The Wall Street Journal today brings word that a professor Efraim Benmelech of the finance department at Northwestern University thinks the Fed is hurting housing and the consumer too much. Opined he, ...those higher interest rates are making mortgages more expensive...
Central Bank
1/27/23 Ryan McMaken on How the Fed Is Ripping Us Off
by Scott Horton | Jan 31, 2023 | The Scott Horton Show
Download Episode. Ryan McMaken of the Mises Institute joins Scott to discuss the ill effects central banking has on the country. McMaken wrote an article recently pointing out that the Federal Reserve, America’s central bank, is technically bankrupt. Scott has...
The Idea of Making a ‘Trillion Dollar Coin’ Is Still Dumb
by Ryan McMaken | Jan 24, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles
Here we go again. Every few years in Congress there is a purely political battle over the debt ceiling. We're supposed to be horrified and worried that the U.S. might default on some of its debt. Some commentators will insist the U.S. has never defaulted, and that...
US to Transfer Seized Russian Assets to Ukraine
by Will Porter | Jan 20, 2023 | News
The US government is preparing to hand Ukraine assets confiscated from Russian businessmen under a scheme proposed by the Biden administration last year, which aims to target the wealth of “oligarchs” and pass it on to Kiev.
A Defense of Mutual Aid Societies
by Zack Sorenson | Jan 19, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles, Libertarianism
The libertarian community is unique on account of its ability to ignore standard political and social conventions. Libertarians value freedom and understand why it needs free markets. However, libertarians do not possess a conservative loyalty to the system as it is...
Where Have All the Working Men Gone?
by Ryan McMaken | Dec 29, 2022 | Economics, Featured Articles
Last week, CNN featured a story called "Men are dropping out of the workforce. Here's why" The article went on to tell us virtually nothing at all about why so many men are leaving the workforce. Although as many as seven million men have stayed out of the workforce...
Empirically, Interest Rate Manipulation Doesn’t Work
by Thomas Eddlem | Dec 19, 2022 | Economics, Featured Articles
It’s an economic article of faith among almost every school of economic thought that central banks raising interest rates curtails economic growth and lowering interest rates stimulates short-run economic growth. The problem with this assertion by nearly every...
Turning Down the Noise in the CPI Numbers
by David Stockman | Dec 15, 2022 | Economics, Featured Articles
So the talking heads of bubblevision think inflation is abating, but what about this: Federal revenues in November posted at $252 billion—10.3% below last November—while spending came in at $501 billion. And the latter included an ominous +53% rise in Federal debt...
No, Tax Cuts Don’t Cause Inflation
by Daniel Lacalle | Dec 14, 2022 | Economics, Featured Articles
The narrative to attack any tax cut and defend any increase in government size is reaching feverish levels. However, we must continue to remind citizens that constantly bloating government spending and increasing the size of monetary interventions are some of the...
The ‘Mother of All Economic Crises’
by Ron Paul | Dec 13, 2022 | Economics, Featured Articles
Nouriel Roubini, a former advisor to the International Monetary Fund and member of President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisors, was one of the few “mainstream” economists to predict the collapse of the housing bubble. Now Roubini is warning that the staggering...
Stand with Humanity
by John Weeks | Nov 27, 2022 | Blog
Stand with the Libertarian Institute The Empire has us on the brink of nuclear Armageddon. The central bank has us flirting with economic-social collapse. Americans are increasingly paranoid of one another and simultaneously invested in wielding the state...
Western Politicians Tried (and Failed) to Legislate Tides of Russian Oil
by Marcel Gautreau | Nov 9, 2022 | Economics, Featured Articles, Foreign Policy
Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Western sanctions program can best be compared to an interrogator who first amputates a victim’s arm and then, brandishing the severed appendage, threatens to begin slitting its wrist and tearing out...
Only I Decide
by Jeffrey Wernick | Nov 1, 2022 | Featured Articles, Libertarianism
This article was originally published on May 5, 2021. Jen Psaki, the White House Press Secretary when responding to questions regarding Trump’s extension of his status as suspended from Facebook, said that the Biden Administration expected more from “social media”...
‘Strong as Hell’ Economy is a Mirage of Math
by Tom Luongo | Oct 26, 2022 | Economics, Featured Articles
“President” Joe Biden described the U.S. economy as, “Strong as hell,” in a recent sound bite. No one except his most ardent supporters, a vanishingly small number in reality, believes that. He and they point to statistics, “internals” in Biden-speaks, that point to...
Blog
Reminder: Volodymyr Zelenskyy Almost Started a World War Based on a Lie
On November 15th, the Associated Press reported that "A senior U.S. intelligence official says Russian missiles crossed into NATO member Poland, killing two people". Since Poland is a member of the North American Treaty Organization, that would mean that America along...
Christopher Hitchens Lied About the Cause of Terrorism
"The suicide murder community is almost perfectly faith based." - Christopher Hitchens On Real Time With Bill Maher, Hitchens claims that because an Islamist in the 1800's used the Koran to justify atrocities, it means that today the issue with Al-Qaeda is due to the...
War is a Euphemism for Mass Murder
To kill one man is to be guilty of a capital crime, to kill ten men is to increase the guilt tenfold, to kill a hundred men is to increase it a hundredfold. This the rulers of the earth all recognize, and yet when it comes to the greatest crime — waging war on another...
Empower the Working Class: Abolish Occupational Licensing
It's time to consistently apply the "my body my choice" principle. If consenting adults want to engage in economic activity, no third party should forcibly stop them. Democrats always say "voting once every two years between two politicians is how you express...
Death By Climate: Down 97% in Last 100 Years
Our schools provide many hours of lessons on climate change, but I wonder how many teachers, let alone pupils, are aware that climate-related deaths have decreased by as much as 97 per cent over the past 100 years, as the OFDA / CRED data show. - Why don’t we ever...
Black Youth Unemployment: Before and After Progressives Started “Helping”
A constant trend is progressivism is to use the state to coercively control others under the guise of "helping" them, make things worse, then ignore the problems you caused and never apologize. Sallie Mae loans didn't make college affordable. The Federal Reserve...
Shop Our Books
Voluntaryist Handbook
by Keith Knight
Hotter Than The Sun: Time To Abolish Nuclear Weapons
by Scott Horton
[playlist artists="false" images="false"...
Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism
by Scott Horton