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Are We Rome? FreedomFest 2013 from Smooky on Vimeo.… read more
Read More CommentKiteboarding is super dangerous, and therefore should be unregulated
Last summer I had a conversation with a kiteboarder about his sport and the clan-like nature of his fellow athletes. He told me that the local government body has entertained the idea of putting more rules and restrictions on kiteboarding but that, thus far, they’ve been stymied. Every time they try, the community of boarders… read more
Read More CommentDoug Casey on the Laissez Faire Club
The world of ideas has become stale and in desperate need for innovation, even upheaval. That’s why I’m excited about the Laissez Faire Club. It is infusing a great body of radical ideas with the energy of a commercial service. The model is new, creative, and astonishingly productive. I’m a member of the Club, and… read more
Read More CommentInterview on OpenCurrency
I enjoyed this interview very much. Great business.… read more
Read More Comment“FHA has now morphed into Countrywide”
A day after Uncle Sam sues S & P for fraud in rating collateral debt obligations too high, Representative Jeb Hensarling served up that tasty sound bite, followed by, “Arguably the FHA has now become the largest subprime lender all with the blessings of the administration.” A creation of FDR’s New Deal, the FHA insures… read more
Read More CommentHack The Fed
America’s central bank has reportedly been attacked by hackers in response to Aaron Swartz’s persecution that led him to commit suicide. Anyone who has walked by a Federal Reserve facility knows they are fortresses. The thousands of Phd’s they have hard at work, doing…well…other than growing their balance sheet I don’t know what they do… read more
Read More CommentVirtual Currencies: The Future is Now
Amazon just announced its introducing a virtual currency that can be used for purchases on the Kindle Fire. The Washington Post reports, Starting in May, consumers will be able to use Amazon Coins to buy applications and virtual merchandise sold within games, the Seattle-based company said today in a statement. The company will give customers… read more
Read More CommentLatest Interview on Mises Canada: Piracy, Luddites, and Inflation
Read More CommentInterview with Peter C. Earle on Hurricane Sandy and Black Markets
This interview is based on Peter Earle’s very interesting chronicle of prices during the aftermath of Sandy.… read more
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The New, New Thing: Books in Multimedia
My jaw dropped on the floor in looking at the new Laissez Faire media book of A Beautiful Anarchy. It should be available on the site this week (and free to Gold members). … read more
Read More CommentA Tribute to Ayn Rand on Her Birthday
I’ve been thinking about her often recently. Atlas Shrugged kick started the whole libertarian world in 1957. And why? I suspect it is because the feeling you have when you close the book: I have dignity, I can do heroic things, I have rights, no one can stop me. How many books since then have… read more
Read More CommentNow is the time to buy a used car?
Cash for Clunkers sent used car prices soaring (the whole supply and demand thing). But that is finally settling down, with the Mannheim used car index falling down from its highs to 124 level (1995 = 100). This means that used car prices overall have gone up at half the pace of prices since 1995… read more
Read More CommentThe Art of Unemployment
Five years of zero interest rates has provided us 7.9% unemployment according to today’s announcement. The broader measure–known as U-6–remains stubbornly high at 14.4%. St. Louis Fed head Bullard was just on Bloomberg painting the report of 150,000 new jobs as positive, rounding it up to 200,000. But ZeroHedge reports the positive number was all… read more
Read More CommentCasey Interviews Schiff
Read More CommentThe origins of the Libor scandal
An extremely interesting article in Bloomberg explains: The 2007 credit crunch increased the opportunity to cheat. With banks hoarding cash and not lending to one another, there was little trading in money markets, making it difficult for rate setters to assess borrowing costs accurately. Instead, traders say they resorted to seeking input from brokers, colleagues… read more
Read More CommentDoes Creativity Alone Create a Special Entitlement?
A discussion we had last night on Adam V. The Man — Stefan Molyneux and I were guests — kept returning to an idea that we never really had time or space to take on directly, until it was briefly touched on at the end. The more I think about this, much of whole question… read more
Read More CommentClay Shirky: How the Internet will (one day) transform government
Read More CommentThe GDP Shock
What? Economic growth as measured by the GDP actually fell in the fourth quarter by 0.1%? Hardly anyone anticipated this. USA Today and other purportedly reliable venues immediately assured the world that this does not mean recession. Somehow after hanging onto to GDP numbers for three years — recovery is here despite your internal sense… read more
Read More CommentDietrich Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church
Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church by Wendy McElroy A destructive myth haunts World War II. It is that a flaw within the German character allowed the rise of Hitler and Nazism. How else can you explain the Holocaust coming from one of the world’s most cultured nations? Oddly, no one seems to consider Mussolini… read more
Read More CommentHow Commerce Will Surive the Death of IP
I’m doing a seminar today for Europeans Students of Liberty. Sadly, that means no WhiskeyBar today but you can sign up for the free seminar. It starts at 2:00pm Eastern Time, and lasts one hour with Q&A… read more
Read More CommentThe Future of the U.S. is Greece
Jeffrey Rogers Hummel explains why.… read more
Read More CommentFools Rush In
“Americans seem to be falling in love with stocks again,” leads Nathaniel Popper on The New York Times front page. Yep, Joe and Josephine Lunch Bucket are back to putting money in stock mutual funds. Mr. Popper quickly mentions what we all know. While the rising market may lift the nation’s collective spirits, it will… read more
Read More CommentThe contribution of commerce
You want to change the world? There is one thing that has changed the world more than any other in the last 500 years. It is the least-noticed thing of all: commerce. Through commerce, we are fed. Through commerce, we are clothed. Through commerce, we are healed. We are entertained. We communicate. We care for… read more
Read More CommentPost Game Wrap Up on Business Cycles
My overall reaction on the online class for the Laissez Faire Club was that it was fantastic. It was definitely a new experience to try to teach Austrian business cycle theory to investors and businesspeople, rather than college students. It forced me to make succinct presentations that passed the credibility test, and it forced me… read more
Read More CommentPNC’s Rohr Mentions the Next (Current) Bubble
James Rohr on CNBC’s Squawk Box made a very important point about the Fed’s ZIRP created bubble but was cut off. it would be nice to have a yield curve. that is without a doubt the next bubble. Without a doubt. safety bubble. think about savers. pension plans. at some point you have to go… read more
Read More Comment“Let me chew my food!”
I wanted to say a special thanks to the Institute for Humane Studies for inviting me to speak at Duquesne University this last weekend. On a cold Friday night, 150 people turned out to hear a lecture on ethics and economics — which is really a credit to the IHS network. I covered a great… read more
Read More CommentThe trouble with “neo-liberalism”
Listening to this LSE podcast, I’m realizing why I don’t like the term “neo-liberalism” as a synonym for broadly classically liberal/libertarian ideas. The term supposes that the false liberalism of the post-1930s liberalism is the authentic liberalism and that the revival of libertarian ideas after WW2 is somehow a new version that hadn’t been heard… read more
Read More CommentPeter Shiff Show Today
I’m on Peter Schiff today to talk about Aaron Swartz. Like everyone else, I find this topic very difficult and painful. Like everyone else, I’m trying to do my best to turn an evil tragedy into something of a teaching and learning moment — perhaps as a way of helping to end this war on… read more
Read More CommentPhil the Thrill vs. The Taxman
Professional golfer Phil MicKelson popped off about greedy government after finishing in the middle of the pack at the Humana Challenge in La Quinta, California Sunday. “If you add up all the federal and you look at the disability and the unemployment and the Social Security and state, my tax rate is 62, 63 percent,”… read more
Read More CommentInterview on Ed and Ethan Show
This was an interesting interview, entirely on the issue of information sharing, intellectual property, and the criminal justice system. The Ed and Ethan show is a paradigm of intelligent conversation.… read more
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