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The German way of 1923


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I chanced this morning on the superb collection of essays from Ludwig von Mises, The Causes of the Economic Crisis and Other Essays Before and After the Great Depression (PDF). In his Stabilization of the Monetary Unit—From the Viewpoint of Theory written in 1923, he showed considerable foresight: Only the hopelessly confirmed statist can cherish the hope that a money, continually declining in value, may be maintained in use as money over the long run. That the German mark is […]

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Monetary activism must end in a slump


On Friday, I spoke against monetary activism once again, complaining about the use of expectation management and new monetary instruments in an attempt to defibrillate the economy. It’s a mistake, not least because a failure to contain inflationary expectations could be catastrophic, as I set out last year. Mark Carney understands the argument that monetary activism will cause a damaging “intertemporal misallocation of capital” but he chooses to believe wise intervention elsewhere can compensate. I am sure this is wrong. […]

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This is a crisis of state intervention


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In the past few posts, I reproduced the economist Ludwig von Mises’ 1949 explanation of “the crisis of interventionism”, which insisted that the “third way” is a system of economic organisation which cannot last. We must choose between either state socialism or a free society. State socialism would be chaos but “Nothing suggests the belief that progress toward more satisfactory conditions is inevitable or a relapse into very unsatisfactory conditions impossible.” Many seem to believe we are in a crisis of […]

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The Crisis of Interventionism, part 3: The End of Interventionism


Blogging will be light for a few days for reasons which will become apparent when I return to it. In the meantime, I wanted to offer some prescient writing from Mises’ 1949 masterpiece, Human Action on the crisis of well-intentioned economic intervention. Via Human Action chapter XXXVI: The End of Interventionism, including the “third way”: The interventionist interlude must come to an end because interventionism cannot lead to a permanent system of social organization. The reasons are threefold. First: Restrictive measures […]

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The Crisis of Interventionism, part 2: The Exhaustion of the Reserve Fund


Blogging will be light for a few days for reasons which will become apparent when I return to it. In the meantime, I wanted to offer some prescient writing from Mises’ 1949 masterpiece, Human Action on the crisis of well-intentioned economic intervention. Via Human Action chapter XXXVI: The Exhaustion of the Reserve Fund: The idea underlying all interventionist policies is that the higher income and wealth of the more affluent part of the population is a fund which can be freely […]

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The Crisis of Interventionism, part 1: The Harvest of Interventionism


Blogging will be light for a few days for reasons which will become apparent when I return to it. In the meantime, I wanted to offer some prescient writing from Mises’ 1949 masterpiece, Human Action on the crisis of well-intentioned economic intervention. Via Human Action chapter XXXVI: The Harvest of Interventionism: The interventionist policies as practiced for many decades by all governments of the capitalistic West have brought about all those effects which the economists predicted. There are wars and […]

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Autumn Statement chart of the day: tax and spending


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The economic facts behind the Autumn Statement, in as far as they are known or forecast, are available in the Economic and Fiscal Outlook from the Office for Budget Responsibility. Table 4.7 provides forecast current receipts. Table 4.18 provides total managed expenditure. So, here’s a chart of current receipts (i.e. tax) and total managed expenditure (i.e. spending) for the next few years: The reality is that the Government intend to increase spending every year of the forecast period and to meet […]

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The Austrians Were Right, Yet Again – Jeffrey A. Tucker – Mises Daily


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Via The Austrians Were Right, Yet Again, Jeffrey A. Tucker sets out the way it is in the USA: After three-plus years of floundering around, a consensus has finally arrived that we are back in recession. Growth is not happening. The meager statistical growth of the past few years — no one dared claim it amounted to full recovery — was probably illusory. He goes on to catalogue the government interventions which have been a failure before quoting some of […]

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Inflation and government borrowing


In his short article Inflation and You, Ludwig von Mises explains inflation itself, the social and economic effects of inflation, who inflation’s victims are, the futility of attempts to hedge against inflation, the moral and political effects of inflation and, finally, inflation and government borrowing. I thoroughly recommend the whole article, but I reproduce the section on government borrowing, which seems particularly pertinent at the moment: Inflation and Government Borrowing The writer, having witnessed the course of inflations in one European […]

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Inflation Must End in a Slump – Mises Institute


It was briefly fashionable to admit that interest rates were too low for too long, leading to a boom built on expansionist monetary policy. Unfortunately (related link my own): Economic theory has demonstrated in an irrefutable way that a prosperity created by an expansionist monetary and credit policy is illusory and must end in a slump, an economic crisis. It has happened again and again in the past, and it will happen in the future, too. If one wants to […]

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