Joseph Solis-Mullen | The Libertarian Institute

Yeah, It Was (Mostly) the Fed’s Fault

by Joseph Solis-Mullen | Sep 20, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles

A not uncommon reaction from central bank defenders in response to criticism is some form of an apology, arguing a lesser of two evils choice. Posing a counterfactual, they present a scenario, say the East Asian Crisis or subsequent Subprime Crisis, which it is then argued would have been much worse but for the interventions of the Federal Reserve. “Think how bad it would’ve been had the Fed not been there!” In fact, in virtually every case, one finds the Federal Reserve at or near the root cause(s) of the problem at hand. And though a complete catalog of all the Federal Reserve’s errors is...

Hong Kong Was Always Doomed to Be Under Beijing’s Thumb

by Joseph Solis-Mullen | Aug 29, 2023 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

On midnight July 1, 1997 a century and a half of British colonial dominion was brought to an end with the handover of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China (hereafter PRC). This was in accordance with the 1984 Sino-British Declaration. That treaty, which had been worked out between British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Deng Xiaoping, was to have secured Hong Kong’s relationship with Beijing on the basis of “One Country, Two Systems"—that is, the assurance of Hong Kong’s relative autonomy on certain economic and political matters for at...

Exchanging the Rust Belt for Military Bases: Foreign Policy and Deindustrialization

by Joseph Solis-Mullen | Aug 9, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

While the benefits of trade liberalization in the postwar period have been abundant, readers may be surprised to learn how secondary (or even nonexistent) consideration of such possible benefits were to U.S. policymakers. Rather, trade liberalization following World War II was primarily conceived in terms of political and security priorities. As an April 1950 report by the Bureau of the Budget put it: “Foreign economic policies should not be formulated in terms primarily of economic objectives. They must be subordinated to our politico-security objectives and the priorities which the latter...

Our National Debt Isn’t Bad, It’s Worse

by Joseph Solis-Mullen | Aug 1, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles

Those paying attention know the so-called “national debt” crossed the $30 trillion mark in late 2021 and has continued to steadily climb since. With trillion-dollar annual deficits having somehow been allowed to become the norm, less than two years later the number has passed $32.5 trillion. Growing almost $8,000 per second, or just under $29 million per hour, our individual “shares” of the debt now stand at just under $100,000 apiece. Yikes. The bad news is, it’s going to get worse. And the bad, bad news is this isn’t even the “real” national debt. As will be shown, Washington’s liabilities...

Sanctioning China in a Taiwan Crisis: Scenarios and Risks

by Joseph Solis-Mullen | Jul 25, 2023 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

Last month the DC hawks’ favorite think tank, the Atlantic Council, released their long anticipated study “Sanctioning China in a Taiwan Crisis: Scenarios and Risks.” Produced in collaboration with the Rhodium Group, the final product is a highly detailed forty page analysis, informed not only by theoretical considerations but significant time spent by the authors talking with policymakers in G7 governments. Broken up into sections respectively devoted to detailing the different range of sanctions available, their probable impacts, and the hypothetical challenges to their implementation, the...

Defending the Defensible: Free Trade and Economic Liberalism

by Joseph Solis-Mullen | Jul 13, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

In 1989, the economist John Williamson introduced the phrase “Washington Consensus” to the politico-economic lexicon. It was shorthand for a set of interrelated policies that, taken together, would free trade within states and between them while boosting overall economic outcomes by freeing the productive forces of society from the stultifying effects of statist managerial policies. These were, in no particular order: Fiscal discipline, in the form of balanced budgets. Tax reform, in favor of lower marginal tax rates. Abandonment of fixed exchange rates in favor of competitive,...

The Fake China Threat, Then and Now

by Joseph Solis-Mullen | Jul 5, 2023 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

Republicans are terrible on China. Examples abound, but perhaps the most instructive illustration of this long-term handicap comes from the following quotation: “We must be prepared to go it alone in China if our allies desert us. We must not fool ourselves into thinking we can avoid taking up arms with the Chinese Reds. If we don’t fight them in China and Formosa [Taiwan] we’ll be fighting them in San Francisco, in Seattle, in Kansas City."Quoted from Chapter Ten, “World Affairs, 1953-1956,” of historian James T. Patterson’s Grand Expectations: the United States, 1945-1974, Volume Ten...

An Archaeology of Nineteenth Century American Expansion

by Joseph Solis-Mullen | Jun 27, 2023 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

Last week, context was added to Murray Rothbard’s assertion in Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy that American foreign policy underwent an abrupt shift during the second Cleveland administration (1893-1897). I argued that American foreign policy from that period on, far from being a radical departure from what had come before, was the natural outgrowth or logical extension of previous expansionist policies. In this reading, the drive to conquer the best of the North American continent, having been declared officially settled in 1890, was simply turned abroad in a series of...