In America, and to a certain extent in Canada, rich businessmen are seen as savvy at their craft. After building an empire of wealth, it’s hard to challenge a successful person’s view of market economies. Business owners have to make
Archive for June, 2014
Bank of England Governor will hold back the tides
Re: The new normal is 2.5%, not 5% benchmark interest rate Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England: “Why is that the case? Things have changed. Households have a lot of debt. The Government is consolidating its financial position.
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Fuzzy Justice: How a Lack of Clarity Undermines the Prison System
A lot of the modern justice system is taken for granted. Built on centuries of common law, we no longer question the fundamental assumptions of crime and punishment. At least, most of us don’t. In light of a large number
Limited Government Is a Vain Hope
Reprinted from Mises.org Against the State: An Anarcho-Capitalist Manifesto. By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. Rockwell Communications. 190 pages. Lew Rockwell has set himself a difficult task. He has written Against the State, not for the already convinced libertarian, eager to discuss
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Bubbles Worry Central Bankers
After years of QE and other loose monetary policies, central banks are starting to get jitters about the effects of their policies. An organization representing the world’s main central banks warned Sunday that dangerous new asset bubbles were forming even
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How to Make Government Cost More
Think the government is expensive? It’s about to cost a little more. The Grow America Act, introduced earlier this month in the U.S. House of Representatives, contains “Buy American” language that would raise U.S. content to 100 per cent by
European “Champion” or European “Crony Capitalist”?
From today’s Open Europe news summary: Following the failed merger of Siemens and Alstom, which eventually joined with General Electric, France is reportedly pushing for an easing of the EU’s antitrust rules to allow the creation of European “champions”. WSJ
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Why Imagining Freedom is Essential
Reprinted from Liberty.me “What are you complaining about all the time?” people sometimes ask me. “I’m just about as free as I want to be.” Here’s the problem. How can we really know what we want if we’ve never had
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Anarchist Oilfield
Editor note: for a real-life example of private law/anarchism in action, please see the email provided below by Dr. Walter Block! As I imagine you know, I have written a book on privatizing roads:Block, Walter E. 2009. The Privatization of
Mises Canada at FreedomFest
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Mises Canada will be at the 2014 FreedomFest! What is FreedomFest? See the description from the website below: FreedomFest is an annual festival where free minds meet to celebrate “great books, great ideas, and great thinkers” in an open-minded society.
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Private Health Care is Inevitable in Canada
Private health care is inevitable in Canada. Does that sound crazy? Decades ago, socialized medicine became an iconic institution in the country. It wasn’t just the establishment of “free” healthcare for all, but an existential “right” created by a loving
My letter to the Financial Times, London re: Here…take all the cocaine you want
Dear Sirs: The Fed’s warning to banks that tougher stress tests are coming, so they should be making extraordinary preparations, is tantamount to passing out cocaine while warning that tough new drug tests will follow. What does the Fed believe
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Inequality, Free Markets, and Crashes
Reprinted from National Review Mark Spitznagel and Nassim Taleb started the first equity tail-hedging firm in 1999. Since then these two friends and colleagues have helped popularize so-called “black swan” investing, with Spitznagel as the founder and CIO of hedge
Replace Striking Teachers with Babysitters
With British Columbia’s 41,000 unionized public school teachers still on strike, parents are scrambling for solutions. What is one of the more popular ones right now? Teenage babysitters. It’s more than a little ironic that the province’s teachers strike has
It’s Official – German Gold is Staying in New York at The Federal Reserve
Republished from Liberty Blitzkrieg Michael Krieger | Posted Monday Jun 23, 2014 at 10:58 am *Update: A couple of people have made a stink about this post claiming that it is misleading because the prior agreed upon repatriation schedule has not actually changed. That said, anyone
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Turning Piketty Right Side Up
Thomas Piketty, a neo-Marxist French Professor, has written a near-700-page book, published by Harvard University Press. His book is titled Capital in the Twenty-First Century, in honor of Karl Marx’s 19th century Das Capital. It has been greeted with fervent
This Boom is a Problem
Writing for the Globe and Mail, Tom Bradley is worried about the markets: It feels like investors have become complacent about – well – everything. The strongest consensus I’ve seen in recent years relates to low interest rates. The rationale
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The Theory of Education in the United States
In 1931, political theorist Albert Jay Nock delivered a series of lectures at Virginia University laying out his understanding of the theory of education in the United States and the ways in which this theory goes badly wrong. Over the
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Bank Deposits are Not Idle Reserves
What role do bank deposits serve? If you asked this to a run-of-the-mill bank customer they would likely tell you that they are looking for some safety reserve to cover expenses. Ask a banker and the answer could well be
