On Friday, residential real estate brokerage firm Redfin released new data on home prices, showing that prices fell 0.6 percent in February, year over year. According to Redfin's numbers, this was the first time that home prices actually fell since 2012. The...
stimulus
The Early Bird Stops the Central Bank’s Digital Currency Designs
by Connor O'Keeffe | Feb 6, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles
Whether you like it or not, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) are coming. That’s the message in a recent tech column in the Wall Street Journal. A similar tone can be found coming from organizations like the World Economic Forum, the International Monetary Fund,...
Bubbles R-Us
by David Stockman | Feb 2, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles
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...
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...
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...
Vote Buying Surges in Advance of Georgia Runoff
by Jim Bovard | Nov 23, 2022 | Featured Articles, Politics
President Joe Biden is tottering on the edge of his most inefficient vote-buying binge yet. As the runoff race for Georgia’s Senate seat enters its final weeks, the Biden administration may rubberstamp a nationwide handout to snare a handful of Peach State ballots....
‘Greedflation’ Is a Red Herring
by Connor O'Keeffe | Nov 21, 2022 | Economics, Featured Articles
Even as price inflation slows and we move past June’s peak, progressives continue to push the concept of “greedflation”—that this year’s price inflation is caused by corporate greed and price gouging. This is inaccurate, based on bad economics, and it blames a...
Housing Prices Will Keep Getting More Expensive
by Ryan McMaken | Nov 17, 2022 | Economics, Featured Articles
As mortgage rates have risen this year, the demand for home purchases has fallen. That has spelled trouble for the home construction business. Homebuilder confidence dropped for the 10th straight month in October. The decline in builder sentiment reflects what...
10/31/22 Mike Swanson on our Strange and Troubling Economy
by Scott Horton | Nov 5, 2022 | The Scott Horton Show
Download Episode. Scott talks with Mike Swanson about the economic mess we find ourselves in. Swanson helps us understand how we got here and why all the traditional “experts” have been so confused. Swanson argues that what happened in the UK with Liz Truss may...
A $31 Trillion National Debt Should Matter To You
by Michael Maharrey | Oct 26, 2022 | Economics, Featured Articles
On Oct. 3, 2022, the U.S. national debt eclipsed $31 trillion for the first time in history. When you factor in unfunded liabilities in Medicare and Social Security, the debt skyrockets to well over $100 trillion. As the Anti-Federalist writer Brutus warned: “I can...
Working Harder for More of the Same in the Fed’s Economy
by Ryan McMaken | Oct 13, 2022 | Economics, Featured Articles
According to the establishment survey of employment, released last week by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, total employment increased, month-over-month by 263,000 jobs. The "job market stays strong" reads one CNBC headline, and the new jobs print was hailed as a great...
7/22/22 Jeff Deist on Inflation, the Housing Market and the Death of Savings
by Scott Horton | Jul 28, 2022 | The Scott Horton Show
Download Episode. Scott is joined by Jeff Deist, the President of the Mises Institute, to discuss the bizarre economic moment we are living through. Deist puts into perspective the historic levels of economic stimulus that the Federal Reserve injected into the...
Not a ‘Soft Landing,’ But a Crash
by Daniel Lacalle | Jun 20, 2022 | Economics, Featured Articles
After more than a decade of chained stimulus packages and extremely low rates, with trillions of dollars of monetary stimulus fueling elevated asset valuations and incentivizing an enormous leveraged bet on risk, the idea of a controlled explosion or a “soft landing”...
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The Capitalist Competition Myth
Capitalism involves far more cooperation than competition—think of the number of mutually beneficial transactions you’ve had today compared to the number of competitions you’ve been in today - Chris Freiman, author of Why It's OK to Ignore Politics Democratic...
Blame Mexico? Blame Neocons! Blame Big Pharma! Blame the USA!
ABC News: If fentanyl is so deadly, why do drug dealers use it to lace illicit drugs? I have an alternative explanation. America has been fighting endless wars almost the entire century. Many have come home from these never-ending wars with injuries and pains. Doctors...
My Testimony Before the Maine State Senate
In support of Ld 1054, Defend the Guard legislation: Thank you all so much for the opportunity to testify before your committee today. Today is the 20th anniversary of the beginning of Iraq War II. The consensus now is that we should not have done it. Iraq was not...
These Iraq War Supporters Are Still in Congress
On March 19, 2003 the United States began its military invasion of Iraq. The Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq passed Congress in October 2002, with 296 congressmen and 77 senators voting in favor of giving President George W. Bush carte blanche...
Laci Green is Wrong: Democratic Competition vs. Free Market Competition
In environments where there's a lot of competition, people tend to lie out their ass and you can apply this to any competitive situation. Take capitalism. As industrialization took full effect, the Federal Government had to interfere because there was so much false...
Empower the Workers: Decriminalize Economic Activity Between Consenting Adults
The most reliable and effective protection for most workers is provided by the existence of many employers. As we have seen, a person who has only one possible employer has little or no protection. The employers who protect a worker are those who would like to hire...
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