Joseph Solis-Mullen

Republican Solutions Would Destabilize Central America, Not Fix It

by Joseph Solis-Mullen | Oct 23, 2023 | Featured Articles

Watching the Republican Party presidential debates has been surreal in many ways. Apart from the awkward spectacle of Mike Pence and Chris Christie acting like they have a chance at the Oval Office, perhaps nothing has been more confounding than the new, hottest idea: bombing and invading Mexico to solve the drug crisis. And it gets better! Because while they’re at it, the military will solve the migrant crisis, too. This really is baffling. Except for those monied interests who benefit from its continued fighting, the drug war has been a total failure. Pick any metric you like. So, too, but...

The Fed Is Steering Us Towards Bankruptcy

by Joseph Solis-Mullen | Oct 11, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles

For all that the corporate press does to paint the Federal Reserve as adroitly steering the monetary ship of state, one has only to look at the Fed’s actual words to know that however much they may be steering the ship, they have no idea where they are going. As evidence, consider the following selection of some of the Fed’s most prominent pronouncements over the past 36 months. March 2020: We won’t have inflation. January 2021: The inflation is “transitory.” September 2021: Rates won’t rise until 2024. November 2021: Inflation may not be “transitory.” November 2021: Rates will rise in 2022....

It’s the Inflation, Stupid!

by Joseph Solis-Mullen | Sep 28, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles

At the beginning of last year, economist Paul Krugman wondered aloud whether Americans would even notice if the economy improved. In his considered opinion, it was already obvious that the economy was humming along merrily and that ordinary shmucks just didn’t get it. Fast forward to this past week, and Krugman was beating the same drum, puzzling why it was that Americans just didn’t appreciate how great the economy was doing. Pointing to a complex interplay of wage growth, consumer confidence, unemployment, household spending, GDP growth, and a host of other metrics, Krugman reached for the...

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...

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Author of The Fake China Threat and Its Very Real Danger, Joseph Solis-Mullen is a political scientist and economist at the Libertarian Institute. A graduate of Spring Arbor University, the University of Illinois, and the University of Missouri, his work can be found at the Ludwig Von Mises Institute, Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, Libertarian Institute, Journal of Libertarian Studies, Journal of the American Revolution, and Antiwar.com. You can contact him via joseph@libertarianinstitute.org or find him on Twitter @solis_mullen.