinitum without severe repercussions to their underlying sustainability. It is widely recognised both within the distinguished ATCA 5000 community across 120 countries and beyond that exchange rates instability, equity and commodity market speculation -- particularly fuel, food and finance -- and resultant volatilities as well as unsustainable levels of external debt are the main causes of asymmetric threats and disruption at the international level manifest as known unknowns, ie, low probability high impact risks and unknown unknowns or black swans.
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Tuesday, December 27, 2011
What Happened To Economic Growth? / Economics / Economic Theory
The magical invention of economic growth needs the magic of invention, and technological-type invention is always around and available the optimists tell us. When it isn’t, like now, doctoring the numbers and letting them doctor themselves with false overvalued monetary units "measuring" the growth that is not there will pass muster, the optimists don’t tell us. Doctoring growth that isn't also draws on productivity gains that aren't, using the same vastly overvalued money units that "measure" growth: for how many years have we had productivity gains (or claims) at 6% or more every year ? In plenty of national cases, simply inverting claimed productivity gains, and claimed rates of inflation, will give a much more honest picture of what is going on. This now longstanding and traditional doctoring of the data, both deliberate and inadvertent, extended over 10 and 15 years or more, gives us vastly different readouts for the real situation: which is bad.
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Wednesday, December 07, 2011
Psychopathic Economics 101 / Politics / Economic Theory
Psychopaths flew financial weapons of mass destruction (derivatives) into the twin towers of our economy, the housing market and the stock market. Ten trillion dollars of wealth imploded in a cloud of dust.
Ninety-nine percent of the economic experts – financial planners, economists, economic professors, brokers, and investors – missed the largest bubble in history as well as the systemic risk that the bubble posed.
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Wednesday, November 23, 2011
A Case for Free-Market Bank Regulation / Economics / Economic Theory
America (BAC) has rescinded its plan to charge customers a $5 monthly debit-card fee. Shall we praise bank regulators for their swift action in preventing the exorbitant charge? Well, no. Then we'll credit politicians for legislating against greedy, big-bank profiteering, right? Wrong again. The free market drove BAC to drop the debit-card fee.
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Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Understand Everything Fundamentally, The entropic force is fundamental / Economics / Economic Theory
Historic and recent scientific developments add to our understanding of how the entropic force from physics may govern everything in nature, including ecosystems and economics. This can be applied to fundamental analysis of potential political outcomes, macroeconomics, and paradigmatic epochal shifts, e.g. the current shift from the industrial to the knowledge age.
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Friday, November 11, 2011
We Must Crush the Army of Krugmanites into Submission - Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Nouriel Roubini, Martin Wolf / Politics / Economic Theory
Two days ago, Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf made an attempt at Thinking through the unthinkable. The "unthinkable" was the breakup of the Eurozone.
Reflections on the Easily Thinkable
For starters, a eurozone breakup is hardly unthinkable given that no currency union in history has ever survived in the absence of a fiscal union, and the Eurozone has no such fiscal union
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Friday, November 04, 2011
Is Debt Necessary for Economic Recovery? / Economics / Economic Theory
Since the crisis began, one of the dominant themes in arguments over proper government policy has been the Keynesian view that it is crucial to prop up total spending. The added twist during this particular recession is the crushing burden of private-sector debt, which allegedly makes it all the more urgent for governments to run fiscal deficits.
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Thursday, November 03, 2011
Look at the U.S. Postal Service and see the future of the Federal Government / Economics / Economic Theory
Niall Ferguson is my favorite Establishment analyst, because he is an historian who understands a lot about free markets. He writes for the literati. He starred in a PBS series that was worth viewing, and another is scheduled in 2012. He teaches at Harvard University and the Harvard Business School.
He thinks America is running an empire, and he thinks it will not survive much longer. As with all empires, it is going to run out of wealth to support it. So, when he wrote a piece for the Daily Beast, Newsweek, I read it.
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Monday, October 31, 2011
Is Economics Worthless Ideology? / Politics / Economic Theory
In fêting the latest recipients of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science, Christopher Sims and Thomas Sargent, the New York Times editorializes that somehow this is a "victory" for empiricism over theory. Although the editors don't come right out and attack theory, they make their point clear by declaring that the latest award is a "challenge to politicians who are driven more by ideology than by serious consideration of the real-world consequences of their actions." In other words, any worldview that might be influenced by real-live economic theory that reflects human action must be wrong because Sims and Sargent won the Nobel.
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Monday, October 24, 2011
Savings, The Paradox of Thrift Debunked / Economics / Economic Theory
Ever since John Maynard Keynes popularized the Paradox of Thrift, economists, central bankers and politicians have labored under the misapprehension that high levels of savings are bad for the economy and inhibit growth. The Paradox of Thrift simply states: Increased savings means there are less buyers for goods produced, so the nation as a whole will tend to produce less.
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Sunday, October 23, 2011
Economic Growth Is Obsolete / Economics / Economic Theory
The last 'classic economic growth interval' can be almost exactly defined as the years 2004-2007.
After that, we enter a zone of permanent disaster for the late, unlamented by myself, Growth Economy which can only and does only operate in a series of boom-slump cycles. What we have now, since 2008 is however different: this slump is vastly greater than the nicely doctored official economic numbers can show. True numbers would not only be terrifying, but also hard to believe.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Does The Economy Need a Referee? / Economics / Economic Theory
I recently appeared on Max Keiser’s "On The Edge" program. Unbeknownst to the viewer, we were having major communication problems. Max only could hear a small portion of what I said and I, likewise. But, right at the very end of the interview the communications worked again… that’s when the interview finally got interesting. Max stated that we “need a referee” in the economy. I replied, “I disagree. We don’t need a referee, I’m an anarchist…”
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Thursday, October 20, 2011
Nouriel Roubini's Global Research Brand vs. His Prescription for the Economy / Economics / Economic Theory
Nouriel Roubini has called the economic crisis rather well. He gas gone on to turn success at RGE into an "economic brand". The Institutional Investor has an 8-page article on How Nouriel Roubini Became a Research Brand.
The article also notes that Roubini has been in the inner economic circles at the World Economic Forum at Davos, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the U.S. Congress.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
The Pitfall Of Rock Star Economists / Economics / Economic Theory
The whole idea of going to University and studying Economics, replete with a thorough understanding of the importance of analyzing economic data points seems to be lost on these Rock Star Economists who dominate the financial media landscape these days. The only barometer these so called economists utilize is: “Oh, the stock market has been selling off hard for two weeks we must be in a recession”!
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Wednesday, October 12, 2011
How Economic Collapse Will Happen / Economics / Economic Theory
Discussion about how the coming economic collapse will happen, and how to prepare yourself.
First - Imports to the Country increase drastically and exports decrease.
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Tuesday, October 11, 2011
The Folly of Economic Forecasting / Economics / Economic Theory
President Obama's mostly forgotten jobs package would reportedly create 1.9 million new jobs, a one-percentage-point drop in the unemployment rate, and goose GDP by two percentage points. That was the prediction of Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Analytics. You see, he has a model. He did a simulation, and presto — 1.9 million jobs!
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Thursday, October 06, 2011
Steve Jobs and the Beautification of Capitalism / Politics / Economic Theory
The day that Steve Jobs resigned from Apple, hosannas for his life's work and accomplishments erupted (and rightly) from every corner of the earth (or the blogosphere, in any case). He was universally hailed as a genius. He was praised for changing and upgrading our lives in so many ways. He was treated as an innovator who dedicated himself to the well-being of society, and accomplished miracles none of us mere mortals could have imagined. He did more than dream; he acted and created one of the great companies on the planet, a company that has enabled us to live out our own dreams.
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Monday, September 12, 2011
Posner Gets It Wrong on Macroeconomics / Economics / Economic Theory
Clifford F. Thies writes: Recession is the falling-down part. Depression is staying down. Normally, the recuperative powers of a market-oriented economy are sufficient that the falling-down part is immediately followed by a rising-back-up part. But, that's not happening now, and that didn't happen during the 1930s.
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Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Cutting Government Spending Will Increase the Budget Deficit / Politics / Economic Theory
The US consumer's decade-long spending spree has ended, but there's still an ocean of red ink left to mop up. And with housing prices falling and unemployment tipping 9 percent, it will take longer to clear the family balance sheet than many had anticipated.
Traditionally, the government has helped to ease the pain of deleveraging by providing fiscal stimulus to boost economic activity and lower the real cost of debt. But Capital Hill is now in the grips of deficit hawks who frown on such Keynesian remedies, so households and consumers will have to fend for themselves and pay-down debts as best as they can or default when repayment is no longer possible . That's bad news for the economy that depends on consumers for 71 percent of GDP. Without a healthy consumer, the economy will face years of sluggishness and stagnation.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Keynesian Economic Solutions - After Total Failure –Try, Try Again / Economics / Economic Theory
“Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth.” – John Maynard Keynes – The Economic Consequences of the Peace
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Tuesday, August 23, 2011
The Great Recession and Dynamic Economic Decision Making / Economics / Economic Theory
This week’s Outside the Box is from my good friend John Silvia, the Chief Economist at Wells Fargo and fishing buddy in Maine. He has written a powerhouse book called Dynamic Economic Decision Making: Strategies for Financial Risk, Capital Markets, and Monetary Policy.
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Sunday, August 21, 2011
Roubini Says We Ran Out Of Rabbits But Don’t Despair!! He Can Save The World / Politics / Economic Theory
Running out of rabbits to pull out of hats in the Year of the Rabbit sounds a bit far-fetched, but apparently that’s the situation right now. At least that’s what Nouriel Roubini says in a recent post “Marx was right: Capitalism may be on brink of doom”.
He should know; because, as we keep hearing, he predicted everything in sight from as early as 2003 and if only anyone had listened to him disaster might have been averted. Oh well, perhaps someone will listen to him now, and perhaps if they do another disaster can be averted?
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Saturday, August 20, 2011
Localize Our Economy / Economics / Economic Theory
Two centuries and a decade ago (in 1802), the third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, stated:
“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property — until their children wake-up.”
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Simple Device that has Spontaneously Revolutionized Life the World Over / Economics / Economic Theory
Devin Leary-Hanebrink writes: A few days ago I was sitting in the break room at work enjoying my lunch when I realized just how incredible the simple, everyday, run-of-the-mill vending machine truly is. For days I have watched people pour money into these simple machines without ever really paying much attention. Heck, I have used these things for the majority of my life and never even given them a second thought. What is truly impressive — no, utterly astonishing — is how such a simple device has spontaneously revolutionized life the world over without the direction of a single bureaucrat, academic, statute, or judicial opinion.
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Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Krugman's New Extraterrestrial Economic Plan For America / Politics / Economic Theory
The collapse of the US Government and US dollar is really turning into some of the best entertainment you can find. We've been enjoying it for the profit alone with our large position in gold and hard asset related investments. Just the humor, however, is worth the price of admission. We've stopped watching comedy movies. Will Ferrell can't beat this.
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Monday, August 15, 2011
Is Debt Deleveraging Bad for the Economy? / Economics / Economic Theory
The economic pundits have stressed more and more that this crisis is special because it involves "deleveraging," and for that reason isn't a run-of-the-mill recession. Because households and corporations are collectively trying to reduce their net indebtedness, it is allegedly up to the government to run massive budget deficits in order to prop up aggregate spending.
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Saturday, August 13, 2011
Rethinking Depression Economics / Economics / Economic Theory
One criticism of Austrian business-cycle theory is that it gives little insight as to what should be done to push an economy out of recession. Even accepting the premise that monetary overexpansion leads to a misallocation of capital goods, detractors claim that this says little in regards to the nature of the depression period. Leland Yeager, for example, argues that "Austrian economists can explain the continuing depression only lamely."[1] Lord Robert Skidelsky once made a similar comment in a live debate with George Selgin and Jamie Whyte.
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Monday, August 01, 2011
The Source of Profits in the Business of Financial Speculation / Economics / Economic Theory
There is scarcely an endeavor awash with more debate, allure, dogma and contempt than the business of financial speculation. The entire investment community is often derided as ‘just a bunch of gamblers’, the most successful speculators are often dismissed as ‘lucky’ and the very pursuit has even been likened to prancing around a fire with two horns on one’s temples. Naturally, we beg to differ. Here, I refute some of these commonly held misconceptions and outline our perception of the rudimentary source of consistent speculative gains.
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Monday, August 01, 2011
The Vices of the Modern Monetary Theory / Economics / Economic Theory
A few months back, I wrote about a virtue of the MMT; namely, the way it focuses on sectoral balances. I think that this view is both interesting and useful for the contrarian investor. However, I do have some misgivings with the convictions of the typical Modern Monetary theorist. Here, I discuss some of the problems with the MMT frame of mind.
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Friday, July 29, 2011
Why Capitalism Is Worth Defending / Politics / Economic Theory
Anthony Gregory writes: As Obama demonizes the wealthy and pitches a dozen plans to restructure the economy, opponents of this program need a reminder of what exactly we’re fighting for. We are resisting bureaucracy, central planning, and encroachments on our freedom and communities. Yet this does not get to the heart of the matter. We are not only an opposition movement, countering the president and his partisans’ agenda. More fundamentally, we stand in defense of the greatest engine of material prosperity in human history, the fount of civilization, peace, and modernity: Capitalism.
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Thursday, July 21, 2011
Society Lacks Purchasing Power, Robots Don’t Buy Cars / Economics / Economic Theory
Our world lurches from financial crisis to financial crisis yet very few academics, reporters or commentators point out the fatal flaw in current orthodox economic theory which is the central force behind these crises. The flaw relates to the general LACK OF PURCHASING POWER in contemporary society. This weakness in classical economic theory is not new and many scholars have explained the problem however, increasingly, the issue is being conditioned out of people’s consciousness. The collapse of the international banking system, as a result of the Sub-Prime; “Originate to Distribute” catastrophe, has brought this Achilles heel of Keynesian economics into sharp focus.
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Monday, July 18, 2011
The Critical Flaw in Keynes's Economic System / Economics / Economic Theory
As part of my Mises Academy class Keynes, Krugman, and the Crisis, I have reread large portions of The General Theory. In his masterpiece, Keynes erects an impressive framework on one crucial assumption: left to its own devices, the free market can get stuck in an equilibrium with very high unemployment.
Although Keynes's whole edifice and critique of the "classical economists" rests on this belief, he devotes surprisingly little time to supporting it. In the present article I'll point out the weakness in his view. If it turns out that the free market does naturally move toward full employment in the labor market, then the entire Keynesian "general theory" falls apart.
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Sunday, July 17, 2011
Back to Economic Basics GDP = C + I + G + Net Exports / Economics / Economic Theory
This week we are going to revisit some themes concerning the problems of the debt and the deficit. I am getting a number of questions, so while long-time readers may have read most of this in one letter or another, it is clearly time for a review, especially given the deficit/debt-ceiling debate. I will probably offend some cherished beliefs of most readers, but that is the nature of the times we live in. It is the time of the Endgame, where things are not as black and white as they have been in the past.
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Monday, June 13, 2011
The Keys to Economic Growth and New Jobs / Economics / Economic Theory
Recent economic data show that U.S. job growth in May was negligible, while the official unemployment figure-- at least the figure the Labor Department admits to-- rose to 9.1%. The real unemployment figure, however, as compiled by economist John Williams, may well be higher than 20%. It is clear the U.S. economy is in terrible shape, and that no amount of government spending or Federal Reserve quantitative easing can reduce unemployment, increase real productivity, or address our debt fiasco.U.S. jobs and productivity are dependent on the accumulation of private capital to finance existing businesses or fund new entrepreneurial activity. Private capital-- whether accumulated by profitable U.S. businesses, invested by private equity and venture capital firms, or attracted from abroad-- is the key to economic growth and new jobs. But we cannot create jobs if we demonize profits, punish risk-taking capitalists, and stay hostile to foreign investment.
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Thursday, May 12, 2011
Macro Economic Theory Confusion on Inflation, Commodities, and the Fed / Economics / Economic Theory
A recent discussion regarding commodity prices on CNBC consisted virtually of sentence-by-sentence errors with respect to macroeconomic theory. Most of the misstatements involve either accidentally or intentionally — I don't know which — attributing economic and financial market events to various incorrect or misleading cause-and-effect scenarios, when the real explanation is simply the government's creation of money and credit.
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Wednesday, May 11, 2011
The Economy When Capital Is Nowhere in Sight / Economics / Economic Theory
A Travel Channel episode of No Reservations, a cooking-focused show narrated by Anthony Bourdain, took viewers to Port-au-Prince, Haiti. I had heard that the show offered unique insight into the country and its troubles. I couldn't imagine how. But it turns out to be true. Through the lens of food, we can gain an insight into culture, and from culture to economy, and from economy to politics and finally to what's wrong in this country and what can be done about it.
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Monday, May 09, 2011
The Upside-Down World of Modern Monetary Theory / Economics / Economic Theory
Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is a hip economic/financial paradigm apparently sweeping a world unsatisfied with mainstream economics. Over the past year, I have been hearing a growing number of people refer to MMT: either fans who think it blows up my Austrian views, or foes who think it deserves a full-scale critique.
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Friday, April 29, 2011
Dyseconomics: The New Macro Econ and The Greatest Economic Boom Ever / Economics / Economic Theory
Cetin Hakimoglu writes: *warning the views of this summary may appear bunt, infuriating, and or egregious, but this is my analysis about why things are the way they (normative economic Natalie Bassingthwaighte s) versus a populist feel-good rant about the fed or shadow banking. *
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Thursday, April 21, 2011
Fear the Economic Boom, Not the Bust / Economics / Economic Theory
Patrick Barron writes: All of the industrial world's central banks and public treasuries currently are engaged in an impossible exercise — trying to reinflate an artificially created boom through zero interest rates and deficit spending. The reality is that the current financial crisis was caused by central-bank money expansion, so it cannot be cured by further money expansion. It is as if a doctor is continuing to bleed a patient who is already bleeding to death.
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Sunday, April 17, 2011
The Cancer of Socialism Infecting the United States / Politics / Economic Theory
The following text is excerpted form the NEW The Stocks Stealth Bull Market Update 2011 70 page ebook is available for FREE Download. Chronic economic under performance by much of Europe as most notably illustrated by the bankrupting PIIGS is as a consequence of socialism, where the greater the degrees of socialism implemented the greater the economic under performance observed, where governments rely upon unsustainable inflationary deficit spending, money printing to give the illusion of temporary prosperity as a consequence of socialist policies that always eventually bankrupt economies.
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Sunday, April 10, 2011
Why Do People Hate John Maynard Keynes? / Economics / Economic Theory
Anyone who spends time on the economics blogs knows that Keynes is blamed for everything from the Wall Street bailouts to quantitative easing. But, why? There's nothing in Keynes "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money" that suggests that he would have supported the bailouts or QE2. Yes, he would have made sure the financial system didn't collapse, but that doesn't mean he would have issued blank checks to insolvent financial institutions run by crooked bankers.
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Friday, April 08, 2011
The Free Trade Theory That’s Killing America’s Economy, Why It’s Wrong / Economics / Economic Theory
I wrote in a previous article how America’s disastrous embrace of free trade is ultimately based on a false theory of how the global economy works: the so-called Theory of Comparative Advantage. This is what economists, from the government on down, believe in. This matters.Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, April 07, 2011
The Free Trade Theory of Comparative Advantage / Economics / Economic Theory
You can read about the free trade controversy for months and never hear about it. But in the minds of real economists, it’s there all the time, and it’s big. I’m talking about the so-called theory of comparative advantage, the theoretical lynchpin—in the view of free traders and protectionists alike—of the case for free trade. It has an unfortunate reputation for being too technically tricky for non-economists to understand, but I think this is a shame, because this myth tends to shut ordinary concerned citizens out of the debate. Therefore, I’d like to take a shot at explaining this theory.Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, April 05, 2011
The Low Interest Rate Economic Cure is the Disease / Interest-Rates / Economic Theory
As a reaction to the global financial and economic crisis, central banks around the world have cut their interest rates to the point of disappearing, because they see low interest rates as being conducive to making economies return to growth and prosperity.
According to the Austrian School of economics, however, the latest crisis has been brought about by a monetary policy of artificially suppressing the interest rate; and pushing interest rates down even further will only make matters worse.
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Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Why Religious People Struggle with Economics / Politics / Economic Theory
For years I've puzzled over the question of why religious people have such trouble coming to terms with economics. This problem applies only to modern religious people, for it was Catholics in 15th- and 16th-century Spain who systematized the discipline of economics to begin with. That was long ago. Today, most of what is written about economics in Catholic circles is painful to read. The failing extends left and right, as likely to appear in "progressive" or "traditionalist" publications. In book publishing, the problem is so pervasive that it is difficult to review the newest batch.
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Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Economists Are Hopelessly Naive About International Trade / Economics / Economic Theory
The economics profession, or well over 90 percent of it according to polls, continues to support free trade. Above all, most economists remain stuck in a cheery “win-win” fantasy of how trade works and are unable to see the brutally adversarial dynamics of trade in the real world.
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Friday, March 25, 2011
Independant Investor Ebook 2011 - Free Download / InvestorEducation / Economic Theory
Free eBook from Elliott Wave International: Being an independent investor never goes out of style – whether the markets are bullish or bearish. The 50-page Independent Investor eBook will challenge conventional notions about investing and explain market behaviors that most people consider “inexplicable.” Learn to think independently -- download the FREE 50-page Independent investor eBook NOW>>
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Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Corporate Cash Stash Soars to $1.9 Trillion, Maybe Marx Was Right After All... / Economics / Economic Theory
Two and a half years have passed since Lehman Brothers collapsed and US consumers are still digging out.
Last Thursday, the Fed released its “flow of funds” report which showed that households had trimmed their debt to $13.3 trillion in the forth quarter (4Q). But the crucial debt-to-income ratio remains significantly above trend at 120.9%. That means that consumers will have to cut their spending even more.
Friday, March 11, 2011
Free Trade Theory Known to be Wrong—Since 1817! / Economics / Economic Theory
The economic argument for free trade is ultimately based on the theory of comparative advantage, invented by David Ricardo in 1817. Ricardo was a London stockbroker, self-made millionaire, and Member of Parliament who became a self-taught economist.
Monday, March 07, 2011
Rick Santelli Needs Austrian Economics to Refute Insufferable Keynesians / Economics / Economic Theory
Mark R. Crovelli writes: In the world of financial "journalism," CNBC’s Rick Santelli stands out as a refreshing and intelligent antidote to the hoards of perma-bulls, fed apologists, and chart sorcerers that otherwise pollute the financial airwaves. Apart from his wonderfully energetic and quirky manner of speaking, and apart from his fantastic last name, Santelli is never afraid to challenge economists, Fed officials, and other mainstream talking heads. Talking points that are taken for granted or left unchallenged by Santelli’s mind-numbing colleagues are passionately attacked by the bond-tracking Italian dervish.
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Friday, March 04, 2011
Capitalism and Socialism / Politics / Economic Theory
How many times have you heard "capitalist" used as an epithet or a put-down? How many people do you know who use variations on "capitalism" to describe pretty much anything they don't like? It's a vice that cuts several ways. As the tea-party movement has risen to prominence, how often have you heard people denounce President Obama as a socialist?
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Thursday, March 03, 2011
Caught: Krugman's Shifting Arguments / Economics / Economic Theory
It's not newsworthy when Paul Krugman contradicts himself. However, in two recent blog posts on the varying economic fortunes of US states, Krugman's about-face was so complete and so fast that I just have to share.
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Monday, February 28, 2011
Trade Solutions That Won’t Work / Economics / Economic Theory
Americans in recent decades have not, of course, been entirely unaware that America has a trade problem. This has drawn into public debate a long list of proposed solutions. Unfortunately, many will not work, some are based on analytical confusions, and a few are outright nonsense. If we are to understand the true scope of our problem and frame solutions that will work, these false hopes must be debunked forthwith.Read full article... Read full article...
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Why a Flat Tariff on All U.S. Imports Would Work / Economics / Economic Theory
I advocate protectionism. But one standard criticism is that this would just result in politically connected industries getting tariffs raised on the products they produce. This would corrupt our economy, force consumers to pay higher prices, and serve no legitimate economic logic.Read full article... Read full article...
Saturday, February 26, 2011
In Praise of Mercantilism, or Why Economic History Isn’t Boring / Economics / Economic Theory
Does economic history hold a giant clue for getting America out of its present trade mess? Yes, because it debunks the idea that free trade is how nations become prosperous. Instead, it shows that nations win at international trade by playing a 400-year-old game called mercantilism.Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Why Have Nations at All? The Case for Economic Borders / Economics / Economic Theory
Why have nations at all, economically speaking?This question is provoked by the fact that every few months, without fail, somebody writes to me and asks why, if the protectionism I advocate between the U.S. and the rest of the world is rational, why isn't it rational to have tariffs between the various states of the U.S.? And since it clearly doesn't make any sense to have tariffs on trade between, say, California and Oregon, it follows that nations shouldn't practice economic protectionism either.
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Monday, February 21, 2011
Commerce Is a People's Revolution / Economics / Economic Theory
The big-box book business has begun to crumble with the bankruptcy filing of book-selling behemoth Borders. The Chapter 11 filing indicates the company is looking to restructure its debts and continue on. But as in the case of bankrupt Blockbuster, there may not be anything to restructure, with both of these old-technology companies destined for liquidation and futures of little more than Wikipedia entries chronicling each company's past glories.
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Sunday, February 20, 2011
Global Economy on the Edge of Chaos / Economics / Economic Theory
Nobel economist Friedrich Hayek’s most enduring legacy is his defense of classical liberalism and free market capitalism. The Road to Serfdom is Hayek’s case against central planning, something he viewed as a product of human design as opposed to human action. Hayek and his mentor Ludwig von Mises were the preeminent writers and thinkers of the Austrian school of economics and political economy.
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Friday, February 18, 2011
What Economics is Not / Economics / Economic Theory
It is starting again. It is a phenomenon that occurs more regularly now, especially with daily talk of massive imbalances right along with a massive boost in activity. More and more people are scratching their heads wondering what gives. Once again, economics has become a debating society. There are Keynesians, Austrians, the Classic folks, and those who will use ridiculous rationale and textbook, but not applicable accounting definitions to try to assert that we’re really getting rich every time the government borrows another dollar. It is no wonder people are confused. Like so many other areas of our society, particularly morality, the definitions have been skewed, the lines, blurred, and the waters made muddy.
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Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Mergers and Acquisitions and the Destruction of Wealth / Economics / Economic Theory
The stock market has been on a tear and it's all about mergers and acquisitions (M&A).
Last year ended up being a blockbuster for global mergers and acquisitions, with the total number of deals and values both rising by over 20 percent for 2010, hitting $2.4 trillion. Private equity buyouts meanwhile rose 7.2 percent, marking the strongest year for buyouts since 2007. Activity in M&A more than doubled in Australia; the Asia-Pacific region saw M&A deal value reach its highest value on record; and M&A deals also jumped 37 percent in Europe.
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Monday, February 07, 2011
Subjective Value and Market Prices / Economics / Economic Theory
One of the most subtle aspects of modern economic theory is the relation between subjective value and objective money prices. This is an area where the Austrians have an advantage over other schools, because they care more about their forebears than most other economists, and because Austrians were instrumental in the development of subjective-value theory.
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Monday, January 24, 2011
Response to Krugman on Austrian Business-Cycle Theory / Economics / Economic Theory
As many readers already know, last week Paul Krugman linked to one of my Mises Daily articles explaining the importance of capital theory in any discussion of the business cycle. Although Krugman graciously described my fable about sushi-eating islanders as "the best exposition I've seen yet of the Austrian view that's sweeping the GOP," naturally he derided the approach as a "great leap backward" and a repudiation of 75 years of economic progress since the work of John Maynard Keynes. To bolster his rejection, Krugman listed several problems he saw with the Austrian understanding.
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Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Defining Economics / Economics / Economic Theory
I have grown to think that the definition of "economics" was the one found in the Mogambo Big Book Of Economic Stuff (MBBOES), which is, "The horrific inflation in prices caused by evil and/or stupid people creating excess money, perpetrators of which comprise a long, long list of evil people and/or stupid people, starting with the Federal Reserve, Congress, and the odious Supreme Court, whose particular idiocy is their traitorous decision to allow a fiat currency, instead of the dollar being defined as a specific weight of gold as required by the freaking Constitution of the United States, for crying out loud, a specific mandate purposely put there by the Founding Fathers to prevent inflation in the money supply, which causes inflation in prices, which is the Number One Killer Of Economies (NOKOE). See also Doomed, We're Freaking."
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Monday, January 17, 2011
Is There a Conservative Case for QE? / Economics / Economic Theory
I recently discussed David Frum's lament that conservative Republicans are defecting from "respectable" economists and joining the ranks of the Austrians. One of the reasons for this is that many conservative pundits — Frum included — are Keynesians, plain and simple. Many rank-and-file conservatives are recognizing that it makes no sense to lambast Obama's fiscal-stimulus package in one breath and praise Bernanke's monetary stimulus in the next.
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Thursday, January 13, 2011
Where Profit Comes From / Economics / Economic Theory
Labor unions like to argue that the payment of higher wages is to the self-interest of employers because the wage earners will use their higher wages to make additional purchases from business firms, thereby increasing the sales revenues and profits of business firms. However, wrong and foolish it may be, this is an argument worth analyzing in some detail, because it can provide a gateway to a discussion of the actual sources of profit in the economic system.
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Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Krugman's Straw-Man Market System / Economics / Economic Theory
A friend of mine a decade ago was looking to do doctoral work in economics, and one of the places where he inquired was his state's flagship university. But he decided not to seek his doctorate at that particular place after he spoke to someone who was just about to defend his economics dissertation there.
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Monday, January 10, 2011
Following the Efficient-Markets Hypothesis into Absurdity / Economics / Economic Theory
Austrians in the tradition of Mises and Rothbard stress the resilience of a free-market economy, and they believe that the institution of private property — along with the profit-and-loss test — will steer resources into their most valuable niches.
However, most Austrians stop short of following Chicago School economists' advocacy of the "efficient-markets hypothesis" (EMH). In its most extreme form, the EMH becomes a caricature of itself in which asset bubbles are not just unlikely but logically impossible.
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Wednesday, January 05, 2011
Economists Can't Forecast for Toffee, In Defense of the “Old Always” / Economics / Economic Theory
Long time readers of Outside the Box are familiar with the name of James Montier, who is now with GMO in their London office. Today, James, with his usual acerbic wit, takes on the notion of the "New Normal" and offers us a defense of the "Old Always." James is a value investor and sees mean reversion as still alive and kicking, where some proponents of the New Normal think we should throw out all of the old aphorisms. While I am in the New Normal camp, I also agree with James. This makes for some quick and thought-provoking reading.
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Wednesday, December 29, 2010
The Emperor Keynes Still Has No Clothes / Economics / Economic Theory
It is time to consider the recommendation and economic analysis of Yale University economist Robert Shiller. He is widely respected, the co-designer of the Case-Shiller index, which traces housing prices in 20 American cities. He coined the phrase "irrational exuberance," which was made famous by Alan Greenspan in the mid-1990s.
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Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Theft by Mercantilism, China and the Keynesian Trap / Economics / Economic Theory
"Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote." ~ The Gospel According to Keynes, Chapter 1, verse 1.
Keynesianism is an economic philosophy based on the idea that the free market required intervention from the civil government in order to maintain justice and efficiency. The free market is both inefficient and unfair to the common man, Keynesianism teaches.
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Monday, December 27, 2010
Job Creation and Other Economic Myths / Economics / Economic Theory
Fred Buzzeo writes: Job creation has become the central theme of the current recession. The focus on job growth is widespread among both conservative (if I may use this term liberally) and left-leaning economists. Furthermore, if you ask the man on the street what the pressing economic problem of the time is, he will certainly respond, "Jobs."
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Monday, December 27, 2010
Have Events During 2010 Vindicated Keynesian Economic Models? / Economics / Economic Theory
In last Monday's article I discussed Jim Manzi's debate with economist Karl Smith. I pointed out that Smith's evidence in favor of mainstream macroeconomic models was actually consistent with the view that fiscal and monetary "stimulus" policies only stoke economic crises.
In the present article, I'll show a different example of this same pattern. Specifically, Paul Krugman took a macro forecast from Mark Zandi, and then after the fact compared it to the actual trajectory of GDP. Krugman concluded that Keynesian theory was vindicated, when in fact the results are more in line with what the critics predicted would happen.
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Friday, December 24, 2010
Economics Is Simple But The Fat Cats Want You to Think It's Complicated So That You Won't Demand Change / Politics / Economic Theory
Economics and finance seem like complicated topics, and so many people "leave it to the experts".
However, these topics are actually simple, and if people hear a clear explanation, they will be able to form an opinion about our current economy and the government's response to economic challenges.
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Thursday, December 23, 2010
Rise of the Free Market Zombies / Economics / Economic Theory
For his Sunday column, Paul Krugman wrote a piece titled "When Zombies Win." Krugman claims that "free-market fundamentalists" — including Ron Paul — have been successful politically, despite being thoroughly discredited by recent events. As we'll see, it's a good thing that these ideas of shrinking government refuse to die, no matter how often Krugman attacks them.
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Thursday, December 23, 2010
No, Mr. Krugman, You're Eating America Alive / Economics / Economic Theory
Here we go again. This week, Paul Krugman, the 2008 Nobel Prize winner in economics and the go-to guy for progressives who need a morale boost, launched another misguided attack on Austrian School economists. From his New York Times soapbox, he referred to the free-market Austrian "hard money" philosophy as a "zombie idea" that is inexplicably eating the brains of the voting public.Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
What Is the Current State of Economic Science? / Economics / Economic Theory
Erwin Rosen writes: What is the current state of economic science? In two words, "not good."
This is evident in the poor performance of the economics profession during the current financial crisis. Few economists saw it coming; once it started, its severity caught them by surprise; and now it is apparent that there is no agreement among them on how to end it.
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Tuesday, December 21, 2010
How Much Faith Should We Put in Keynesian Economic Models? / Economics / Economic Theory
Jim Manzi is a private-sector expert in statistical analysis. He is my favorite commentator on the economics of climate change, because he dove into the IPCC reports and found that the proposed legislative "cures" (cap-and-trade or carbon-tax laws) are arguably worse than the disease, even according to the "consensus" numbers.
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Thursday, December 16, 2010
The Economic Reality of the Obama Republican Tax Deal / Economics / Economic Theory
Economists and other pundits have been discussing the deal struck between Obama and the Republicans. It is an interesting topic because it showcases the enormous gulf between what makes good political sense and what policies are economically beneficial.
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Monday, December 13, 2010
The Fed, The Chicago School's Achilles Heel / Economics / Economic Theory
In a recent post "Triumph of the Austrian Economists," David Frum laments the displacement of the respectable Chicago School as the economists of choice among the political Right. Frum fails to see that conservative Republicans are justified in switching their allegiance to the Austrian economists, because supply-side monetarists have a glaring blind spot when it comes to the Federal Reserve.
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Saturday, December 04, 2010
There’s Still Hope for Modern Economists / Economics / Economic Theory
A recent blog of mine, dated Nov. 12, 2010, suggested that modern economists have modeled the economic decision-making process for many years with a high degree of inaccuracy.
They implemented a methodology referred to as the dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model.
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Saturday, November 27, 2010
Destructive Neoliberal Economic Austerity / Economics / Economic Theory
Instead of vitally needed stimulus, Washington and European governments dictate austerity. The pretext of deficit reduction is being used to transfer more wealth to those already with too much, plus the usual canard over the urgency to save national banking systems.In other words, make ordinary people bear the burden of bailing out banking giants responsible for the severest economic crisis since the Great Depression. How? The usual IMF solution, involving preservation of capital at the expense of workers - a package including wage and benefit cuts, less social spending, privatization of state resources, mass layoffs, deregulation, lower "onerous" taxes, maintaining corporate debt service, and harsh crackdowns against resisters.
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Friday, November 26, 2010
Economic Boom, Bust, and Gold / Economics / Economic Theory
In his interview with the CNBC on November 9, 2010, a highly regarded Wall Street economist, Nouriel Roubini, the cofounder and chairman of Roubini Global Economics, said that a gold standard is unlikely to stabilize the financial system. On the contrary, holds Roubini, such a standard can only make things much worse.
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Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Raising Taxes Is Not Reducing Government Spending / Economics / Economic Theory
Sunday's New York Times carries an article titled "The Blur Between Spending and Taxes." The author is Harvard Professor N. Gregory Mankiw.[1] The essential theme of the article is that the government is spending when it decides to forgo tax revenue that it otherwise could have collected. Indeed, tax revenues forgone in the enactment of tax deductions, such as for interest payments on home mortgages or charitable contributions, and tax credits, such as for first-time homebuyers or adoptions, are now commonly described as "Tax Expenditures." The thought is that the government is spending money in deciding not to take it in taxes and to allow the taxpayers to keep it.
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Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Bernanke vs. Keynes / Economics / Economic Theory
Investment drives the economy. It creates jobs, builds factories, develops technology, and stimulates growth. When investment falls, spending slows, unemployment rises, and the economy languishes in persistent stagnation.
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Saturday, November 20, 2010
Zombie Keynesianism / Economics / Economic Theory
The Keynesians are having a highly public quarrel on a deep and divisive issue – a fundamental issue. They are wrangling over exchange rates.
Obama and Bernanke and the U.S. Congress want the Chinese to raise the value of the Chinese currency. The Chinese don’t want to.
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Thursday, November 18, 2010
What Drives Business Profits? / Economics / Economic Theory
The economic and business community constantly attempts to forecast the effects of various economic changes and government policies on corporate profits. But both the cause and effect of increasing profits are other than what most people imagine. It will therefore be helpful to gain a concrete understanding of what profits do and do not represent.[1]
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Monday, November 15, 2010
Bernanke and Greenspans Pretense of Economic Knowledge Continues / Economics / Economic Theory
Two years after the Wall Street '08 come-apart, with the economy still lingering in a funk, the Federal Reserve announced, a day after the elections, what the Associated Press called "a bold effort to invigorate the economy": the purchase of $600 billion of government bonds from now through the middle of next year, at a pace of $75 billion a month. This $600 billion is on top of the $250–$300 billion the Fed will be buying to reinvest proceeds from its mortgage portfolio.
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Sunday, November 14, 2010
The Keynesian Vacuum Universe / Economics / Economic Theory
"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than a sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity" - Martin Luther King, Jr.
If only we existed in a Keynesian vacuum universe, then the current Administration's economic policies may have actually succeeded in fixing the ailing, debt-ridden economy! Here are some of the reasons why:
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Friday, November 12, 2010
Modern Economists Failed at Disaster Recovery / Economics / Economic Theory
When a recent Nobel Laureate in Economics, a current Federal Reserve Board president, and MIT economist with the National Bureau of Economics (NBER) agree — take serious note: It is quite rare.
"I believe that during the last financial crisis, macroeconomists (and I include myself among them) failed the country, and indeed the world,” Dr. Narayana Kocherlakota, President of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank, wrote this past May.
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Tuesday, November 09, 2010
Common Sense vs. Academic Economist Formulas; Fed Concludes Structurally High Unemployment is a Myth / Economics / Economic Theory
Ben Bernanke and the Fed have great belief in academic models whether they make any real world practical sense or not.
Indeed, Bernanke's reliance on formulas instead of common sense is what told him there was no housing bubble, that unemployment would not get above 8.5%, and that Quantitative Easing in massive force would cause the unemployment rate to drop. He was wrong on all counts.
Monday, November 08, 2010
Thinking Clearly about Capital, Interest, and Income / Economics / Economic Theory
Nowadays, Austrian economists are most famous for their theory of the business cycle, as developed by Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. However, they also made many contributions to the pure theory of capital and interest, most notably in the seminal work of Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk and later in that of Hayek. In the present article we'll see that these insights are relevant today, as mainstream economist Scott Sumner lashes out justifiably against absurd tax policies but, in the process, throws economic theory out the window too.
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Monday, November 08, 2010
The Business Boom-Bust Cycle in Microcosm / Economics / Economic Theory
The essential features of the boom-bust business cycle can be understood by viewing them in terms of the financial circumstances of a single individual.
Thus, imagine that an ordinary person has been going about his life more or less living within his means. And now, one day, he receives a registered letter from a major bank. The letter informs him that he is the sole heir of a distant relative who possessed a substantial fortune, and that he should come into the bank's main office in his city to sign the necessary documents and receive all the necessary authorizations to henceforth dispose of this fortune as he sees fit. Naturally, he quickly goes in and takes possession of his newfound fortune.
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Saturday, November 06, 2010
Bernanke Leaps into a Liquidity Trap, Thoughts on the U.S. Employment Numbers / Economics / Economic Theory
A Few Thoughts on the Employment Numbers
Bernanke Leaps into a Liquidity Trap
How to Spot a Liquidity Trap
Toy Blocks
I am in London finishing my new book, The End Game, which will be out after the first of the year, as soon as Wiley can make it happen. Working with my co-author, Jonathan Tepper, we are making good progress. We intend to quit (a book like this is never finished) tomorrow afternoon.
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Friday, November 05, 2010
Bernanke's Bubble Making Solutions Are the Problem / Economics / Economic Theory
Ben Bernanke, the man who purports to be the savior of the economy today, was actually deeply involved in creating the housing bubble, encouraging people to invest in toxic assets, and orchestrating the cover-up after the bubble collapsed. Now he is bludgeoning the economy into depression. Just like his predecessor Greenspan, his statements are replete with misleading, convoluted, and inconsistent claims, all designed to disguise the role of the Fed in the economic calamity.
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Wednesday, November 03, 2010
Academic Economists are the Unholy Priests of the Bankster's / Economics / Economic Theory
Gabriel Donohoe writes: "Political Economists," according to Stephen Zarlenga in The Lost Science Of Money, "became the priesthood of the new Bank aristocracy, often serving as a propaganda apparatus to whitewash the monetary power structure. They put forward false ideas and smoke screens on the nature of money, primitive concepts that help entrench the bankers."
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Tuesday, November 02, 2010
Keynesian Economic Confusion Means Investors Should Continue to Accumulate Gold / Economics / Economic Theory
Michael Lewitt is one of the most provocative writers I know. He consistently gives me something to chew on with his monthly letter. How he comes up with all those quotes (usually from sources I have never read but should have) amazes me. He has a unique view of the markets as he run Collateralized Debt Obligation funds and really understand the nitty-gritty of the bond and credit markets.
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Monday, November 01, 2010
Economic Recessions, Banking Reform, and the Future of Capitalism / Economics / Economic Theory
Jesús Huerta de Soto writes: It is a great honor for me to have been invited by the London School of Economics to deliver this Hayek Memorial Lecture. To begin, I would like to thank the school and especially Professor Timothy Besley for inviting me, Professor Philip Booth and the Institute of Economic Affairs for allowing me to also use this as an opportunity to introduce my most recent book, entitled Socialism, Economic Calculation, and Entrepreneurship, and finally Toby Baxendale for making this whole event possible.
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Monday, November 01, 2010
Deflation Is Not the Enemy, Bad Economics Is / Economics / Economic Theory
According to Alan Blinder "the present danger is not inflation but deflation". His pal Bernanke has driven the Fed's funds rate down to zero while giving the US economy an unprecedented increase in its monetary base. Not satisfied with that he is now apparently preparing an astonishing $2 trillion monetary expansion -- and Blinder worries about deflation!
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Friday, October 29, 2010
A Complexity Manifesto, Capitalists Continue to Increase Complexity Within Their Spheres of Production / Economics / Economic Theory
"Every limit appears as a barrier to be overcome" - Karl Marx (describing the world through a capitalist’s eyes)
There has been much debate since the global financial crisis of 2008 about what exactly happened and why. Some analysts believe that a period of deregulation in the financial sector, including the infamous repeal of Glass-Steagall (separating commercial and investment banking activities) [1], combined with reckless managerial decisions was the primary driver of a housing bubble, which led to a credit crunch and economic recession. Conservatives and libertarians tend to place the blame on government intervention in the housing and financial markets through Congressional legislation, such as the Community Reinvestment Act (putting pressure on banks to issue credit in low-income neighborhoods) [2], and the Federal Reserve's loose monetary policy (targeting low interest rates during the tech and housing bubbles) [3].
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Paul Krugman Challenged to Debate on Keynesian vs Austrian Business Cycle Theory / Economics / Economic Theory
As many readers already know, last week I launched a campaign to pressure Paul Krugman into debating me. In just the first week, this sophomoric 7-minute YouTube video has generated $35,000 in pledges. At this point, I don't see how Krugman will ever live this down until he debates me on Austrian versus Keynesian business-cycle theory.
In the present article, I'll give a little background of how I came up with the idea. Then I'll point out the broader implications of this episode, which go well beyond my jousting with Krugman.
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Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Poststeroid Economics / Economics / Economic Theory
During the ’80s and ’90s, ignorance was bliss. The global economy was growing nicely, and analyzing it (or even paying attention to market cycles) seemed like a waste of time, as the economy came in only three flavors: good, great and awesome. Even if you misread the flavor, the downside was that you’d just make a little less money.Read full article... Read full article...
Sunday, October 24, 2010
The Paradox of Capitalism, The Relevance of John Maynard Keynes / Economics / Economic Theory
Prabhat Patnaik writes: John Maynard Keynes, though bourgeois in his outlook, was a remarkably insightful economist, whose book Economic Consequences of the Peace was copiously quoted by Lenin at the Second Congress of the Communist International to argue that conditions had ripened for the world revolution. But even Keynes' insights could not fully comprehend the paradox that is capitalism.
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Monday, October 18, 2010
Putting Austrian Business-Cycle Theory to the Test / Economics / Economic Theory
Paul Krugman is despairing of late, because a growing number of mainstream economists are adopting (versions of) Austrian business-cycle theory. The most recent convert is Minneapolis Fed president Narayana Kocherlakota.
Krugman uses the occasion to criticize what he derides as "the hangover theory" of economic slumps, in which high unemployment is necessary after an artificial boom. As happened with his earlier criticism of "the hangover theory," here too Krugman buttresses his Keynesian logic with a misguided appeal to the data.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Nobel Committee in Search of Economists / Economics / Economic Theory
This year's Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics goes to Peter Diamond, Dale Mortensen, and Christopher Pissarides, for their work on "search theory," especially as applied to labor markets. In the present article I'll explain the basics of their contribution but then point out the crisis in mainstream economics: even though these economists — especially Diamond — are very smart and productive, they and their colleagues have hardly helped the plight of the unemployed, as we stumble ever deeper into depression.
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Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Krugman is a Smart Fellow but Obsessed with Government Spending / Economics / Economic Theory
Murray Sabrin writes: Paul Krugman wears many hats — Princeton University professor, New York Times columnist, Nobel Laureate in Economics (2008), prolific author of scholarly books and journal articles, and now president of the Eastern Economic Association. The EEA is a regional scholarly group that publishes a journal and holds an annual academic conference in New York City every other year. The EEA is housed in the Anisfield School of Business, at Ramapo College, where I have taught Corporate Finance, and Financial Markets and Institutions for the past 25 years.
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Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Paul Krugman "I Told You So" Keynesian Stimulus Economic Nonsense / Economics / Economic Theory
As predicted on numerous occasions, Paul Krugman is once again pleading for still more Keynesian stimulus. Please consider Hey, Small Spender
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Saturday, October 09, 2010
Economic Nonsense From the Washington Post / Economics / Economic Theory
The only genuinely good news in Friday's jobs report was the much needed shedding of 159,000 government workers of which only 77,000 were temporary census workers.
Shed another million government workers and you have a small start as to what needs to happen. Some don't see it that way, including Erza Klein at the Washington Post.
Friday, October 08, 2010
Economic Depressions, Their Cause and Cure / Economics / Economic Theory
We live in a world of euphemism. Undertakers have become "morticians," press agents are now "public relations counsellors" and janitors have all been transformed into "superintendents." In every walk of life, plain facts have been wrapped in cloudy camouflage.No less has this been true of economics. In the old days, we used to suffer nearly periodic economic crises, the sudden onset of which was called a "panic," and the lingering trough period after the panic was called "depression."
Tuesday, October 05, 2010
The Deep Cause Of The Great Financial Crisis: The Peace Diktat Of Versailles / Economics / Economic Theory
According to a recent news item, not widely circulated, after more than 90 years of slavery, on October 3, 2010, Germany made the final payment for its World War I debt. This event is highly symbolic. It gives me great pleasure to be one of the first to congratulate you, literally hours after the German people were finally freed from debt slavery.
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Monday, October 04, 2010
Blind to the Flaws of Keynesian Economic Theory / Economics / Economic Theory
Recently the pundits and bloggers have been arguing about the empirical case for (and against) the Obama Administration's $800 billion stimulus package. I have already focused on Paul Krugman's humorous role in this debate, and today we'll get some chuckles courtesy of Princeton economist Alan Blinder.
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Monday, October 04, 2010
Why I Despise Krugman / Politics / Economic Theory
Recently, I wrote a take-down of Paul Krugman. I pointed out how, in some of his recent posts, Krugman was distorting facts in order to score points for his policy prescriptions. I showed how he was pulling sleight-of-hand with the numbers, so as to play on readers’ misconceptions, and thereby make his rather foolish policy prescriptions sound reasonable.
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Monday, October 04, 2010
US Economy Demand Deficiency is Not the Problem and Keynesianism is Not the Solution / Economics / Economic Theory
In trying to explain the state of the American economy the commentariat is still blaming the lack of consumer demand. But as the classical economists always pointed out when presented with this fallacy, consumption is never a problem but production is.
(Although I have made use of classical economists numerous times, drawing attention their correct views on production and consumption, I should make it clear that classical economists were far from being in agreement on every important point of theory, especially where value, prices and costs entered the discussion.)
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Friday, October 01, 2010
Inflationism and Government Intervention Roots of the Great Depression / Economics / Economic Theory
Lionel Robbins writes: I want to start by saying something about the phrase "poverty in plenty" of which we hear so much. I cannot help thinking that it may be misleading to some readers. The object of this series is to explain why the economic machine sometimes produces so much less than it could produce, in spite of the fact that so many people consume so much less than they could consume.
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Sunday, September 26, 2010
The Economic Impact of More Trade Agreements / Economics / Economic Theory
Mauro Dias Lourenço writes:In the second half of the twentieth century, Brazil was one of the countries that grew fastest on the planet, especially until 1979, which includes the period of the so-called "economic miracle," from 1967 to 1973. The fact that the phenomenon coincided mostly with the period of military dictatorship (1964-1985) does not mean that resulted from an authoritarian regime in which the State has stimulated the development.
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Saturday, September 25, 2010
Is a Flat Tariff the Answer to America’s Trade Mess? / Economics / Economic Theory
The House Ways and Means Committee has finally approved a bill that would attempt to crack down on Chinese currency manipulation, a key cause of America’s trade deficit, by threatening China with retaliatory tariffs. Leaving aside the bogeyman of a trade war—which China is unlikely to start as the nation running the trade surplus and thus the nation having something to lose—this raises the obvious question of whether tariffs are a plausible long-term solution to America’s trade problems. What would happen, that is, if America reverted to its historical norm (from Independence to after WWII) of being a tariff-protected economy?Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, September 24, 2010
Partial Equilibrium Analysis – Part 2 / Economics / Economic Theory
In the first part of this series, we took at a look at Partial Equilibrium (PE) analysis in terms of analyzing a particular good or service rather than macroeconomic aggregates. What PE allows us to do as well is to both qualitatively and quantitatively assess the true effects of taxes and subsidies. We can also answer whether or not taxes and subsidies represent Pareto efficiencies. For our example we chose to look at the area of gasoline taxes. Many state governments are considering increasing gasoline taxes in the face of collapsing tax receipts. Intuitively, it would seem that such measures would be penny-wise and dollar foolish, but let’s use PE and see if that bears out conventional wisdom.
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Monday, September 20, 2010
The Empirical Case against Government Stimulus / Economics / Economic Theory
Economists in the Misesian tradition stress the primacy of theory in the social sciences. When trying to figure out the Great Depression, for example, we can't approach the topic with a blank slate and let the facts "speak for themselves." Mises argued that in order for us to even know which facts to consider as relevant, we need to have an antecedent body of deductive insights.
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Saturday, September 18, 2010
Economics vs. Fakeonomics, Free Trade Skepticism / Economics / Economic Theory
We skeptics of free trade are used to being told, “You don’t understand economics.” In fact, one major reason I wrote the book Free Trade Doesn’t Work was simply to expose, once and for all, that there do exist extremely serious and intellectually reputable arguments, within the confines of accepted mainstream economics, which question free trade. And indeed they exist.Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, September 17, 2010
H.G. Wells's Socialist Critique of Capitalism / Economics / Economic Theory
Paul A. Cantor writes: "One might wonder whether these intellectuals are not sometimes inspired by resentment that they, knowing better what ought to be done, are paid so much less than those whose instructions and activities in fact guide practical affairs. Such literary interpreters of scientific and technological advance, of which H.G. Wells, because of the unusually high quality of his work, would be an excellent example, have done far more to spread the socialist ideal of a centrally directed economy in which each is assigned his due share than have the real scientists from whom they have cadged many of their notions." —Friedrich Hayek, The Fatal Conceit
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Friday, September 17, 2010
John’s Economic Worldview / Economics / Economic Theory
Today, we are faced with a period in world history of unprecedented change. Carl Jung, who worked with Sigmund Freud and is known today for his work in humanistic-existential psychology, believed that man perceived change as “death”. Dr. Janice Dorn, who has coached hundreds of professional traders since the mid ‘90s, stated to me in an interview for my December 2006 newsletter entitled Mindgames, that we avoid change because “it is incredibly difficult to shift paradigms, which of course is the way in which we perceived the world.”
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Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Economic Thought in Ancient Greece / Economics / Economic Theory
Jesús Huerta de Soto writes: The intellectual odyssey that laid the foundations for Western civilization began in classical Greece. Unfortunately, Greek thinkers failed in their attempt to grasp the essential principles of the spontaneous market order and of the dynamic process of social cooperation which surrounded them. While we must acknowledge the important Greek contributions in the areas of epistemology, logic, ethics, and even the conception of natural law, the Greeks failed miserably to see the need for the development of a discipline, economic science, devoted to the study of the spontaneous processes of social cooperation that comprise the market.
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Sunday, September 12, 2010
Where Krugman Went Wrong on Economic Stimulus / Economics / Economic Theory
Paul Krugman, writing in The New York Times on September 5 under the title "1938 in 2010", chastizes president Obama's economists once more for doing what they have promised not to do: to repeat the mistakes of president Roosevelt's economists in 1937 in pulling back fiscal stimulus too soon. According to Krugman, while president Obama's policies have limited the damage from the financial crisis to the economy, they have been too timid in opening the spigots to make money flow, as shown by levels of unemployment that is still disastrously high and increasing. He advocates applying more stimulus, nay, a burst of deficit-financing of the same order of magnitudes as that during World War II, which can amount to roughly twice the value of GDP, or $30 trillion.
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Sunday, September 12, 2010
Western Economies Don't Need a Manufacturing Industry / Economics / Economic Theory
A common assumption among many commentators is that Western countries need a manufacturing base. We have these trade and budget deficits because we don't 'produce' anything tangible. I suppose 200 years ago the same people would have said we need an agricultural base and not this 'phoney' manufacturing industrialisation many nations embarked towards. I disagree with Peter Schiff, Americans don't need manufacturing any more than a country used to employ huge numbers of the population in the agricultural sector. They just need to do things that other nations can't. The service sector is not a drag on the economy, its a path to further prosperity and represents an increase to a nations living standards.
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Wednesday, September 08, 2010
The Ultimate Source of Profit and Loss on the Market / Economics / Economic Theory
The changes in the data whose reiterated emergence prevents the economic system from turning into an evenly rotating economy and produces again and again entrepreneurial profit and loss are favorable to some members of society and unfavorable to others. Hence, people concluded, the gain of one man is the damage of another; no man profits but by the loss of others.
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Wednesday, September 08, 2010
Real Bank Credit and Real GDP Growth, Michael Boskin’s Summer of Economic History Amnesia / Economics / Economic Theory
Monetarism, In a September 2 op-ed commentary in the WSJ ("Summer of Economic Discontent"), Michael Boskin, former chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers under Bush 41, compares the anemic current economic recovery with vibrant ones, such as the recovery that commenced in the first quarter of 1983, when Martin Feldstein was chairman of President Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers. Mr. Boskin intimates that the reason the current economic recovery is so feeble is because of economic policies being pursued by the current presidential administration.
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Sunday, September 05, 2010
The Economic Insane Asylum / Economics / Economic Theory
In a Nutshell: Our economy is really an insane asylum run by lunatics.
Common Sense: No problem can be fixed before a solution is formed. No solution can be formed until the underlying problems are clearly identified.
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Sunday, September 05, 2010
Stimulus and Full Employment, Averting the Great Depression Again / Economics / Economic Theory
In multiple posts Paul Krugman is saying "I told you so". For example, please consider Nobody Could Have Predicted
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Friday, September 03, 2010
Bad Monetary Policy Is Redundant / Economics / Economic Theory
George F. Smith writes: A great thinker once wrote that "all things useful are of such a nature that where there is too much of them they must either do harm, or at any rate be of no use, to their possessors."[1]
Having experienced the harmful results of a paper currency manufactured at will, early US statesmen tried to forbid it from ever happening again. Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution specified that no state shall "make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts," while the
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Friday, September 03, 2010
If a Pure Market Economy Is So Good, Why Doesn't It Exist? / Economics / Economic Theory
Edward Stringham and Jeffrey Rogers Hummel writes: If a pure market economy is so good, why does it not already exist? If governments are so bad, why are they dominant throughout the world today? Indeed, is the widespread adoption of free markets ever likely to occur?
Many recent authors, including Tyler Cowen,[1] Cowen and Daniel Sutter,[2] Randall G. Holcombe,[3] and Andrew Rutten[4] question the feasibility of a pure libertarian society.[5] They maintain that such a system cannot arise or persist because some people will always have both the incentive and the ability to use force against others. These authors offer several reasons why, even if society starts out in a perfect libertarian world without any states (as Murray Rothbard and others advocate),[6] competing groups will eventually form a coercive government.
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Friday, September 03, 2010
Neo-Keynesian's, Signs of an Evil Economy / Economics / Economic Theory
I am standing on the corner of the street, doing my duty to "give back" to society, in this case by yelling at morons passing by in the cars, "We're freaking doomed, you moron! Your own stupid government has destroyed you by letting the foul, fetid, festering Federal Reserve create too much money that they stupidly, stupidly, stupidly did as part of the stupid neo-Keynesian econometric theoretical lunacy that has mesmerized them, so that a shiny computer in front of a neo-Keynesian econometric economist is like a shiny toy in front of a monkey, and which has mesmerized the Fed and the government for similar reasons, and with similar results, in that the toy is now broken, the monkey cut its hand on the broken toy, the cut is infected, and there is a good chance that the monkey will die a horrible, painful death! Hahaha! How do you like them apples? Horrible, painful death! We're freaking doomed, including you and your hotshot car with the radio turned up real loud, trying to drown me out! And stop honking at me! I have rights, you moron!"
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Monday, August 30, 2010
Partial Equilibrium Economic Analysis, Part I / Economics / Economic Theory
One of the many tools available to economists and analysts in determining the suitability of fiscal or economic policy is partial equilibrium (PE) analysis. However, many scoff at the notion of using partial equilibrium simply because many of its assumptions are deemed to be too unrealistic. However, for taking a look at the potential benefits (or costs) of a policy such as a tax on a single good, PE is a very valid construct. One of the biggest hot button topics these days in nearly every state is how to raise revenue (rather than cutting costs). One of the traditional cash cows for states is in the form of gasoline taxes. The same goes for the Federal government in this regard. However, as we all know, simply arbitrarily and capriciously taxing a product is not necessarily efficient. In fact it usually isn’t.
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Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Economic Science and Theory: The Special, the Sublime, the Climax / Economics / Economic Theory
The existence of the universe is something extraordinary!
The countless conjectures (mainly scientific) on the intrinsic characteristics of the universe and also the attempts to understand it have followed the history of mankind. This direction has been the role of Physical Science (prominently, but also chemistry) the "lady" of understanding the laws and forces that comprise the cosmos.
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Thursday, August 19, 2010
Economists Are Behind the Curve of Economic Realities! / Economics / Economic Theory
Concerns about the U.S. economy began as a ripple when economic growth unexpectedly began slowing in the 2nd quarter. The continuing waves of negative economic reports in May, June, July, and now into August have had economists scrambling to revise their growth forecasts downward. But they have not been quick enough to keep up with the downward pace of the reports.
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Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Affording the Unemployed / Economics / Economic Theory
While the unemployment rate continues to hover between 9 and 10 percent, the average amount of time wage earners remain unemployed has skyrocketed to previously unrecorded levels.[1] Keynesians fear that a weak fiscal and monetary response will allow the presently cyclically unemployed to become so permanently.[2] UC Berkeley professor Bradford DeLong puts it briefly, "Long-term unemployment has a way of turning into structural unemployment."[3]
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Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Peter Schiff Says Dr. Keynes Killed the Patient / Economics / Economic Theory
A morbidly obese gentleman labored into Dr. Hayek's office suffering from severe chest pain. The patient also complained that he was unable to consume his usual 10,000 calorie-per-day diet; in fact, he was feeling so sick that he could barely scarf down 9,000 calories. He plead that his love for food remained as strong as ever, but his body just wasn't keeping up with his demands.
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Monday, August 16, 2010
The Outsourcing Circle of the Global Economy / Economics / Economic Theory
A lot has been written, over the years, about the benefits of outsourcing and its effects on the profitability of the global corporations.
This article aims to draw attention towards the Long Term effects of outsourcing to the same corporations doing so.
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Friday, August 13, 2010
Inflation and Deflation, The Flations Moving Towards a Chaotic Conclusion / Economics / Economic Theory
The incessant debate of whether the economy is inflating or deflating suffers from a vocabulary problem. This is as it must be since some (Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke) discuss deflation as falling prices of stuff while others concentrate on the debt deflation of an overleveraged economy. The latter is what matters.
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Tuesday, August 10, 2010
The Deflation Bogey / Economics / Economic Theory
The Paul Reveres of the economics profession are riding their horses, warning Americans, "Deflation is coming! Deflation is coming!" From Paul Krugman to Joseph Gagnon to the various mainstream news publications, the message is the same — the government needs to induce inflation now, or else the economy will sink further into the Slew of Despond and unemployment will increase.
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Monday, August 09, 2010
The Form of Saving Matters For Free-market Fractional Reserve Banking / Economics / Economic Theory
Although Austrian economists agree on most of the "big picture" issues, even so there are some internal controversies. One of the most heated debates within the Austrian camp centers on the economic benefits (or lack thereof) of the practice of fractional-reserve banking. Just about every Austrian today thinks that our current financial system — cartelized and propped up by the government — is prone to excessive inflation and the boom-bust cycle.
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Friday, August 06, 2010
The Austrian History of U.S. Money and Banking / Economics / Economic Theory
Jonathan Finegold Catalán writes: Traditionally, the greatest and most complete history of American money is held to be Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz's A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960. As a reservoir of statistics, Friedman and Schwartz's magnum opus is unrivaled. In terms of influence, there is no other book on the subject held in higher regard. Friedman and Schwartz challenge the conventional wisdom on American economic history, on the topics of the so-called Long Depression — a period which saw steadily falling prices, but unrivaled industrial growth — and the "dangers" of secular price deflation,[1] and the Great Depression.[2] But their empirical and positivist approach to economic analysis often mars their accuracy.[3]
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Friday, August 06, 2010
The Inflation and Deflation Debate Deconstructed / Economics / Economic Theory
'What most people call reason is really rationalization. Given a new set of data, most people will search through it only for those examples that support their existing beliefs. Their beliefs are really opinions, a tenuous collection of myths, anecdotes, slogans, and prejudices based largely on justifying personal fear and greed. This is what makes modern propaganda so powerful; people do not bother to think critically and objectively and act for the greatest good. And in their ignorance they can find the will to do increasingly monstrous things, and rationalize them.' Jesse
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Thursday, August 05, 2010
Linguistic Nonsense and Liberal Economics / Economics / Economic Theory
Liberal economics has long been recognized by a host of writers, some of whom are economists themselves, as a religious-like dogma. Like Tertullian who believed "because it is absurd," economists accept the dogma not because it makes sense, but because it doesn't.
Whoa, you say, show me the evidence, and I will.
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Monday, August 02, 2010
Nonsense on the Federal Budget Deficit Question / Economics / Economic Theory
In a recent piece I reported the shocking ignorance in a Huffington Post article on the alleged harmlessness of the federal deficit. Several readers wrote to tell me that as bad as the HuffPo article was, James Galbraith's interview with Ezra Klein was even worse.
They were right. In today's piece I'll walk through some of Galbraith's biggest whoppers.
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Saturday, July 31, 2010
Nielson: The End Game is Either Hyperinflation or Debt Implosion – Got Gold? / Economics / Economic Theory
“The collapse of the U.S. economy is a certainty - only the manner in which it will happen has yet to be determined. It is just a matter of time before the global derivatives bubble will produce the same result that has occurred to every other currency not backed by gold throughout history - those currencies, our ‘money’, will become worthless.”
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Saturday, July 31, 2010
Federal Government's Trillion Dollar Deficits Crowding Out Our Future Wealth / Economics / Economic Theory
The standard justification for the Federal government's trillion-dollar-plus deficits for the next decade is this: "Without this stimulus, the economy will fall into another Great Depression." This is the Keynesian Party Line, all over the West. It is promoted by almost everyone. Even normally free market economists have gotten on board.
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Friday, July 30, 2010
The History of Capitalism / Economics / Economic Theory
The history of capitalism as it has operated in the last two hundred years in the realm of Western civilization is the record of a steady rise in the wage earners' standard of living. The inherent mark of capitalism is that it is mass production for mass consumption directed by the most energetic and far-sighted individuals, unflaggingly aiming at improvement. Its driving force is the profit motive, the instrumentality of which forces the businessman constantly to provide the consumers with more, better, and cheaper amenities. An excess of profits over losses can appear only in a progressing economy and only to the extent to which the masses' standard of living improves. Thus capitalism is the system under which the keenest and most agile minds are driven to promote to the best of their abilities the welfare of the laggard many.
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Friday, July 30, 2010
Has Economics Run Out of Ideas? / Economics / Economic Theory
Jonathan Finegold Catalan provides an excellent review of the current state of intellectual paralysis in the economics profession: http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article21501.html
He describes how right-now the debate hinges on re-examination and re-hashing of the ideas of the two legends of economic thinking, John Maynard Keynes and Mises-Hayek (the Austrian School).
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Thursday, July 29, 2010
Austrian Business Cycle Theory Vs Keynesians / Economics / Economic Theory
The current recession has brought back discussion on the merits of countercyclical fiscal and monetary policy. Broadly speaking, the economics profession is divided into two camps. One side is made up of "liquidationists" and "deficit hawks," supporting tight monetary policy and low — or no — government spending. The other group is composed of those fearing a fall in prices, who support easy credit and expansive fiscal policy to combat it. While most economists probably fall in between, this dichotomy represents the two poles. The extremes are occupied by the Austrian School on one end and Paul Krugman on (or close enough to) the other.
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Tuesday, July 27, 2010
The Unlimited Power of Suppressing the Interest Rate / Interest-Rates / Economic Theory
Under today's fiat-money regimes, central banks, as a rule, control short-term interest rates. They do so by setting the interest rates on short-term loans extended to commercial banks (typically with maturities of one day, one week, two weeks, or one month).
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Sunday, July 25, 2010
Credit Based on Consumption Not Savings, Real Bills Revisted / Economics / Economic Theory
Adam Smith in his Wealth of Nations worked out the foundations of a second type of credit that is based, not on savings, but on consumption. Later this theory was pejoratively called "Real Bills Doctrine" by its detractors. We stick to this name because the adjective "real" admirably captures the essence of a bill of exchange, making it different from anticipation bills, accommodation bills, treasury bills, which all have a measure of being "unreal".
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Sunday, July 25, 2010
Thoughts on the Economy / Economics / Economic Theory
Marcus Eduardo de Oliveira writes: "… the ideas of Economists and political philosophers, BOTH right when they are and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood." -John Maynard Keynes
Nobody can ignore the economy for only two reasons: the first is that not enough resources for everyone, since desires are unlimited. The shortage, understood as market failure, is an incontestable truth. The second reason is that we are all part of the economy. The latest issues involving the economy also involve us in every moment. Thus, regardless of the evolutionary stage of each company, we always affect situations involving the generation of employment, income, combating poverty, hunger, resource transfers, taxation, purchase and sale of goods.
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Thursday, July 22, 2010
The Death of the Postindustrial Dream / Politics / Economic Theory
Remember postindustrialism? Not long ago, this catchphrase was supposed to define America’s future: no more grubby hard industries, just a clean bright world of services and high technology. Its most succinct formulation is as follows:
Manufacturing is old hat and America is moving on to better things.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Keynesian Economics Fraud, A Bad Day For The WSJ / Economics / Economic Theory
A recurrent theme in my articles has been that our current economic system is intended to steal your wealth and that a vast amount of information being taught as economics is intended to justify this stealing and to trick you into falling for its program.
As with any misinformation, one must make a distinction between a deliberate lie and an honest mistake. As I have studied this, it is clear to me that, at the very top, it is deliberate. For example, John Maynard Keynes was a deliberate fraud. He did not believe Keynesian economics. It was a useful tool toward his goal of attracting the bankers to support him and his followers. Keynes was a confidence man; our current economic system is a confidence game, and the intent is to steal the wealth of all the marks.
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Sunday, July 18, 2010
Debunking Paul Krugman's Icelandic Economic Miracle / Economics / Economic Theory
With op-ed pieces such as "Budget Deficits: Spend Now, Save Later", it is of no surprise that Paul Krugman declares--Iceland--a "Post-Crisis Miracle."
In an article dated June 30, Krugman wrote: "...although Iceland is generally considered to have experienced the worst financial crisis in history, its punishment has actually been substantially less than that of other nations."
Friday, July 16, 2010
Austrian and Keynesian Economics, Price Target for Gold and Silver Mining Stocks / Commodities / Economic Theory
We live in an era of unparalleled confusion on monetary and economic issues. It’s almost like a shoot-out among the economists in the Old West, except that here you can’t tell the good guys from the bad guys. You read so many conflicting reports, editorials, and newsletters that it’s easy to get befuddled.
There are those who say inflation, those who shout deflation. Some say print more money, others say halt the printing presses. There are those who say bail them out, and the others who say let them fail. There are those who say gold is going up to $2,000 and even to $5,000, and those who say it’s a bubble about to burst. We’re in a bear market, sell all your stocks. No, we’re in a bull market, buy, buy, buy.
Friday, July 16, 2010
Economics in Freefall / Economics / Economic Theory
I admire Joseph E. Stiglitz, because he has a social conscience and a sense of justice, the absence of which turns economists into monsters. Despite his virtues and Nobel Prize, Stiglitz sometimes falls down as an economist. Readers of my new book, How The Economy Was Lost, will be aware that I take him to task for the Solow-Stiglitz production function, which seriously misleads economics about the scarcity of nature’s capital.
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Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Economics Is Easy Except for Academic Economists / Economics / Economic Theory
Sterling T. Terrell writes: I stumbled across an interesting article a few days ago. Written by Kartik Athreya, of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, the article is titled "Economics is Hard. Don't Let Bloggers Tell You Otherwise."
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Tuesday, July 13, 2010
The Self-Defeat of the Keynesian Cross / Economics / Economic Theory
Predrag Rajsic writes: The Austrian business-cycle theory, initiated by Ludwig von Mises and further developed and elaborated by F.A. Hayek, is by many considered the cornerstone of this school of thought. However, in 1998, Paul Krugman plainly dismissed the theory as not "worthy of serious study."
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Wednesday, July 07, 2010
Ten Economic Blunders from History / Economics / Economic Theory
John S. Chamberlain writes: Take cover when you hear a political leader talking about economic affairs. You can bet a bad decision is incoming. Luckily for the leaders, their meddling usually has a slow, erosive effect on the economy. Every so often, however, the great ones manage to land a real whopper that takes them down along with their whole country. Here are ten examples from history.
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Wednesday, July 07, 2010
Beyond Black Swans, De-Leveraging And Re-Leveraging / Economics / Economic Theory
The black swan is the foo bird of modern Keynesianism. It is a threat only because of central bank fiat money and commercial bank leverage.
In a recent report, "China: What Rhymes with 'Crash'?" I wrote this:
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Tuesday, July 06, 2010
Economists Gathering Data Whilst Economy Burns / Politics / Economic Theory
Mark R. Crovelli writes: When future generations of scholars look back on the economic and political disaster enveloping the United States today, three questions should be at the forefront of their minds.
First, they should wonder whether the many generations of politicians that collectively engineered this economic and political disaster were either (1) too outrageously stupid to know that what they were doing would produce such a dreadful catastrophe, or (2) whether they were so evil and underhanded that they did know what they were doing would result in disaster — and yet they did it anyway.
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Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Defending the Slum Landlord / Housing-Market / Economic Theory
Walter Block writes: To many people, the slumlord — alias ghetto landlord and rent gouger — is proof that man can, while still alive, attain a satanic image. Recipient of vile curses, pincushion for needle-bearing tenants with a penchant for voodoo, perceived as exploiter of the downtrodden, the slumlord is surely one of the most hated figures of the day.
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Wednesday, June 30, 2010
How Economic Policy Errors Cause Depressions / Economics / Economic Theory
It is easy to pick on Paul Krugman. So easy in fact, that it is not even fair sport.
However, if you can separate the wheat from the chaff, sometimes there are nuggets of truth in what Krugman writes.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Economic Choice Between Austrian Austerity Or Keynesian Poverty / Economics / Economic Theory
Sean Corrigan writes: [Government] is apprehended, not as a committee of citizens chosen to carry on the communal business of the whole population, but as a separate and autonomous corporation, mainly devoted to exploiting the population for the benefit of its own members… The intelligent man, when he pays taxes, certainly does not feel he is making a prudent investment of his money; on the contrary, he feels he is being mulcted in an excessive amount for services that, in the main, are useless to him, and that, in substantial part, are downright inimical to him" ~ H.L. Mencken, "More of the Same," American Mercury 1925
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Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Keynesian Economics C + I + G = Baloney / Economics / Economic Theory
Patrick Barron writes: Wrongheaded governmental interventions are preventing the world's largest economies from recovering from massive malinvestment.
Japan, currently the world's third-largest economy, has had zero growth for 20 years. A good case can be made that the United States has had zero growth for ten years, because the so-called growth of the first decade of the new millennium now appears to have been phony. All of those houses were built at a loss, losses that we are only now recognizing. We have yet to plumb the total extent of the rot.
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Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Paul Krugman Warns of Depression / Economics / Economic Theory
The more I read Paul Krugman's columns and papers, the more I realize just how great the gulf is between Austrian and Keynesian thought. It is impossible to sum up all of the differences between the two camps, but I do think that perhaps the disparities can be summed up in the Austrian rejection of Keynes' famous 1943 statement that expansion of credit by the central bank will create a "miracle . . . of turning a stone into bread."
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Monday, June 28, 2010
How do Other Nations Balance Their Trade? Try Germany / Economics / Economic Theory
As America continues to contemplate its trade mess, the question naturally arises how other developed nations manage to trade with the world without deficits and without turning high-wage industries into low-wage industries to compete. Although some other developed nations, like Britain and Spain, have trade situations almost as bad as ours in recent years, some have been quite the opposite.Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, June 28, 2010
The New Ideological Divide Between Stimulators and Austereians / Economics / Economic Theory
Despite the apparent deficit-cutting solidarity that emerged from this weekend's G-20 meeting in Toronto, it is clear that the great powers of the industrialized world have not been this philosophically estranged since the end of the Cold War. Ironically, in this new contest, the former belligerents have switched sides - the capitalists are now the socialists, and vice versa.
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Monday, June 28, 2010
More Keynesian Clowns With Priming the Economic Pump Nonsense / Economics / Economic Theory
Nearly every day, more Keynesian and Monetarist clowns show up trumpeting the benefits of more government spending and more financial debt.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Money vs Wealth / Economics / Economic Theory
When discussing financial matters, people often conflate money with wealth. Although such loose language may be perfectly fine in everyday conversation, it's important to occasionally go over the basics and make sure we are thinking about these issues in the proper way.
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Tuesday, June 22, 2010
What's the Point of Macro Events Research in Forecasting? / Economics / Economic Theory
I am back in Tuscany and will head to Milan tomorrow early, give a speech at the Bloomberg offices and then back home. But it is Monday and that means it is time for another Outside the Box. And I have found a most excellent offering. Dylan Grice from Societe Generale in London wrote on value for an OTB a few weeks ago, and he follows that up with more thoughts on the use of macro trends versus value investing. This is a real think piece, and worthy of more than one read.
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Saturday, June 19, 2010
Economic Depression Solutions, Krugman vs. Greenspan / Economics / Economic Theory
Courtesy of Calculated Risk here are a pair of articles, one from Krugman and another from Greenspan on the limits of debt.
That ’30s Feeling
Friday, June 18, 2010
Trade Cycle Impact on the Market Economy / Economics / Economic Theory
The popularity of inflation and credit expansion, the ultimate source of the repeated attempts to render people prosperous by credit expansion, and thus the cause of the cyclical fluctuations of business, manifests itself clearly in the customary terminology. The boom is called good business, prosperity, and upswing. Its unavoidable aftermath, the readjustment of conditions to the real data of the market, is called crisis, slump, bad business, depression. People rebel against the insight that the disturbing element is to be seen in the malinvestment and the overconsumption of the boom period and that such an artificially induced boom is doomed. They are looking for the philosophers' stone to make it last.
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Thursday, June 17, 2010
The Crisis of Capitalism; Why the Socialists are Wrong / Politics / Economic Theory
Clearly international free market capitalism is the midst of the greatest long wave debt crisis in history; including government, corporate and personal debt. Overcapacity plagues virtually every industry around the globe from Taipei to Toledo to Timbuktu. Debt, overcapacity, and their impact on market prices are the key long wave winter season trends that have yet to run their course. The world now faces the final years of this long wave decline and winter season that will deliver global economic and financial upheaval until 2012.
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Friday, June 11, 2010
The Monetary or Circulation-Credit Theory of the Trade Cycle / Economics / Economic Theory
The theory of the cyclical fluctuations of business as elaborated by the British Currency School was in two respects unsatisfactory.
First, it failed to recognize that circulation credit can be granted not only by the issue of banknotes in excess of the banks' holding of cash reserves, but also by creating bank deposits subject to check in excess of such reserves (checkbook money, deposit currency). Consequently it did not realize that deposits payable on demand can also be used as a device of credit expansion. This error is of little weight, as it can be easily amended. It is enough to stress the point that all that refers to credit expansion is valid for all varieties of credit expansion no matter whether the additional fiduciary media are banknotes or deposits.
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Friday, June 04, 2010
A Primer on Austrian Economics / Economics / Economic Theory
The jurisdiction of economics extends far beyond the study of production and consumption of goods and services. The science of economics consists of the study of human action, interaction, and cooperation. Even if you accept the mainstream division of micro- and macroeconomics, at the most basic levels economics deals with how market agents make decisions and how these decisions affect interactions between individuals. Even the broadest of market trends, usually condemned to the realm of "macroeconomics," boils down to interactions between individual market agents.[1]
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Friday, June 04, 2010
Give Free Markets a Chance / Economics / Economic Theory
After watching The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission's June 2nd hearing on credit rating agencies yesterday and reading Professor Raghuram Rajan's op-ed piece, (Bankers have been sold short by market distortions) in the June 3rd edition of the FT, I felt moved to rerun a commentary I wrote way back on July 17, 2008.
Given the economic and financial market "challenges" of the past year, some pundits and politicians are concluding that these challenges are the result of the failure of free markets. I would respond that we cannot determine whether free markets have failed unless we have had free markets. I do not think we have.
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Monday, May 31, 2010
The Kondratiev Cycle: Where Are We Now? / Economics / Economic Theory
In one of the early issues of my newsletter, I wrote an article about the Kondratiev Cycle, an economic cycle which was first identified by Nikolai D. Kondratiev (1892-1938) an eminent Russian economist. The famous economist, Joseph Schumpeter, once said that the Kondratiev Wave is “...the single most important tool in economic forecasting.”
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Wednesday, May 26, 2010
What is the Underground Economy? / Economics / Economic Theory
Danny LeRoy writes: What is the underground economy?
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Sunday, May 23, 2010
Revisionist History: Violation of Economic Laws, Why You've Never Heard of the Great Depression of 1920 / Economics / Economic Theory
Lets take a look at what happens when economic laws are violated. Revisionist history is a useful, potent tool. The cats out of the bag and everyone knows Obama is a closet socialist, but lets take a look at a American favorite, Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Despite all his spending programs, public works, quick fix legislations, radio talks, etc., it solved nothing. Years after his programs were in full swing even his Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau admitted, "We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work ... After eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started ... And an enormous debt to boot!". To wit - at least back then a high government official payed lip service to the truth.
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Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Rationality and the Free Market Economy / Economics / Economic Theory
People seem to do the craziest things when it comes to money. Whether it's chasing stock-market bubbles or paying good money after bad on a home that's hopelessly underwater, the idea of individuals acting as homo economicus seems far-fetched. Only in the ivory-tower world of rational-expectations theory does one find perfectly rational humans making judgments using all available information to satisfy their subjective ends.
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Wednesday, May 12, 2010
HyperInflation or HyperDeflation? The Quantity Theory of Money / Economics / Economic Theory
James Turk's article Hyperinflation Looms dated April 20, 2010, is based on Quantity Theory of Money (QTM). It draws an analogy between Weimar Germany of 1923 and the United States of 2010. Both precepts are invalid. As far as the QTM is concerned, it suffices to point to the very fact, admitted by Turk, that it is possible to have a shortage of money simultaneously with the overworking of the printing presses. Hyperinflation is not the same as the ultimate inflation of the money supply. It is the ultimate depreciation of the currency unit. The two concepts are far from being the same, QTM notwithstanding.
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Tuesday, May 04, 2010
It Is Not the Aggregate Demand, Stupid! / Economics / Economic Theory
Jeremie T.A. Rostan writes: According to Obama's leading economic adviser, the current double-digit unemployment rate is obviously due to a "shortfall in aggregate demand." Indeed, former UC Berkeley professor Christina Romer even told the Wall Street Journal that, until her chief of staff advised her not to, she intended to title a recent speech "It's Aggregate Demand, Stupid."[1]
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Monday, May 03, 2010
Why Economic Policies Inspired by the Great Depression Fail / Economics / Economic Theory
The latest quarterly survey by the National Association for Business Economics reports that the stimulus did not promote recovery. (In case you didn't know, the country's phony media are frantically pushing the idea that happy days are on the way, something they would never do under a Republican administration.) Any conundrum here is a direct result of fallacious economic reasoning. The idea that the level of output and employment is a function of aggregate spending was a very old fallacy that Keynes successfully resurrected and which is now part of orthodox economic theory even though it has been thoroughly refuted by experience.
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Saturday, May 01, 2010
Economics: How to Cure a Sick Discipline / Economics / Economic Theory
America’s financial mess and our festering trade crisis were both caused by bad policies that mainstream economics told us were OK. This has made the public cynical about economists, but has produced few specific suggestions on how to actually fix the discipline. So—what should we do to restore its ability to give sound advice?
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Friday, April 30, 2010
The Phenomenon of Interest / Interest-Rates / Economic Theory
It has been shown that time preference is a category inherent in every human action. Time preference manifests itself in the phenomenon of originary interest, i.e., the discount of future goods as against present goods.
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Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Economics Is Crucial for Ethics / Economics / Economic Theory
I assume that we all want to use the lives we've been given to make the world a better place. This isn't as straightforward as it seems at first. It is insufficient merely to think globally; and depressingly many kinds of acting locally are positively destructive. I have been asked to consider a handful of questions: I'm supposed to discuss the most pressing issue in the world, whether it is getting better or worse, and what we can do about it. I have also been asked what we can do to reduce infant mortality in Memphis. Finally, I've been asked what "thinking globally and acting locally" means to me. I will discuss each in turn.
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Monday, April 19, 2010
Economic Booms and Busts, the Punditry's Terrible Grasp of Economics / Economics / Economic Theory
What makes manufacturing an important part of the boom-bust phenomenon is the crucial role that time plays in production. Unfortunately, not only is this fact ignored by our economic commentariat they also adamantly refuse to even recognise its existence, just as they refuse to recognise that there exists a capital structure. (What makes this attitude peculiar is that some of these people claim to have studied von Hayek. The content of their articles strongly suggests otherwise.)
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Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Uncle Sam, Global Trade Sucker? / Economics / Economic Theory
Of all the blurbs I got for my book Free Trade Doesn’t Work: What Should Replace It and Why, my favorite is one I got from Robert B. Cassidy, a distinguished former trade diplomat whose career included being Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for China, Asia and the Pacific. His contribution was short, but it made a point, coming from a man who had actually sat at the table where many of America’s key trade agreements were negotiated, that our government would do well to grasp. He wrote,
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Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Yes, Virginia, There is a Legitimate Case Against Free Trade / Economics / Economic Theory
THERE IS A MYTH in wide circulation that the superiority of free trade is simply a settled question on which all serious economists agree. The flip side of this myth, of course, is that anyone who criticizes free trade must either be ignorant of economics, or the spokesman of some special interest which hopes to benefit from trade restrictions. Such critics are not only wrong, the story continues with admittedly impeccable logic, but profoundly worthy of public contempt, as they are necessarily either dumb or corrupt.Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, April 12, 2010
Why UK Treasury Economic Models are Out of Date, and Wrong / Economics / Economic Theory
I had a superb session on Budget Day last month with Joe Nellis, Professor of Economics at Cranfield, and he gave us some of his forecasts for economy in the next few years. The forecast could be summarized as that we would recover, but slowly.
It was interesting to see later, during the budget, the Treasury forecasts and compare, and as the papers have said today, 'Expert' forecasters think Darling is a bit optimistic.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Common Sense Beats Keynesian Sense / Economics / Economic Theory
L. Albert Hahn writes: My book, The Economics of Illusion, published in 1949, was essentially a critique of the late Lord Keynes's General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. My conclusion was, briefly, that what is new in Keynes's work is not good, and what is good is not new.
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Wednesday, April 07, 2010
Economy and Inflation, Interview with Rick Davis of the Consumer Metrics Institute / Economics / Economic Theory
Introduction: Richard Davis, President of the Consumer Metrics Institute, measures real-time consumer transactions as an objective indicator of consumer demand and associated economic health. (For more about Richard’s data, please see “Contraction Tracked by the Consumer Metrics Institute Traces Unique Pattern.”)Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, April 05, 2010
China Yuan Repegging and Other Non Free Market Trade Imbalance Solutions Are Doomed to Fail / Economics / Economic Theory
In spite of much yapping by economists, especially Paul Krugman, I strongly doubt a currency repeg by China would do much (if indeed anything at all) to cure any global imbalances.
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Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Solving Britain's Economic Crisis Through Micro Business Capital Investments and Credit / Economics / Economic Theory
Britain had bet its future on the financial sector as the means for delivering economic prosperity and lost. The financial sector over the past 3 decades had mushroomed to an enormous size on terms of over leveraged liabilities extending to more than 5 times UK GDP that has imploded in spectacular style following the start of the Credit Crisis in August 2007 which has now left the country on the brink of bankruptcy under the burden of the liabilities of the banking sector (most denominated in foreign currencies), unsustainable annual budget deficit and the growing public sector debt mountain.
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Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Academic Economics Profession in Crisis / Economics / Economic Theory
Dear economics department chairman,
In all the formal economic study I have sat through, I have developed a growing concern for the direction of the economics profession in general, and economic education in particular. Let me explain — and challenge you.
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Sunday, March 28, 2010
Obama's Road to Economic Ruin / Economics / Economic Theory
When Obama ran for the presidency I warned that if elected the American people won't know what hit them. Obama supporters immediately responded with an avalanche of abuse. Last June Obama told a wildly applauding congregation of Hollywood celebrities that "You ain't seen nothing' yet!" I observed at the time that "he was speaking the truth. Americans really have seen nothing yet". Even now millions of Americans still cannot grasp the enormity of his fiscal depredations. Nevertheless, it does appear that the majority of Americans are beginning to catch on to this dedicated leftwinger's -- to put it mildly -- intellectual shortcomings.
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Thursday, March 25, 2010
The Fable of the Krugman / Economics / Economic Theory
While Paul Krugman likes to present himself as being a Keynesian, in reality, his intellectual roots run back a few centuries to the mercantilists. If you wish to see the Krugman of 300 years ago, read Bernard Mandeville's The Fable of the Bees, first published in 1705, to see all of the same economic (and logical) fallacies that haunt Keynesianism and Krugman's columns.
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Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Can You Help Me Find My Market? / Politics / Economic Theory
Socialists believe in two things which are absolutely different and perhaps even contradictory: freedom and organization. ~ Élie Halévy
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Monday, March 22, 2010
The Second Austrian Monetary and Business Cycle Theory Revival / Economics / Economic Theory
Joseph T. Salerno and Jeffrey A. Tucker write: [This article is adapted from introductory remarks delivered by the first coauthor at the Austrian Scholars Conference, March 11–13, 2010, Auburn, Alabama. Both the oral remarks and the written article are joint products of both coauthors.]
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Friday, March 19, 2010
The Economic Impossibility of John Maynard Keynes / Economics / Economic Theory
What shall we do with those people deprived of work by wealth and technology...?
HOW TO FILL the days, hours and minutes? It's now seven decades since John Maynard Keynes peered into the future and declared that, one day, trying to scratch a living would cease being "the permanent problem of mankind."
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Thursday, March 18, 2010
Paul Krugman Versus Economic Reality / Economics / Economic Theory
In his latest weekly New York Times column, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman put forward arguments that were so nonsensical that the award committee should ask for its medal back.Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Fear The New Krugman / Economics / Economic Theory
Such explosive growth in debt can't go on forever, and it won't. Yet our current leaders and their apologists insist that the problem will magically solve itself. Paul Krugman ~ November 4, 2003
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Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Blanchard IMF Chief Economist Pushes Governments for More Inflation / Economics / Economic Theory
It seems that different people have drawn different lessons from the credit crunch and global recession. Many have pointed to the Fed's easy-money policy as a major culprit. Not so the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, and the leading light of mainstream "new Keynesians," Olivier Blanchard. His recipe for avoiding future calamities of the kind recently witnessed is for monetary policy to be even looser and inflation rates even higher, as expressed in a recent Wall Street Journal interview.
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Monday, March 15, 2010
The New Dumb Economic Idea: Velocity Of Money Was Driven By Securitization / Economics / Economic Theory
Oh I do love it so when the economists sit all us little boys and girls down, pat us on the head and start talking to us in Baby Language.
Once upon a time there was “inflation targeting” and then the Big Bad Wolf came along and ate it for breakfast. So now we are going to bake a magic cake, we will take a little bit of Keynes, a little bit of Friedman, mix in a dash of Austrian Chocolate…and WOOPIE!! We saved the world…again!!!
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Monday, March 15, 2010
Unemployment Continued… / Economics / Economic Theory
Some questions were raised by my article on unemployment of last week and so I want to continue the same subject.
Unemployment has become the central issue of our day and perfectly illustrates the genius of Ayn Rand in putting the spotlight on altruism as the central concept which is destroying our society. Today (but not when Rand wrote) the conservatives have adopted the left-wing’s ideas on economics. They are screaming that Obama has failed because, after little over a year in office the unemployment rate is 10%.
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Saturday, March 13, 2010
The Implications of Velocity of Money on the Economy / Economics / Economic Theory
The Velocity of Money
Our Little Island World
GDP = (P) x (T)
P=MV
A Slowdown in Velocity
Dallas and Thoughts on the Economy
This week we do some review on a very important topic, the velocity of money. If we don't understand the basics, it is hard to make sense of the hash that our world economy is in, much less understand where we are headed.
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Saturday, March 13, 2010
End of Keynesian Blood Sucking Parasitic Economic System / Economics / Economic Theory
On March 11, I spoke at the annual Austrian Scholars Conference, sponsored by the Ludwig von Mises Institute. It was gratifying to see so many attendees that they could not fit into one room.
The Mises Institute is a high-tech outfit. They set up a video camera, and the speech appeared on monitors in other rooms. It will also go on-line within a few days. This will be free. Anyone in the world with Web access can see it from now on. This is a great model for communication and education.
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Saturday, March 13, 2010
Marc Faber vs Mish on Inflation Vs Deflation / Economics / Economic Theory
I had the great pleasure of meeting Marc Faber in person over the past couple of days after having exchanged emails with him about various things for the past several years. Marc is not only extremely knowledgeable about investments and strategies, he is also a lot of fun to be with personally.
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Tuesday, March 09, 2010
The Scandinavian Socialist Welfare Myth Revisited / Economics / Economic Theory
Obama seems hell-bent on expanding the US welfare state at any cost, and of course no welfare-state debate is complete without bringing up the Scandinavian countries as the perfect example of massive statism bringing prosperity. This seems to be a real conundrum, even for Austrians and other libertarians. Being a citizen of Sweden myself, I am often asked to give an explanation of these "bumblebee economies" that aren't supposed to be able to fly but still do.
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Saturday, March 06, 2010
The Bubble That Broke the World / Economics / Economic Theory
Jonathan M. Finegold Catalan writes: With the United States and much of Europe buried in public debt, many wonder how world governments will solve their impending budgetary crises. The economics profession has split into two camps: those who promote more spending; and their opponents, the "deficit hawks." The spenders have been the more vocal, largely due to their dominance in mainstream academia.
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Saturday, March 06, 2010
Krugman Fails to "Get It" on Japan / Economics / Economic Theory
One of my pet peeves with Paul Krugman is his constant rewriting of history, a rewriting that just happens to coincide with left-wing political talking points. For example, we hear that the Great Depression occurred because Herbert Hoover was a staunch believer in laissez-faire and took the advice of Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, who called for liquidation of bad assets to "purge" the economy of whatever was "rotten" in the system.
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Thursday, March 04, 2010
Elliott Wave Principle Crash Course: There's No Going Back / InvestorEducation / Economic Theory
Wave Principle Crash Course: There's No Going BackFree video tutorial available to all Club EWI members
By Nico Isaac
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Sunday, February 28, 2010
Cause of Today's Economic Crises: Too Much Thrift / Economics / Economic Theory
In this essay I want to propose that the ultimate of cause of today's economic crises is that we have too much thrift. This view is very similar to John Maynard Keynes' Paradox of Thrift. What I want to show is that this is not a paradox at all but confusion about what saving money really means and what consequences it has. I want to explain this confusion by way of examples and using non-technical economic jargon usually used by Keynesian economists. But before I can go into why too much savings leads to a disaster in the modern economy I need to clarify what I mean by savings and what money is by way of an example:
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Thursday, February 25, 2010
Inflation as the Enemy of Investing / Economics / Economic Theory
In this age of inflation, we are all forced to do many tasks that others could do better for us. The fact is that inflation impedes the process of civilization, which is brought about by the division of labor. While, without the central bank's continual monetary infusions, prices would gently fall as technology made all things and all people more efficient, we don't enjoy that luxury. Instead we're mowing our own grass, fixing the flappers in our toilet tanks, and managing our own retirement funds.
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Sunday, February 21, 2010
Government Stopping the Cleansing Action of Capitalism By Propping Up Malinvestments / Economics / Economic Theory
The business end of the business cycle does the dirty work of clearing away the malinvestments made during the previous boom. These malinvestments are a stark reminder of what was hot and now is not.
Cheap and abundant money flowed into real-estate projects after the tech bubble burst and the Fed hit the monetary gas. Sand states like Arizona, California, and Florida, as well as the hub of the Southeast, Atlanta, attracted homebuilders large and small.
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Friday, February 19, 2010
Note to Fareed Zakaria: Tax Rates Affect Behavior / Economics / Economic Theory
Fareed Zakaria is not a fiscal conservative by any means. His left leaning bias towards relying on tax increases to fix our deficits, instead of spending cuts, makes that abundantly clear. On his “What in the World” segment on Sunday’s GPS program, Mr. Zakaria excoriated former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan for not asserting that they want taxes to increase in order to balance the budget--Zakaria’s comment was prompted from an interview those gentlemen conducted the prior week with David Gregory from Meet the Press.Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, February 15, 2010
Is Krugman Harry Potter? Keynesian Fantasy / Economics / Economic Theory
One of the things one learns (or should learn) in an economics graduate program is that while we hold to certain laws of economics, we do not view the world through a template, and especially one structured from political talking points. For example, as an economist, I can say that if one raises the minimum wage during a recession, one of the results will be increased unemployment among lower-skilled workers, and especially teenagers.
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Sunday, February 14, 2010
Nightmare Macro Economics, Keynesian and New Keynesian Variety / Economics / Economic Theory
Paul Krugman is such an economist. Austrian economist Bill Anderson's highly recommended blog, Krugman-in- Wonderland, deconstructs Mr. Krugman on a daily basis. There is a lot there that needs to be deconstructed.
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Friday, February 12, 2010
Antal Fekete Fantasy Land Monetary Theory of Hyperinflation That Creates Bonds Boom and Falling CPI / Economics / Economic Theory
Antal Fekete has published an article, "There Is No Business Like Bond Business." It was published on the 24hgold site, which my site links to (my gold price chart). Some of you may have read it. Some of you may be confused. Let me de-confuse you.
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Thursday, February 11, 2010
Robert Prechter on Herding and Markets' "Irony and Paradox" / Stock-Markets / Economic Theory
To anyone new to socionomics, the stock market is saturated with paradox.The following is an excerpt from a classic issue of Robert Prechter's Elliott Wave Theorist. For a limited time, you can visit Elliott Wave International to download the rest of the 10-page issue free.
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Tuesday, February 09, 2010
Inflation or Deflation, Which “ation” is This? / Economics / Economic Theory
I’ve been receiving a number of emails lately asking me whether I am a deflationist or an inflationist. Just as often I am asked if we’re in a deflationary environment or inflationary environment.
My answer to both questions is “yes.”
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Monday, February 08, 2010
Austrian Business Cycle Theory and Global Financial Crisis / Economics / Economic Theory
Ersan Bocutoglu and Aykut Ekinci write: Austrian business-cycle theory (ABCT) is capable of explaining the origin of the current global crisis. Therefore, ABCT provides Austrian economists with an advantageous position, compared to the other schools, in foreseeing this crisis. See, for example, Thornton (June 2004), Karlsson (November 2004), Shostak (August 2005).
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Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Retail Sales Discount Offers Are the Language of Action, Not a Trick / Economics / Economic Theory
Predrag Rajsic writes: In the last several months, retail stores have sales on all sorts of products. Discounts go as far as 90% off. Some of these widespread price reductions can be attributed to the holiday season behind us, while most of them, it seems, were triggered by the recent fall in consumer demand due to the macroeconomic downturn.
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Tuesday, January 26, 2010
The Nature of Socialism / Economics / Economic Theory
Mateusz Machaj writes: I first met Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe in 2003, when he visited Poland for a libertarian conference. Most of the participants were interested in normative issues and political philosophy, whereas very few were interested in Austrian economics. Hence, I was coincidentally the only one to engage with Professor Hoppe in extensive discussions on theories of the Austrian School. I did not hesitate shamelessly to consume his time for the personal benefit of learning more about economics from one of Rothbard's most important followers. After this meeting, fortune continued to smile on me — it turned out that despite substantial geographical distance, I have enjoyed such productive conversations with my German mentor at least few times a year.
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Monday, January 25, 2010
Illusions of the Age of Keynes / Economics / Economic Theory
A year ago George Melloan wrote in the Wall Street Journal, "We're all Keynesian's Again." You remember last January — change was on its way. We had a new rock-star president and he was going to get us out of the mess that Wall Street had got us into. "Now is the time to jump-start job creation, restart lending, and invest in areas like energy, health care, and education that will grow our economy, even as we make hard choices to bring our deficit down," President Obama told Congress. The new president has a worldview that is "all but in name Keynesian," Carl Horowitz wrote last spring.
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Saturday, January 23, 2010
Morality and Economics, A Critical Review of Joseph E. Stiglitz's Writings / Economics / Economic Theory
Joseph Eugene Stiglitz is an American economist and a professor at Columbia University who received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 2001 and the John Bates Clark Medal in 1979. He is one of the most frequently cited economists in the world and has served as a Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank. He has been critical of the management of globalization, free-market economists, and the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. He is the founder of the Initiative for Policy Dialogue, a think tank on international development based at Columbia University.
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Thursday, January 21, 2010
The Religion of Socialism and the Profit of Reform / Politics / Economic Theory
There is this to be said in behalf of avowed and doctrinaire socialists, that their faith in the State is sublime. To them, the institution of political power is the unerring shepherd of the flock, the guide to the Good Society; it is also the antidote for all evil, the maker of abundance, the embodiment of justice, the sublimation of human aspirations. That they believe. To be sure, they affect an elaborate rationalism, something they call dialectical materialism, which in turn rests on a verbal agglomeration known as Marxian economics. Logic and fact without end have been applied to these notions to prove that they are only notions. But all this cerebration has turned out to be sheer waste of effort as far as influencing the true worshipers is concerned. They still believe. One cannot help but marvel at, and admire, their devotional integrity.
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Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Krugman the Crazy Keynesian Does Not Have Clue / Economics / Economic Theory
Even when Paul Krugman gets it right, he still gets it wrong. Now, I am not someone who is a knee-jerk critic of the guy, although I generally expect Krugman to blame the wrong people and recommend the wrong "solutions."
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Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Academic Economists Serving their Political Masters / Politics / Economic Theory
Frederick Sheehan writes: On January 14, 2010, an academic economist took a rare stance. Tenured professors rarely lift the veil from numbers that governments invent. In "Don't Like the Numbers? Change 'Em," Michael J. Boskin, Ph.D., formerly, an economics professor at Harvard and Yale; formerly, chairman of the Counsel of Economic Advisers in the George H.W. Bush administration; currently, T. M. Friedman Professor of Economics at Stanford University; research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research; senior fellow at the Hoover Institution; and board member of the Exxon Mobil Corporation, Oracle Corporation and Vodafone PLC (among others), wielded his sword.
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Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Free Banking versus Large-scale Credit Expansion / Economics / Economic Theory
Observations on the Discussions Concerning Free Banking - The Banking School taught that an overissuance of banknotes is impossible if the bank limits its business to the granting of short-term loans. When the loan is paid back at maturity, the banknotes return to the bank and thus disappear from the market. However, this happens only if the bank restricts the amount of credits granted. (But even then it would not undo the effects of its previous credit expansion. It would merely add to it the effects of a later credit contraction.)
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Monday, January 11, 2010
Does the Government Own the Whole Economy? / Economics / Economic Theory
In a recent New York Times op-ed, economist Robert Shiller (coproducer of the famous housing-price index) recommended that the US government begin to sell claims on fractions of Gross Domestic Product. Besides the practical problems with his proposal, it rests on the premise that the US government owns the entire economy. It will be instructive to parse Shiller's column to see just how badly his collectivist thinking misleads him.
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Thursday, January 07, 2010
Do Technological Innovations Cause Business Cycles? / Economics / Economic Theory
Malte Tobias Kähler writes: Agora — "market" — was the name for the public place in the center of ancient Hellenic cities. Spanish film director Alejandro Amenábar recently gave his new movie the same dignified title. It tells the story of Hypatia of Alexandria, a wise and proud woman, a teacher of philosophy and astronomy at the library of that old metropolis. During those times, the dominant model of the solar system was the Ptolemaic view, in which the earth is located in the centre, and the sun and all the planets surround it in circles.
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Thursday, January 07, 2010
Keynes and Bernanke on Bubbles and Manias: Blame the Free Market / Economics / Economic Theory
In 1936, John Maynard Keynes' book appeared: The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money. It changed the world. It justified in the name of economic theory what governments had been doing since 1932: running deficits and creating fiat money. Keynes' ideas took over. Today, they are dominant. The 30-year break, 1978–2008 – Chicago School, rational expectations, efficient market theory – is over. Academic economists, like Dorothy in Kansas, ran for the Keynesian storm cellar. Unlike Dorothy, they made it. No trip to Oz for them!
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Monday, January 04, 2010
Mature Capitalist Economies Trend Towards Stagnation Triggering Financial Innovations / Economics / Economic Theory
British economist John Maynard Keynes, believed in capitalism, but he was also sharply critical of its structural flaws. He summed it up succinctly like this: "Our analysis shows... that long-run development is not inherent in the capitalist economy. Thus, specific 'development factors' are required to sustain a long-run upward movement."
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Sunday, January 03, 2010
Fiscal Policy Cannot Stimulate the Economy, Redux / Economics / Economic Theory
Sterling T. Terrell writes: Fiscal policy, the attempt to use government outlays and revenue to better the economy, simply does not work either a priori or in practice.
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Monday, December 28, 2009
The Most Redeeming Feature of Capitalism is Failure / Economics / Economic Theory
There is an interesting interview in Barron's with two hedge fund managers called Shorting the Economic Recovery.
The fund managers who correctly predicted the housing collapse and the rise in gold, now predict the economy's next leg down. The second theme in the article is on capitalism, fractional reserve lending and what the government should have done.
Friday, December 25, 2009
Does Economics Deserve a Nobel Prize? / Economics / Economic Theory
Michael Hudson writes: Reality & Relevance rather than "Purity" & Elegance are the Burning Issues in Economics Today.
It is bad enough that the field of psychology has for so long been a non-social science, viewing the motive forces of personality as deriving from internal psychic experiences rather than from man's interaction with his social setting. Similarly in the field of economics: since its "utilitarian" revolution about a century ago, this discipline has also abandoned its analysis of the objective world and its political, economic productive relations in favor of more introverted, utilitarian and welfare-oriented norms. Moral speculations concerning mathematical psychics have come to displace the once-social science of political economy.
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Friday, December 25, 2009
The Economic of Bethlehem, Remembering the Inn Keeper / Economics / Economic Theory
At the heart of the Christmas story rests some important lessons concerning free enterprise, government, and the role of wealth in society.
Let’s begin with one of the most famous phrases: "There’s no room at the inn." This phrase is often invoked as if it were a cruel and heartless dismissal of the tired travelers Joseph and Mary. Many renditions of the story conjure up images of the couple going from inn to inn only to have the owner barking at them to go away and slamming the door.
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Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Bernanke's Flawed Understanding of Economic Theory / Economics / Economic Theory
In his speech at the Economic Club in Washington, DC on December 7, the Fed chairman, Ben Bernanke, detailed his expectations of the future course of the US economy. Below, I comment on the various parts of Bernanke's speech.
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Monday, December 21, 2009
Krugman Falls into the Keynesian National Income Accounting Trap / Economics / Economic Theory
It's one thing to criticize Paul Krugman for his views on Austrian economics, but only a brave soul would have the temerity to question Krugman's discussion of the Keynesian approach to international trade, right? Since Krugman is the world's most famous living Keynesian, and he won the Nobel (Memorial) Prize for his work on trade theory, accusing him of a basic error on this score would be akin to telling Madonna she knows nothing of pop music.
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Saturday, December 19, 2009
Academic Economists and Futurologists Make Worthless Forecasts 2010 / Economics / Economic Theory
It's that time of the year. Not only are chestnuts roasting over an open fire and Jack Frost nipping at your nose, but whether you ask for it or not, those in the prediction business are rolling out their prognostications for 2010.
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Thursday, December 17, 2009
Austrian Economists WIn, Keynesians and Friedmanians the Big Intellectual Losers / Economics / Economic Theory
Niall Ferguson is an academic hotshot. He is a professor at both Harvard University and the Harvard Business School. This is unique. He is both an economist and an historian. This is rare. He writes very well. He writes widely respected books and very readable articles.
He is also on target about what happened to the American economy in 2009. This is simply astounding.
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Thursday, December 10, 2009
Leave Free Markets to Themselves, Nothing Else Will Work / Economics / Economic Theory
A market is the voluntary coming together of two groups of people: those that have something to sell and those that want to buy what is being sold at the price it is being offered. The former group is called producers and the latter consumers.
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Wednesday, December 09, 2009
Government Socialist Intervention and the Distortion of Capital / Economics / Economic Theory
In all times, but more especially of late years, attempts have been made to extend wealth by the extension of credit.
I believe it is no exaggeration to say, that since the revolution of February, the Parisian presses have issued more than 10,000 pamphlets, crying up this solution of the social problem.
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Tuesday, December 08, 2009
Productive Debt versus Unproductive Debt / Economics / Economic Theory
The credit crunch continues, with businesses large and small finding that their bankers remain exceedingly stingy in the wake of the 2008 financial debacle. "We need to see banks making more loans to their business customers," Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Chairwoman Sheila Bair told reporters recently after the FDIC released figures showing that the amount of loans outstanding in the nation's banks fell $210.4 billion in the third quarter of 2008. That is the largest quarterly decline since the FDIC began tracking loans in 1984.
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Monday, December 07, 2009
Guide to Keynes's Dangerous and Destructive Economic Theory / Economics / Economic Theory
Defenders of Keynes, such as the recent convert Bruce Bartlett, often claim that he supported capitalism. (Bartlett's The New American Economy has this as a primary theme.) His interventionist measures had as their aim not the replacement of capitalism by socialism or fascism. Rather, it is alleged, Keynes aimed to save the existing order.
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Thursday, December 03, 2009
How Progressive Capitalism Conquers Mass Poverty / Economics / Economic Theory
Throughout history, until about the middle of the 18th century, mass poverty was nearly everywhere the normal condition of man. Then capital accumulation and a series of major inventions ushered in the Industrial Revolution. In spite of occasional setbacks, economic progress became accelerative. Today, in the United States, in Canada, in nearly all of Europe, in Australia, New Zealand, and Japan, mass poverty has been practically eliminated. It has either been conquered or is in process of being conquered by a progressive capitalism. Mass poverty is still found in most of Latin America, most of Asia, and most of Africa.
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Thursday, December 03, 2009
A Guide to Keynes's Dangerous and Destructive Economics / Economics / Economic Theory
Where Keynes Went Wrong And Why Governments Keep Creating Inflation, Bubbles, and Busts. By Hunter Lewis. Axios Press, 2009. Vi + 384 pages.
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Tuesday, December 01, 2009
Economics vs. Politics / Politics / Economic Theory
It may be that wary beasts of the forest come around to accepting the hunter's trap as a necessary concomitant of foraging for food. At any rate, the presumably rational human animal has become so inured to political interventions that he cannot think of the making of a living without them; in all his economic calculations his first consideration is, what is the law in the matter? Or, more likely, how can I make use of the law to improve my lot in life?
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Monday, November 30, 2009
Housing Market Boom and Bust According to Austrian Economic Theory / Housing-Market / Economic Theory
Is Housing a Higher-Order Good? While reviewing a book about the financial crisis, a policy analyst of the free-market persuasion pooh-poohed the notion that housing constitutes a long-term project or "higher-order good," insisting that homes are instead a "durable consumer good," and thus he believes that examining the housing meltdown through the lens of Austrian business-cycle theory is illegitimate.
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Monday, November 30, 2009
Blame Keynes, Not China for America's Economic Mess / Economics / Economic Theory
Every financial crisis seems to produce its own crop of economic fallacies. The Great Depression gave us the mercantilist fallacy of "demand deficiency" that Keynes dressed up in mathematical garb and convoluted language. Instead of the boom's inevitable bust being treated as a case of "disproportionalities" that needed to be liquidated if the equilibrium was to be restored it was now defined as a simple case of insufficient demand could be easily corrected by increased government spending, i.e., a monetary expansion. (Incidentally, Keynes never argued that this policy would have restored full employment in the 1930s, quite the opposite. Those who argue to the contrary should read T. W. Hutchison's Keynes v. the 'Keynesians'...?, The Institute for Economic Affairs, 1977.)
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Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Can Asset-Price Bubbles Be Harmless? / Economics / Economic Theory
There is an increasing concern among some commentators that the current, extremely loose monetary policy of the US central bank could fuel another round of asset-price bubbles. This in turn, it is held, could pose a serious danger to the US economy.
Some commentators, such as John Taylor (the inventor of the Taylor rule), are urging the US central-bank policy makers to start considering a tighter stance as soon as possible, in order to prevent a repetition of the Greenspan Fed's interest-rate policy, which kept rates at very low levels for too long. (The Fed lowered its policy rate from 6.5% in December 2000 to 1% by June 2003. The Fed kept the rate at 1% until June 2004).
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Monday, November 23, 2009
Economic Meltdown, A Call for Systemic Change / Economics / Economic Theory
John Perkins writes: Whenever I hold my two-year old grandson, Grant, in my arms I wonder what this world will look like six decades from now, when he is my age. I know that if we "stay the course" it will be ugly. The current economic meltdown is a harbinger.
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Friday, November 20, 2009
Keynes the Man as Rotten as His Economic Theory - Part 2 / Economics / Economic Theory
Keynes's Political Economy
In The General Theory, Keynes set forth a unique politicoeconomic sociology, dividing the population of each country into several rigidly separated economic classes, each with its own behavioral laws and characteristics, each carrying its own implicit moral evaluation. First, there is the mass of consumers: dumb, robotic, their behavior fixed and totally determined by external forces. In Keynes's assertion, the main force is a rigid proportion of their total income, namely, their determined "consumption function."
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Friday, November 20, 2009
Keynes the Man as Rotten as His Economic Theory / Economics / Economic Theory
John Maynard Keynes, the man – his character, his writings, and his actions throughout life – was composed of three guiding and interacting elements. The first was his overweening egotism, which assured him that he could handle all intellectual problems quickly and accurately and led him to scorn any general principles that might curb his unbridled ego. The second was his strong sense that he was born into, and destined to be a leader of, Great Britain's ruling elite.
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Thursday, November 19, 2009
Communist China, 1995, The Dawn of Capitalism / Economics / Economic Theory
The Hong Kong based guide talked about the free enterprise zones, building projects, golf courses, and roads with a chest full of pride and visible excitement. Capitalism was everywhere along the tour route, and judging from the advertisements on billboards and posters, the world was coming to China!
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Friday, November 13, 2009
Krugman's Magic Solution to Budgetary Woes / Economics / Economic Theory
Long-time readers know that I am second only to Bill Anderson in my constant criticism of Paul Krugman. Indeed, I quite recently defended the gold standard from Krugman's ridicule.
Given this context, I am very surprised to confess that Krugman has convinced me of the virtues of currency debasement. As I was reading his blog post on the tragic fate of Ecuador, I applied Krugman's lessons to my personal life, and suddenly everything became clear. In a flash, all of my household's financial stresses were solved.
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Thursday, November 12, 2009
Securitization and Fractional Reserve Banking / Economics / Economic Theory
For good economists, the link between the operation of a fractional-reserve banking system and the recurrence of boom-bust cycles is of little doubt. One of the paramount figures who has contributed to the intellectual elaboration of this relationship and to its transmission to young economists, among which the present writer has had the pleasure to count himself, is Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe.
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Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Inflation and Deflation; Inflationism and Deflationism / Economics / Economic Theory
The services money renders are conditioned by the height of its purchasing power. Nobody wants to have in his cash holding a definite number of pieces of money or a definite weight of money; he wants to keep a cash holding of a definite amount of purchasing power. As the operation of the market tends to determine the final state of money's purchasing power at a height at which the supply of and the demand for money coincide, there can never be an excess or a deficiency of money.
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Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Can Capitalism Survive? Creative Destruction and the Global Economy / Economics / Economic Theory
[Can Capitalism Survive? Creative Destruction and the Global Economy • By Joseph Schumpeter • New York, Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2009 • 208 pages]
The most famous chapters of Joseph Schumpeter's Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy have been republished in paperback under the title Can Capitalism Survive? Creative Destruction and the Global Economy.[1] Republishing these core chapters as a standalone text in a time of economic crisis is timely to say the least.
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Sunday, November 01, 2009
The Nanny State and the Cost of Unfunded Government Liabilities / Economics / Economic Theory
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.” Declaration of Independence
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Sunday, November 01, 2009
Economic Crisis in the Post-industrial Age / Economics / Economic Theory
Already in the second half of the past century such insightful thinkers as Daniel Bell and Alvin Toffler discerned the beginnings of the transition from the industrial to the information level of social development. By the end of the 20th century and especially today this awareness has become almost universal. The question is now not whether the information society is real, but rather how to define its still forming structure, what are the contradictions that determine the dynamics of its development.
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Saturday, October 31, 2009
Halloween and it's Candy Economy / Economics / Economic Theory
Dale Steinreich once wrote that Halloween has a "socialist tenor" because "menacing figures arrive at your door uninvited, demand your property, and threaten to perform an unspecified 'trick' if you don't fork over. That's the way the government works in a nutshell."
And yet, for overall kid excitement, Halloween seems to surpass Christmas, at least from what I can observe. The kids spend months preparing their costumes, and thrill to every detail of the ceremony: pumpkins, scary things, and of course candy. For the children, too, there is the attractive fact that parents are not all that happy about Halloween with its goblins, gore, and gluttony.
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Thursday, October 29, 2009
The Myth of "Free" Enterprise Economic System / Economics / Economic Theory
Free enterprise, also called free market, is an economy governed by the laws of supply and demand, not restrained by government interference, regulation or subsidy.
Command economy is basically a slave enterprise where supply and price are regulated by the government rather than market forces.
The only thing I will agree with about the “law of supply and demand” is that supply at a downward-manipulated price, can create demand.
Downward manipulation is an uneconomic aberration first discovered in the precious metals market by the noted silver analyst, Ted Butler.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Ludwig von Mises, Henry Hazlitt, and Murray Rothbard Sacrificing for an Idea / Economics / Economic Theory
Lew Rockwell gave a lecture on the trials and tribulations of three free market economists: Ludwig von Mises, Henry Hazlitt, and Murray Rothbard. He showed that their commitment to free market economic theory cost them their careers in an era of Keynesianism. Yet today, they are remembered by a growing number of readers. Their bureaucratic opponents are long forgotten: lost in the noise of "we, too."
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Thursday, October 29, 2009
The ABCs of the Economic Crisis, Capitalism on the Ropes? / Economics / Economic Theory
Interview with Michael D. Yates and Fred Magdoff
1. Mike Whitney---In your new book, "The ABCs of the Economic Crisis: What Working People Need to Know", you allude to right wing think tanks, like the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, which promote a "free market" ideology. How successful have these organizations been in shaping public attitudes about capitalism? Do you think that attitudes are beginning to change now that people understand the role that Wall Street and the big banks played in creating the crisis? ("The ABCs of the Economic Crisis: What Working People Need to Know" By Fred Magdoff and Michael Yates, Monthly Review Press)
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Tuesday, October 27, 2009
How the Free Market Works / Economics / Economic Theory
In the great book Man, Economy, and State, Rothbard's vast compendium of economic wisdom, we read much that has not yet been properly popularized. Rothbard's production theory, for example, is quite different from the standard account. I have tried to distill this theory into the following synopsis, although it is by no means the only part of the book that warrants exposition.
Economics is about using our available means to achieve the best possible ends. Achieving an end is called consumption and applying a means towards an end is called production.
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Monday, October 26, 2009
The Secret Truth About Karl Marx and His Disciples Part 3 / Economics / Economic Theory
Karl Marx: Apocalyptic Reabsorptionist Communist
Karl Marx was born in Trier, a venerable city in Rhineland Prussia, in 1818, son of a distinguished jurist, and grandson of a rabbi. Indeed, both of Marx's parents were descended from rabbis. Marx's father Heinrich was a liberal rationalist who felt no great qualms about his forced conversion to official Lutheranism in 1816. What is little known is that, in his early years, the baptized Karl was a dedicated Christian.[43]
Monday, October 26, 2009
The Secret Truth About Karl Marx and His Disciples Part 2 / Economics / Economic Theory
Communism as the Kingdom of God on Earth: The Takeover of Münster
Thomas Müntzer and his Sign may have gotten short shrift, and his body be a-mouldrin' in the grave, but his soul kept marching on. His cause was soon picked up by a Müntzer disciple, the bookbinder Hans Hut.
Monday, October 26, 2009
The Secret Truth About Karl Marx and His Disciples / Economics / Economic Theory
The key to the intricate and massive system of thought created by Karl Marx is at bottom a simple one: Karl Marx was a communist.
A seemingly trite and banal statement set alongside Marxism's myriad of jargon-ridden concepts in philosophy, economics, and culture, yet Marx's devotion to communism was his crucial focus, far more central than the class struggle, the dialectic, the theory of surplus value, and all the rest.
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Monday, October 26, 2009
Macro Economics for Dummies / Economics / Economic Theory
“He who goes a-borrowing, goes a-sorrowing.”
The quote comes from Ben Franklin. But it was recalled to us neither by America’s president, nor Britain’s Prime Minister. Instead, the
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Monday, October 26, 2009
Abolishing Risk Destroys America and Your Wealth / Economics / Economic Theory
Our willingness to engage in risks drives our prosperity. We urgently need a public debate on risk, one driven by reason, not emotion. Without risk, individuals are bound to lose the purchasing power of their savings; corporations that don’t take risk will fade into oblivion; and governments that regulate away risks destroy the growth engine of their nation.
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Monday, October 26, 2009
Civilisation Sweeping Towards Destruction, Economics Needs Moral Courage / Economics / Economic Theory
It must be really painful to be an economist of the mainstream today, or, at least, it should smart to some extent. In a financial and economic calamity of the current scale, people naturally want to know who issued the warnings about the real estate bubble and its likely aftermath.
When private sector jobs have grown none at all in ten years, and when ten years of domestic investment is systematically undone in the course of 18 months, when housing prices in some sections of the country collapse 80%, and when formerly prestigious banks go belly-up or receive many billions in rescue aid, people want to know which economists saw this coming.
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Thursday, October 22, 2009
Risk and Uncertainty Implications for Economic Forecasting / Economics / Economic Theory
In a recent paper, "The Limits of Numerical Probability: Frank H. Knight and Ludwig von Mises and the Frequency Interpretation," Hans-Hermann Hoppe explores Mises's approach to probability and its implications for economic forecasting.[1]
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Thursday, October 22, 2009
The 1934 Meeting of Roosevelt and Keynes / Economics / Economic Theory
Few historians or economists know that the most influential American President of the twentieth century and the most influential economist of the twentieth century had a meeting in June of 1934. This is recorded in a book by Frances Perkins, who served as Roosevelt's Secretary of Labor: The Roosevelt I Knew (1946).
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Sunday, October 18, 2009
Death of Mauldin's Muddle Through Economy? / Economics / Economic Theory
The US government is on an unsustainable path. Deficits are soaring and the Obama administration is planning massive tax hikes.
Moreover, businesses have little reason to hire already because of massive overcapacity. Add increasing health care costs to the list of reasons for businesses not to hire.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Karl Marx Predicted Collapse of US Dollar in 1857 / Economics / Economic Theory
The great October fall of the US dollar is turning into an avalanche. On Tuesday, the American currency lost nine kopeks in Russia and reached a new minimum mark this year - 29.5 rubles per dollar. Within six months (April through September) the dollar lost over 10 percent at the world foreign exchange trading, which marked the sharpest decline since 1991. Some experts believe that the American currency is close to collapse, which may lead to a new financial crisis.
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Thursday, October 15, 2009
A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism / Economics / Economic Theory
In the wake of the downfall of the Berlin Wall, the breakup of the Soviet Union, and the emergence of capitalism in China, I was asked to teach the comparative-economic-systems class at Auburn University for the summer term in 1989. My only exposure to the topic had been as an undergraduate student, where my teacher was a Cold War–era professor who concentrated almost exclusively on the Soviet Union. His implicit message was to fear the Soviet Union, which would soon come to smother the American dream.
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Wednesday, October 14, 2009
WSJ Inane Understanding of Economic Theory / Economics / Economic Theory
Increase Employment the Same Way You Increase Home Sales - Every month in its survey of economists' forecasts, the WSJ asks various inane questions. In its latest survey, one of the questions had to do with what the government could do to increase employment. Now that health-care "reform" appears to be on its way to being a done deal, the D.C. issue du jour is employment stimulus. Various kinds of employer-tax incentives are in the initial stages of being proposed. Of course, the editorial board of the WSJ, which has never encountered a tax cut it did not encourage, is lobbying for a cut in the Social Security payroll tax. Good idea if the WSJ editorial board also argues for an equal cut in Social Security benefit payments. Fat chance of that occurring - i.e., a cut in Social Security benefit payments.
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Monday, October 12, 2009
Is the Stock Market a Leading Economic Indicator? / Stock-Markets / Economic Theory
Inquiring minds are pondering the question "Is the Stock Market a Leading Indicator?"
Please consider the following two charts.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Refuting Keynes, Line-by-Line / Economics / Economic Theory
If I were a young man, I would not share this. I would implement it. It would become the foundation of my academic career.
The Austrian School of economics, more than any other, is built on the idea of the centrality of entrepreneurship. Ludwig von Mises explained the principle profit and loss in terms of some forecasters' ability to foresee consumer demand, and then plan to meet it at a total cost below the sales price. Successful entrepreneurs gain profit as a residual. Unsuccessful entrepreneurs gain losses.
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Wednesday, October 07, 2009
The Fed's Schizophrenic Monetary Economists / Economics / Economic Theory
If monetary theory is accurate, it is a subset of general economic theory, which must also be accurate. Monetary theory is not an independent theory of human action that is divorced analytically from a general theory of human action.
Only the Austrian School of economics believes this and adheres to it in practice. All other systems of economic thought segregate monetary theory from general economic theory.
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Tuesday, October 06, 2009
Marx and Lenin Revisited / Economics / Economic Theory
"Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks." Karl Marx
If Karl Marx and V. I. Lenin were alive today, they would be leading contenders for the Nobel Prize in economics.
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Tuesday, October 06, 2009
Paul Krugman Would Fail as a Businessman / Economics / Economic Theory
Recently, I traveled to Idaho to meet with several customers over a two-day period. As a surety bond underwriter, I predominantly deal with small-to-medium sized public works and commercial contractors. My objectives, for each meeting, were to gain a better understanding of local market conditions, to see if a viable business plan was in place for each contractor, and to determine which clients would survive this vicious economic downturn.
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Monday, October 05, 2009
Unemployment Economic Theory and the U.S. Dollar / Economics / Economic Theory
Gold made a quick dip to the $990 area on Friday and then whipped around to close above $1,000. We cannot completely rule out one final pull back to $960. However, the U.S. dollar is in free fall. So any dip in gold will be very brief.
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Sunday, October 04, 2009
An Engineer's Solution for Sustained Economic Growth / Economics / Economic Theory
Sustained or increased economic chaos is the likely result of the public solutions offered for the worldwide macro-economic decline as of late 2009. Comparing simple historical economic data with public rhetoric, the solutions offered promise further economic decline past recession into depression and beyond for the vast majority of our micro-economic futures. It is time to publicly look at the “Golden Goose” in technical history to find a realistic solution with sustained economic growth.
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Saturday, October 03, 2009
Financial Markets and World Economy Fingers of Instability / Stock-Markets / Economic Theory
Fingers of Instability
Ubiquity, Complexity Theory, and Sandpiles
Stability Leads to Instability
A Stable Disequilibrium
3 Billion and Counting
"To trace something unknown back to something known is alleviating, soothing, gratifying and gives moreover a feeling of power. Danger, disquiet, anxiety attend the unknown - the first instinct is to eliminate these distressing states. First principle: any explanation is better than none... The cause-creating drive is thus conditioned and excited by the feeling of fear ..." Friedrich Nietzsche
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
What Is Money? / Economics / Economic Theory
This question divides economists even more than it divides voters. Voters do not think much about this question. Economists think about it throughout their careers. They do not agree with each other regarding the answer.
The problem is, about half of American economists who specialize in monetary theory and banking policy are either on the payroll of the Federal Reserve System or sell their services to the FED on a piece-rate basis.
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Sunday, September 27, 2009
Reflections on the Great Inflation Deflation Debate / Economics / Economic Theory
Last week I was in an inflation vs. deflation debate on Financial Sense with Daniel Amerman. The debate was moderated by Jim Puplava. It is a credit to Jim that he is willing to entertain both sides of an argument even though he himself is an inflationist.
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Friday, September 25, 2009
Paul Krugman's Identity Crisis, Lying to the American People / Economics / Economic Theory
Anyone who reads Paul Krugman, our latest "Nobel Prize-winning economist," knows that Krugman believes inflation is not a threat to the economy at all. He is a regular defender of large fiscal deficits and expansionary monetary policy, claiming that they are the road to salvation from our so-called deflationary spiral. (We'll ignore the fact that this "deflationary spiral" involves six straight months of price increases and regular complaints from Mr. Krugman himself about skyrocketing costs in health care.)
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Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Government Spending, Money For Nothing / Economics / Economic Theory
Someone stole all my credit cards, but I won’t be reporting it. The thief spends less than my wife — Henny Youngman
Milton Friedman was a great American economist and statistician among other admirable things. He is best known among scholars for his theoretical and empirical research.
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Monday, September 21, 2009
The Flawed Theoretical Framework of Modern Economics / Economics / Economic Theory
Economics is often referred to as the “dismal science.” This expression is traced back to Thomas Carlyle who claimed that economics “is not a gay science, I should say, like some we have heard of; no a dreary, desolate, and indeed quite an abject and distressing one; what we might call by way of eminence, the dismal science.”
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Saturday, September 19, 2009
Academic Economists Lead Governments to the Edge of the Abyss / Economics / Economic Theory
99.9% of academic economists living in ivory towers lost in world of their own formulae's and theories of what should happen and what could not happen not only did not see the crisis coming but far more dangerously led the government and central bank policy makers down a long winding garden path towards the edge of the financial and economic abyss. It was only after all of the economic theory was binned i.e. that which the academics had worked on and spouted for decades was financial armageddon avoided.
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Thursday, September 17, 2009
Is the Fed's Money Pumping Inflationary? / Economics / Economic Theory
Given the recent, massive increase in commercial banks' excess reserves, many commentators are of the view that banks will sooner or later start employing these reserves in lending and thus cause an increase in the inflation rate.
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Wednesday, September 16, 2009
The Fed Owns Most American Monetary Economists / Economics / Economic Theory
The Social Security system has long been described as the third rail of American politics. "Touch it, and you die." You get electrocuted. If you should somehow survive, the next subway train will cut you in pieces.
There is such a rail in academia: the Federal Reserve System.
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Monday, September 14, 2009
Unemployment And Stock Markets, Next Good News Or Great Depression? / Stock-Markets / Economic Theory
The implicit and sometimes explicit promise of government is they will do "useful" things, like control inflation (both up and down through the genius of Inflation Targeting), keep "The Motherland" safe from aliens, bail out banks, create jobs and if they can be bothered, do things like organize assistance to hurricane victims like they did after Katrina. That's why people pay taxes, and more important, that's why they vote.
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Sunday, September 13, 2009
1929 Great Crash, Depression, Then and Now Lessons From History / Economics / Economic Theory
Early 1955 finds the American public swamped by forecasts of prosperity and boom. Economic advisers to governments, corporations, universities, labor unions and other groups seem to have resolved in unison to assure the people that a depression like that of the 1930s has been banned forever from the American scene. "Americans need not fear a depression," they say. "Our government will carefully watch our economy and interfere when the need arises."
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Sunday, September 13, 2009
Fiat Money a Tool for War to Kill Americans / Economics / Economic Theory
A few years ago on these pages, I harshly criticized an article urging New Yorkers to "eat local," and went so far as to dub the young lady's column, "The worst economics article ever." I am here to report that her record has been smashed. Floyd Norris's recent New York Times article on the greenback is hands down the worst economics article I have ever read. Not only is it jam-packed full of false history, but it uses the falsehoods to justify monstrous crimes, both in the past and present.
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Tuesday, September 08, 2009
How A Bear Can Be Bullish And Still Be Right / Stock-Markets / Economic Theory
Nico Isaac writes: Bob Prechter: the only good label is an Elliott wave label...
In recent months, Elliott Wave International President Bob Prechter has become something of a household name. In the final two days of August 2009 alone, Bob was mentioned by several news outlets from MarketWatch to the New York Times. The claim to his "fame" --
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Tuesday, September 08, 2009
When Keynesian Salvation Fails, Horrific Stimulus Trouble / Economics / Economic Theory
On this Labor Day I got up before dawn, turned on CNBC and watched an hour long, free-wheeling discussion moderated by Maria Bartoromo among Jack Welch [GE CEO for decades], Fink [CEO and Chm. of Blackrock], Pandit [CEO of Citigroup] and about seven other major people at the top of U.S. Finance and Big Corps. They all agree we face many years of grim financial and economic and probably political developments.
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Monday, September 07, 2009
Why Is Capitalism So Unpopular? / Politics / Economic Theory
Henry Hazlitt once said that good ideas have to be relearned every generation. Among the intellectuals of our time, capitalism is wildly unpopular. This in spite of the fact that it is the only social system that has permitted prosperity and flourishing.
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Sunday, September 06, 2009
Deflation, Inflation, Stagflation, Mass inflation, Hyperinflation, Which One Will Get Us? / Economics / Economic Theory
One of them will. That's if things work out really well. Two or three will if things go according to the Austrian theory of the business cycle.
Americans have been living in the eye of the monetary hurricane. Prices have been stable. In July, both the Consumer Price Index and the Median CPI were flat compared to June.
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Saturday, September 05, 2009
Failure of Economics, the Super Trend and Elements of Deflation / Economics / Economic Theory
The Elements of Deflation
The Failure of Economics
The Super Trend Puzzle
Final Demand and Income
Unemployment Was NOT a Green Shoot
As every school child knows, water is formed by the two elements of hydrogen and oxygen in a very simple formula we all know as H2O. Today we start a series that starts with the question, What are the elements that comprise deflation? Far from being simple, the "equation" for deflation is as complex as that of DNA. And sadly, while the genome project has helped us with great insights into how DNA works, economic analysis is still back in the 1950s when it comes to decoding deflation. Notwithstanding the paucity of understanding we can glean from the dismal science, in this week's letter we will start thinking about the most fundamentally important question of the day: is inflation, or deflation, in our future?
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Tuesday, September 01, 2009
Does Loose Monetary Policy Cause Economic Growth? / Economics / Economic Theory
At the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City's annual economic symposium, held in Jackson Hole, Wyoming on August 21, 2009, Ben Bernanke expressed satisfaction with the action that his administration undertook to save the financial system. According to Bernanke,
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Tuesday, September 01, 2009
Karl Marx and the Global Economic Crisis / Economics / Economic Theory
Are we getting good Marx? I think not
I often wonder how Karl Marx would react were he to find himself here, right now? After all, he too lived through momentous and world-changing times, perhaps even more so than the changes we are experiencing, given that his was the world that gave birth to the rise of the Machine and capitalism as we know it. Born on the cusp so-to-speak and I too, was born on the cusp, 23 July, 1945, a couple of weeks before the empire showed the world that it was truly barbarian when it dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
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Wednesday, August 26, 2009
The Free Market Caused the Great Depression? / Economics / Economic Theory
Floy Lilley writes: Did you hear the one about bobbing heads on Sunday agreeing that the cause of the Great Depression was the absence of government guidance? "The Great Depression would never have happened if there had been any economic regulations," agreed the policy wonks.
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Tuesday, August 25, 2009
A Student's Guide to Economic History / Economics / Economic Theory
David Gordon writes: [How Capitalism Saved America: The Untold History of Our Country, From the Pilgrims to the Present. By Thomas J. DiLorenzo. Crown Forum, 2004. 295 pages.]
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Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Gross National Product (GNP): How is it Calculated? What does it Measure? / Economics / Economic Theory
Prof. John Kozy writes: Although the Department of Commerce claims that GDP measures the final value of goods and services produced in the United States in a given period of time, it merely measures the income of the politically sanctioned commercial class. GDP is used as an indicator of how well that commercial class is doing; it is not a measure of the nation's well being.
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Friday, August 21, 2009
Debt Fuelled Economic Recovery Leading to What? / Economics / Economic Theory
Last week’s essay centered on the fact that America has borrowed nearly $12 trillion dollars yet achieved very little, if any real economic growth in the last half century. If that wasn’t alarming enough, this week’s effort should suffice to turn some heads. While last week we used the broadest monetary aggregate M3 to discount GDP, this week we’re going to take a look at velocity of circulation in the M2 aggregate and translate that into some logical conclusions. Politicians, the Conference Board and nearly every alphabet soup media outlet known to man are trying to talk this economy out of recession. We already know that talk is cheap, but I have a distinct suspicion that we’re soon going to find out exactly how cheap it really is.
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Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Inflation and the Fall of the Roman Empire / Economics / Economic Theory
This is a transcript of Prof. Joseph Peden's 50-minute lecture "Inflation and the Fall of the Roman Empire" given at the Mises Institute Seminar on Money and Government in Houston, Texas on October 27, 1984. The original audio recording is available courtesy of the Mises Institute.
Two centuries ago, in 1776, there were two books published in England, both of which are read avidly today. One of them was Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations and the other was Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Gibbon's multi-volume work is the tale of a state that survived for twelve centuries in the west and for another thousand years in the east, at Constantinople.
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Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Media Economist Paul Krugman Is Insane / Economics / Economic Theory
Richard Daughty writes: I think that Paul Krugman is one of those absurd guys that has no idea what in the hell he is talking about and who owes his undeserved prominence to being a real butt-kissing sucker-upper to Alan Greenspan and his Federal Reserve, and now he’s doing the same thing to the laughable Ben Bernanke and his disastrous Federal Reserve, although I will admit that I don’t know why anybody listens to this guy.
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Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Jaguar Inflation, Layman's Explanation of the Impact of Government Intervention / Economics / Economic Theory
This article is part of a syndicated series about deflation from market analyst Robert Prechter, the world's foremost expert on and proponent of the deflationary scenario. For more on deflation and how you can survive it, download Prechter's FREE 60-page Deflation Survival eBook , part of Prechter's NEW Deflation Survival Guide.
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Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Slow Long-Term Economic Growth, And Government's Response / Economics / Economic Theory
This week I am really delighted to be able to give you a condensed version of Gary Shilling's latest INSIGHT newsletter for your Outside the Box. Each month I really look forward to getting Gary's latest thoughts on the economy and investing. Last year in his forecast issue he suggested 13 investment ideas, all of which were profitable by the end of the year. It is not unusual for Gary to give us over 75 charts and tables in his monthly letters along with his commentary, which makes his thinking unusually clear and accessible.
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Sunday, August 09, 2009
Efficient Market Hypothesis Destroying Industry and Forever Blowing Bubbles / Economics / Economic Theory
Six impossible things before breakfast, or how EMH has damaged our industry
The Dead Parrot of Finance
The Queen of Hearts and impossible beliefs
Slaves of some defunct economist
Prima facie case against EMH -- Forever blowing bubbles
The EMH 'Nuclear Bomb'
The Efficient Market Hypothesis, according to Shiller, is one of the most remarkable errors in the history of economic thought. EMH should be consigned to the dustbin of history. We need to stop teaching it, and brainwashing the innocent. Rob Arnott tells a lovely story of a speech he was giving to some 200 finance professors. He asked how many of them taught EMH - pretty much everyone's hand was up. Then he asked how many of them believed it. Only two hands stayed up!
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Monday, August 03, 2009
Defending Capitalism / Economics / Economic Theory
I recently got into an argument with a marketing executive of India's biggest mutual fund, Unit Trust of India. We were discussing the recent media coverage of the 'public' outrage over a new Indian TV show called 'Sach ka Samna', it is the Indian counterpart to the American show 'Moment of Truth'. I haven't seen the show but I did see the public condemnation hailed on Indian media. It didn't bother me that people were speaking out against the show, but it did bother me when I saw members of Government condemning the show as if whole families were being murdered. It is surprising that the one thing that offends the government happens to be the revelation of truth.1Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, July 31, 2009
How Paul Krugman Has Misconceived Austrian Business Cycle Theory / Economics / Economic Theory
David Gordon writes: Paul Krugman is an eminent economist, but he here reveals a woefully inadequate understanding of Austrian business-cycle theory. The rudiments of the theory are easy; one might have thought that even a Keynesian could grasp them.
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Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Keynesians Can't Predict, Forecasts of Postwar Deflation Turned Out to be Entirely Wrong / Economics / Economic Theory
L. Albert Hahn writes: If you take the trouble to interrogate a large number of economists about the economic future of the country you will find that an overwhelming majority argues in the following way: In about two years at the latest, rearmament will be completed and the amounts spent for this purpose will be negligible. At about the same time the pent-up demand for investments will be largely satisfied. The productive apparatus will be sufficiently enlarged, improved, and modernized to meet the needs of an increased population and all other reasonable requirements. A depression — or at least a serious recession from the present high level of production and employment — must follow.
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Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Meta Economics vs Quantitative Economics / Economics / Economic Theory
This brief essay is a summary of the idea "Meta-Economics" as introduced my E.F Schumacher in his classic book; "Small is Beautiful."
Economic: "Sufficient to give a good return for the money or resources expended."
Meta: "To transcend or go beyond."
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Has Paul Krugman Become an Austrian Economist? Not Quite…. / Economics / Economic Theory
William L. Anderson writes: Paul Krugman has looked at Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle and found it wanting. First, he mistakenly calls it a "hangover theory" when, in fact, it is a theory of easy credit leading to malinvestments. Second, he really does not understand that government cannot sustain a boom once the financial wave has crested. Third, he has no understanding of the heterogeneity of assets, assuming that capital and other assets are homogeneous for the purposes of economic policy.
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Thursday, July 16, 2009
Keynesian Economics, the Usual Suspects / Economics / Economic Theory
Fred Buzzeo writes: In 1977, the prolific economic writer Henry Hazlitt wrote, [T]here has been a profound change in the economic reputation of Keynes' General Theory. It is no longer accepted as the new gospel. Professors of economics can openly declare themselves to be non-Keynesians and even anti-Keynesians and still be treated with respect.[1]
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Wednesday, July 15, 2009
The Keynesian Economic Revolution and the Neo-liberal Counter-revolution / Economics / Economic Theory
Dr. Eric Toussaint writes: As a result of the depression of the 1920s and 1930s, a new wave of critics tackled the neo-classical creed on a largely pragmatic basis. This new wave was international and involved political leaders and economists from differing belonging to various currents backgrounds: enlightened bourgeois thinkers, socialists and Marxists. In a context of mass unemployment and depression, proposals came forward for major public works, for anti-cyclical injections of public money, and even for bank expropriations.
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Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Keynes, Monetary Cranks Promoting Fiat Currencies and Deflation / Economics / Economic Theory
Gary North writes: John Maynard Keynes changed his economic views every few years. His 1936 book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, was his last book. He spent the war years in the British Treasury. He died in 1946. So, he did not change his mind again.
Keynes' final book was a defense of government spending. This is why the book was hailed as a masterpiece. It backed up what all Western governments were already doing: spending money on welfare projects and running massive deficits.
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Saturday, July 11, 2009
The Minimum Wage is Maximum Economic Stupidity / Politics / Economic Theory
In a free market, demand is always a function of price: the higher the price, the lower the demand. What may surprise most politicians is that these rules apply equally to both prices and wages. When employers evaluate their labor and capital needs, cost is a primary factor. When the cost of hiring low-skilled workers moves higher, jobs are lost. Despite this, minimum wage hikes, like the one set to take effect later this month, are always seen as an act of governmental benevolence. Nothing could be further from the truth.
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Tuesday, July 07, 2009
Credit Expansion, Crisis, and the Myth of the Saving Glut / Economics / Economic Theory
George Reisman writes: Readers who are already familiar with the nature of credit expansion and the concepts of standard money and fiduciary media should skip the first section. Readers who are also already familiar with the role of credit expansion and fiduciary media in generating the stock market and real estate bubbles should skip the second section as well and proceed directly to the third section "Evasion of Responsibility for the Bubbles."
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Friday, July 03, 2009
A Message for Armchair Economists / Economics / Economic Theory
Betsy Hansen writes: At some point in our intellectual development, we libertarians are naturally drawn to study economics. I think this stems from the fact that we love to explore the forces which drive our world. Economics is, in a broad sense, the study of human cooperation. A solid understanding of economics enables us to see how and why our world looks and behaves as it does.
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Friday, July 03, 2009
The Keynesian System, the Economics of Illusion / Economics / Economic Theory
[This is the title essay of Hahn's The Economics of Illusion, his frontal attack on the Keynesian system. It is based on a lecture delivered at the Studiengesellschaft fur Wirtschaftspolitik, Zurich, Switzerland, September 12, 1947.]
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Sunday, June 28, 2009
The Inflation Deflation Debate and Myth of the Kondratieff Wave / Economics / Economic Theory
Gary North writes: Do you want to lose money? Invest in terms of the Kondratieff wave.
Do you want to misunderstand completely the relationship between economic production and prices? Adopt the Kondratieff wave as your tool of explanation.
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Wednesday, June 24, 2009
The Miracle of the Market / Economics / Economic Theory
Ludwig von Mises didn’t like references to the "miracle" of the marketplace or the "magic" of production or other terms that suggest that economic systems depend on some force that is beyond human comprehension. In his view, we are better off coming to a rational understanding of why markets are responsible for astounding levels of productivity that can support exponential increases in population and ever higher living standards.
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Thursday, June 18, 2009
Carl Marx was the First Real Globalist / Politics / Economic Theory
William Bowles writes: If nothing else, the wholesale plunder of the planet’s natural resources has brought into sharp focus the necessity for some kind of global (and globally enforceable) regulation of what’s left of the planet’s precious cargo of life. But can capitalism undertake such a task? Not only that, is it willing to do so and is even some kind of ‘reformed’ capitalism capable of doing so given that the basic drive of capitalism is expand or die.
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Tuesday, June 09, 2009
Conservative Economics Based Upon Greed / Politics / Economic Theory
Cage Innoye writes: In life we have the problem of self management. If we don’t manage ourselves, then disaster occurs. Self control is a key trait of this behavior, taking calculated risks is another, a strategy of balance is another. Most people accept this.
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Tuesday, June 09, 2009
Lessons for Economists on Deflationary, Deleveraging Recessions / Economics / Economic Theory
There is a debate in academic circles on the lessons of the current economic crisis. While most ivory tower debates are of little concern to our daily affairs, this debate should concern you, as it will inform those who hold central bank and political power. Remember, there is no playbook of rules for what to do in deflationary, deleveraging recessions. They are making it up as they go along.
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Tuesday, June 02, 2009
The Austrian Cure for Economic Illness / Economics / Economic Theory
Don Miller writes: An ill person may have diabetes or an infection. When an economy becomes ill people lose their jobs and watch the value of their homes and stock portfolios fall.
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Saturday, May 30, 2009
Elliott Wave Theory Based Trading Into and out-of the Stock Market March 2009 Low / Stock-Markets / Economic Theory
We trust that all those who have engaged in trading markets for any period of time will conclude that it is an unrealistic expectation that any single or group of trading strategies can work to perfection all of the time. Price action is elusive more often than not. As a result, losses are a most assured and inevitable part of the entire trading process. However, unwelcomed but anticipated nonetheless, cumulative debilitating losses need not dominate ones trading experience. Similar to a professional baseball player’s batting average, highly successful trading strategies need only perform with consistency a small percentage of the time in order to deliver phenomenal benchmarked measures of success.
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Saturday, May 23, 2009
Stocks Bear Market, Russo Vs Prechter an Elliott Wave Count Comparison / Stock-Markets / Economic Theory
First, we wish to state for the record that there is no meaningful difference in the intermediate and long-term market opinions held by the astute Mr. Prechter and those held by this analyst. Secondly, we would like to note that we hold the utmost respect for Mr. Prechter’s talents, skills, contributions, and achievements in both his publishing empire, and in his eloquent and brilliant sharing of Elliott Wave Theory. Without Mr. Prechter, this analyst would not exist in this venue.
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Monday, May 04, 2009
Gold-Exchange Standard, Gold, and Monetary Freedom / Economics / Economic Theory
Michael S. Rozeff writes: Two major government economists, Christina D. Romer and Ben Bernanke, have done influential research on the Great Depression. Both implicate the State-run gold standard of that era, which differed from the pre-1914 gold standard, as a major culprit in the Great Depression. (See here and here.) Their work parallels that of other economists such as Barry Eichengreen and Peter Temin on the negative role of the interwar gold exchange standard. There is an emerging or existing consensus among economists about the negative effects of the gold-exchange standard.Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, May 01, 2009
The Fallacy of Free Trade / Economics / Economic Theory
"The causes of wealth are something totally different from wealth itself. A person may possess wealth i.e. exchangeable value; if, however, he does not possess the power of producing objects of more value than he consumes, he will become poorer. A person may be poor, if he, however possesses the power of producing a larger amount of valuable articles than he consumes, he becomes rich.
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Thursday, April 30, 2009
Annoying Fiscal and Monetary Policy / Economics / Economic Theory
Michael S. Rozeff writes: The terms "fiscal and monetary policy" annoy me. The fact that fiscal and monetary policy even exist annoys me. They are the terms that mean government control over the economy. That annoys me too.
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Thursday, April 23, 2009
Global Financial Crisis: Bad Economics, Economists Do not Have a Clue / Economics / Economic Theory
Prof. John Kozy writes: Classical/neoclassical economics has consistently protected the wealth of the privileged; it has preserved the status quo. This is capitalism's intent, and the evidence for it is overwhelming. It has impeded the improvement of the human condition for two hundred years, and unless it is scrapped, it will continue to do so. No mere change in government can stop it.
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Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Does Taxing Pollution Lead to Higher Prices and Lower Aggregate Economic Output? / Economics / Economic Theory
Congress is about to consider legislation that could result in a tax on the burning of fossil fuels. Some argue that such a tax would result in increased prices of a wide variety of goods and services and reduced aggregate output. I do not want to get into the argument as to whether the burning of fossil fuels is contributing to global warming or whether global warming is globally harmful. Rather, I want to discuss the issue of taxing pollution in general. In other words, I want this to be a discussion about economic theory, not political-economic theory.
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Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Clown Economist Mankiw Defends Policy of Theft of Private Property / Economics / Economic Theory
In case you are new to this story, Gregory Mankiw, professor of economics at Harvard, proposed negative interest rates in It May Be Time for the Fed to Go Negative.
At one of my recent Harvard seminars, a graduate student proposed a clever scheme to [make holding money less attractive].
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Krugman in Need of Remedial Economics Education / Economics / Economic Theory
Paul Krugman is back in his usual form of preaching sheer idiocy with his piece Time for bottles in coal mines.Krugman is upset that Obama says stimulus projects under budget.
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Monday, April 06, 2009
Bailouts Insolvency vs. Liquidity, or Austrian vs. Keynesian Economics / Economics / Economic Theory
Michael S. Rozeff writes: An economics debate of very great importance is surfacing. Is the government's economic rationale for bailing out the banks valid? If it is not, then the entire case for the bank bailouts fails. On one side of the debate are Austrians using Austrian economics, on the other side are Keynesians using Keynesian economics.Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Eggertsson Theory, Armstrong, Timing and the Economic Confidence Model / Economics / Economic Theory
Who's that knocking on the door? Who's that ringing the Bell? It's time for another visit by your friendly Collection Agency to offer timely advice and to remind you of his previous excellent record. You should all know by now that the Collection Agency doesn't pull any punches and has ensured that subscribers have been well ahead of developments in the global macro economy.Read full article... Read full article...
Sunday, March 08, 2009
Keynesian's Blame Asian Saving's for Causing the Economic Crisis / Economics / Economic Theory
"Thank Heaven for little Keynesian Nobel laureates... without them what would little Keynesian Treasury secretaries do?..." At the long last we got the official explanation how we got into this mess. In his March 2, 2009, column in The New York Times under the banner title Revenge of the Glut Paul Krugman tells us, quoting the authority of the Chairman of the Fedreal Reserve Ben Bernanke, that it is all the fault of the Asians. They save damn too much. They test the endurance of unhappy Americans who bankrupt themselves in trying to work off all that darned excess saving fast enough before it can do more damage. Even though they do their level best, they could not keep up with the prodigious output of the Asians and "global savings glut" is the result.Read full article... Read full article...
Monday, February 23, 2009
Mainstream Economists Retarded Embrace of John Maynard Keynes' "Paradox of Thrift" / Economics / Economic Theory
Mainstream economists and the mainstream media continue to embrace John Maynard Keynes' notion of the "paradox of thrift." While most economists subscribe to the view that the pace of long-run economic growth is a function of productivity and thrift (saving), short-run growth can be retarded by too much thrift. According to this view, if households in the aggregate decide to cut back on their current spending, i.e., save more, aggregate economic demand will be negatively affected. Hence, the paradox of thrift. A little later in this commentary, I will try to dispel the notion that thrift retards growth in aggregate demand in the short run.Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Will Keynesian Tax Cuts Deepen The Recession? / Economics / Economic Theory
In one of the more ridiculous Keynesian theories to date, Gauti B. Eggertsson at the New York Fed comes to the conclusion Tax Cuts Will Deepen The Recession . Simple logic would dictate that letting people and businesses keep more of their money would be a good thing but amazingly Eggertsson comes to the opposite conclusion.Read full article... Read full article...
Sunday, February 08, 2009
Epic Economic Battle Being Waged Between Friedman and Fischer Theories / Economics / Economic Theory
Jack Crooks writes: There is a battle being waged now in the world of economics. This battle is fierce. And no matter who wins, the impact will be felt far and wide. I dub this epoch struggle: “Godzilla vs. King Kong”
I'm not sure who will win, but I do have a favorite.
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Monday, December 29, 2008
Krugman Still Wrong on the Economy / Economics / Economic Theory
Krugman seems particularly proud of a piece he wrote a decade ago. His new remake, Hangover Theorists , is as wrong now as it was then. Let's take a look.
The hangover theory , which I wrote about a decade ago, is still out there. The basic idea is that a recession, even a depression, is somehow a necessary thing, part of the process of “adapting the structure of production.” We have to get those people who were pounding nails in Nevada into other places and occupation, which is why unemployment has to be high in the housing bubble states for a while.
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Friday, October 10, 2008
If You Listen to Economists… You WILL Go Broke / Economics / Economic Theory
Before I begin, I recommend you bookmark my archive on this site so you can easily find my new posts http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/UserInfo-Mike_Stathis.htmlRead full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Consumption and Investment Fallacy / Economics / Economic Theory
For years I have been stressing the media's lousy economics. For those readers who think I have been exaggerating the situation allow me to introduce you to Bernard Salt, a partner in the well known accounting firm of KPMG. According to Mr Salt
It was a no-brainer in the 1950s: half the working age population was not engaged in the paid workforce. Change based on the role of women was always going to transform our society over the course of a generation.
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