This week, the Federal Reserve raised the target Federal Funds Rate ever so slightly. The Fed perhaps felt it had to raise rates to protect its credibility, as credibility problems seem to be plaguing similar institutions worldwide.
Luckily for us all, Mises survived the war and went on to live a life that fundamentally altered the world. He overcame the Nazis, academic blacklists, and the personal hardships that tends to haunt any man who refuses to sacrifice his principles.
Economics is not a popular topic among the general population. When economics is discussed at all, it’s in the context of politics — and politics gives us only the blandest, safest, most meaningless platitudes about economic affairs. The 2016 campaigns will be no different.
Economics has been in trouble for decades, ever since mathematics replaced what should properly be known as economics. In many ways, the science was killed, but it's not dead enough for some anti-economics leftists who want all of economics to be abandoned permanently.
In this short interview, Carmen Elena Dorobăț, assistant professor of international business at Coventry University, discusses Austrian economics and her work as a summer Fellow at the Mises Institute.
Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on 20 July 2015.
It's been a light season for hurricanes and tropical storms in North America, and contrary to what many economics "experts" may think, that's a good thing. After all, natural disasters are extremely costly in terms of opportunity costs and capital.
Mises had diagnosed these problems long before they became apparent. In a series of essays written between the two World Wars—but also in Omnipotent Government published in 1944—, Mises showed that in a world where governments interfere in their domestic markets, and with the monetary system, and where (economic) nationalism prevails, it is pointless to hope for any political and economic resolution from supranational organizations. The best these institutions can do is prolong the disastrous effects of government policies, and postpone—though loans and bailouts—their inevitable collapse.
