Category Archives: economics

what i read yesterday

Yesterday I read the delightful book Bourbon for Breakfast, by Jeffrey Tucker.  Lest you fear, gentle readers, know that the book is not really about strong drink, but rather about the way that government intervention backs up our toilets and does many other unpleasant things.
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gold cracks the 1250 ceiling again

That’s right. Gold hit $1250.80 today.  Gold gets stronger and stronger compared to the dollar for one simple reason:  government is always printing more dollars out of thin air, but no one can do that with gold.
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i’ve finished human action

And it is absolutely great:  the finest work of economic thinking I’ve ever read.  It embraces the whole scope of economics.  Although I dislike the concept of compulsory high school education, if we are to have it we’d be better served by a year-long dissection of Human Action than we would by the existence of [...]
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gold is moving independently of the dollar

At least that’s what Elizabeth Tawne is saying.  And her take on this is that this is a sign of beginning to be used more widely as a store of value for those whose funds would otherwise be threatened by the inflationary tendencies of governments with fiat currency.  If she’s right, that’s one more step [...]
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is china’s spectacular recent growth a mirage?

No, that’s not quite right.  We know China’s been undergoing some massive growth in recent years–real growth fueled by economic liberalization and technological progress.  So a more accurate way to ask this would be:  are the numbers we have seen for Chinese economic growth lately deceptive because they are part of an inflationary boom cycle [...]
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on the fed and full disclosure

The Federal government at its current pace is spending $3549 billion dollars per year–about $25,700 per taxpayer.  The people who are having such great amounts of money taken from them occasionally get the pesky urge to know what that money is being spent on.
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cause-and-effect: healthcare bill edition

The market is governed by simple principles derived from the fact that on the free market everyone is trying to get whatever it happens to be that they want.  One of these rules concerns the relationship between supply and demand.
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on child labor laws and the blues

Child labor laws have taken this poor kids blues away.  He lives in Wisconsin, and is an 8-year-old with a shocking musical ability.  He will from time to time go play at blues venues, and the money from that is all put toward his college education.  It’s sort of the opposite of child exploitation.  But [...]
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economic news and commentary for today

Gas prices, banking risk management, and new FDA regs:
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the fed godfather?

Hmm . . . The concept of the Fed as a destructive con-job has apparently hit even the mainstream media (in the form of MSNBC).  Very good.  This is a pretty good description of exactly where our financial problems came from. Keep in mind, of course, that by ‘con job’ I am referring only the [...]
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