Burns Diary Exposes the Myth of Fed Independence - Doug French - Mises Daily

Burns Diary Exposes the Myth of Fed Independence - Doug French - Mises Daily: "a Fed chairman has to do what the president demands or 'the central bank would lose its independence.'"

"The Fed chair [Burns] writes more than once that he did not favor closing the gold window, but that ultimately it had to be closed because the government was incapable of action and leadership. But, of course, Burns and company were implementing Nixon's New Economic Policy, which involved plenty of heavy-handed government action: a wage-and-price freeze, a 10 percent surcharge on imports, an investment tax credit of 10 percent, and a 'temporary' closing of the gold window that became very permanent.

Burns wrote that he 'assured the President that I would support his new program fully,' notwithstanding his reservations about the gold suspension."

A Message of Hope from the Dismal Science - Art Carden - Mises Daily

A Message of Hope from the Dismal Science - Art Carden - Mises Daily: "Almost all economic progress has been confined to the last two and a half centuries, which has (for me, at least) changed the way I look at history, look at my life, read my Bible, and all sorts of things. We've done well, but the fact that our progress is confined largely to the last 250 years suggests that we should tread lightly and avoid hubris. The past shows us that economic growth is not automatic, and under the wrong conditions, self-interest will be channeled into predation rather than production."

"for all of our wars and bloodshed you are today less likely to die at the hands of another person than at any point in history. In China and India, we are witnessing the largest movement of human beings out of abject poverty in the history of our species.

An average life several hundred years ago would be considered a humanitarian disaster today."

"The poor are not better than you and me. They're just poorer. We bourgeois do not make them better off by being ashamed of being rich, since it's not our fault that they are poor, and there is therefore no original sin in our being rich. We should instead work to make them rich, too, by spreading the used-up liberal capitalism."

"just because some people cannot be trusted with liberty does not mean that other people can or should be trusted with power."

"Calling President Obama a socialist or a Nazi short-circuits the discussion and puts our friends on the Left on the defensive. It obscures the substance of the analysis. It's also intellectually lazy, and it's something I don't tolerate from my students."

The Faults of Fractional-Reserve Banking - Thorsten Polleit - Mises Daily

The Faults of Fractional-Reserve Banking - Thorsten Polleit - Mises Daily: "'any contractual agreement that involves presenting two different individuals as simultaneous owners of the same thing (or alternatively, the same thing as simultaneously owned by more than one person) is objectively false and thus fraudulent.'[4] A 'fractional reserve banking agreement implies no lesser an impossibility and fraud than that involved in the trade of flying elephants or squared circles.'"

"Arguing in favor of fractional-reserve banking would in fact be tantamount to saying that it is legal (or rightful or even lawful) that Mr. A does whatever he wishes with Mr. B's property — without requiring Mr. B's consent."

"fractional-reserve banking is not, as Mr. Wolf notes, 'a natural consequence of market forces.' It is a result of, and has been upheld by, government law.


In a free-market system, the practice of fractional-reserve banking would be illegal by its very nature. And so fractional-reserve banking would be ended (sooner rather than later) under the auspices of a functioning law of private-property rights."

"fractional-reserve banking under commodity money necessarily causes economic problems on a grand scale. This is because banks then engage in circulation-credit expansion — that is, they issue money through lending that is not backed by real savings.

Circulation bank credit is inflationary, and it causes economic disequilibria and overindebtedness of the private sector — in particular on the part of governments. It is also the very cause of the 'boom-and-bust' cycle."

Taxes and the Top Percentile Myth | Alan Reynolds | Cato Institute: Commentary

Taxes and the Top Percentile Myth | Alan Reynolds | Cato Institute: Commentary: "'the upper 1% of the income distribution earned 19.6% of total income before tax [in 2004], and paid 41% of the individual federal income tax.' No other major country is so dependent on so few taxpayers."

"if tax rates on high incomes, capital gains and dividends were increased in 2013, the top 1%'s reported share of before-tax income would indeed go way down. That would be partly because of reduced effort, investment and entrepreneurship."

Obama's Bull's-eye on U.S. Citizens | Nat Hentoff | Cato Institute: Commentary

Obama's Bull's-eye on U.S. Citizens | Nat Hentoff | Cato Institute: Commentary: "An extrajudicial killing policy under which individuals are added to 'kill lists' after secret bureaucratic processes and remain on the lists (for months at a time) even in the absence of any reason to believe that they pose a threat of imminent harm goes far beyond what the Constitution and international law permit.'"

"In Zimbabwe — where President Robert Mugabe, while voicing agreement with the Bush administration's policies in the war on terrorism, "declared foreign journalists and other critics of his regime 'terrorists' and suppressed their work." His version of our "enemy combatants."

And in Eritrea — where the governing party arrested 11 political opponents, has held them incommunicado and without charge, and defended its actions as being consistent with United States actions after September 11"

"Even a Nazi got more due process than we today are willing to extend to U.S. citizens. Aulaqi is a traitor, to be sure, but hanging American traitors is a job for the American federal courts"

The Ozone Scare: A Retrospective - Rod Rojas - Mises Daily

The Ozone Scare: A Retrospective - Rod Rojas - Mises Daily: "Environmentalists claimed that CFCs would somehow travel 40 miles up above the surface of the earth, despite the fact that CFCs are about five times heavier than air. A common case of floating bricks, no doubt."

"The substitutes for CFC inhalers are the HFA (hydro-fluoroalkane) inhalers, which many doctors report to be of marginal effectiveness compared to the CFC version, which provided faster and longer-lasting relief from the agony of suffocation."

Why This Gigantic "Intelligence" Apparatus? - Robert Higgs - Mises Daily

Why This Gigantic "Intelligence" Apparatus? - Robert Higgs - Mises Daily: "According to retired admiral Dennis C. Blair, formerly the director of national intelligence, after 9/11 'the attitude was, if it's worth doing, it's probably worth overdoing.' I submit that this explanation does not cut to the heart of the matter. As it stands, it suggests a sort of mindless desire to pile mountains of money, technology, and personnel on top of an already-enormous mountain of money, technology, and personnel for no reason other than the vague notion that more must be better."

"the Bush administration and Congress gave agencies more money than they were capable of responsibly spending."

Revealing the Reality of Antitrust - Gary Galles - Mises Daily

Revealing the Reality of Antitrust - Gary Galles - Mises Daily: "Antitrust keeps superior products and marketing strategies from harming rivals, but since every innovation that benefits consumers takes business away from rivals, halting such innovation harms consumers. It inhibits superior firms from passing on their efficiencies to consumers in lower prices; it does so by restricting their ability to cut prices for some (without enabling them to raise prices for others), or by invoking the mythical bogeyman of predatory pricing. It also restricts their growth, even when consumers will be better served by moving more production into the hands of lower cost firms."

"[Producers] have no reason to subsidize retailers through excess markups, which would lower their profits. Producers only impose minimum retail prices when they expect to benefit, which is only true when they believe that consumers value the extra retail services bought with the higher markup more than they value the money they must spend on the increased retail price"

Fear and Control: The TSA Case - Chris Waidele - Mises Daily

Fear and Control: The TSA Case - Chris Waidele - Mises Daily: "Because getting on a plane is tougher these days, don't you think that a terrorist would just try something else? Are there terrorist bombs, fires, and shootings going on around the country on a daily basis?"

"any terrorist with the most basic intelligence will know the security procedures and find a way to circumvent or avoid them."

Missouri's Mover Monopoly | Timothy Sandefur | Cato Institute: Commentary

Missouri's Mover Monopoly | Timothy Sandefur | Cato Institute: Commentary: "the government won't let you open your doors unless you first get permission from all your existing competitors.

Bizarre as it might seem, that's just the law that St. Louis entrepreneur Michael Munie ran into when he asked the state's Department of Transportation for a permit to operate a statewide moving company. Under a seventy-year old law, MoDOT cannot issue a permit without first notifying the existing moving companies and giving them the chance to object."