Austrian Economics continues to gain in influence despite the ruling elite’s attempts to marginalize it. The latest example was the Wall Street Journal’s recent coverage of Peter Boettke. The Daily Bell deals with the WSJ article in Mises Shakes the World? The consensus seems to be that editors at the Journal [...]

The milk of American politics may be money, but the fuel for American socialism is Keynesian economics. Keynesianism’s inherent bias toward bigger government has made it the indispensable tool for statists around the globe. Politicians’ natural wont to spend and control benefited immensely when John Maynard Keynes published the General [...]

History is a great teacher. It often provides clues that enable us to understand the present and future. The ancient regime’s concept of divine right of kings seems pertinent to today. According to Wikipedia: The Divine Right of Kings is a political and religious doctrine of royal absolutism. It asserts that a monarch is subject [...]

Never mind what you believed at the beginning. Most never believed Paulson anyway. Now even the believers, unless they are working for this Administration in some fashion or another, no longer believe. How can they? It is pretty simple and laid out nicely by Eric Fry: The Aftermath of Paulson’s [...]

A rather interesting lecture as to Keynes’ influence. According to North, Samuelson was more responsible for the popularization of Keynes than Keynes himself. Starts slow, but becomes interesting and optimistic when the internet is dealt with as a force that cannot be stopped. A lecture by Gary North. (approx. 55 [...]

The “Pretence of Knowledge” was the title of economist Friedrich Hayek’s 1974 Nobel speech. In his first few sentences, he described the then-prevailing economic condition in words appropriate to today: … [this economic condition] has been brought about by policies which the majority of economists recommended and even urged governments [...]

This excerpt from a very interesting website by Gordon T. Long: 07-08-10 EXTEND & PRETEND: Stage I Comes to an End! Both came to an end at the same time: the administration’s policy to Extend & Pretend has run out of time as has the patience of the US electorate [...]

As Friedrich Hayek, shown to the left with President Reagan, pointed out in many articles and books, Keynesian economics cannot work and never worked. Below is a particularly pertinent quote regarding how things have been made worse by government stimulus efforts. Keynesian fail – manipulating “aggregate demand” does not equalibrate [...]

Robert Murphy takes apart the Keynesian argument for more stimulus. He concludes with the following: Brad DeLong’s recent arithmetical argument for bigger government deficits is flawed on several counts. He treats government spending as equivalent to household spending, and his focus on aggregates overlooks the coordinating function of interest rates. [...]

Walter Williams is amongst my favorite commentators (and economists). He has a knack for identifying the critical aspects of complex issues and simplifying them for layman. In a recent piece, published on Townhall, Dr. Williams argued against the presumed economic successes of FDR during the Great Depression. Political myths apparently [...]

The U.S. government moves closer to a debt death spiral. Arguably, we are already in the beginning phase of this spiral as this rather scary observation points out: The nation’s debt leapt $166 billion in a single day last week, the third-largest increase in U.S. history, and it comes at [...]

Europe wants to discontinue government spending as a means of solving the crisis. At least that is their stated position. The Obama Administration wants to continue stimulus. Few doubt that that is their stated and operative position. The debate over spending is not new. It heated up in the last [...]

Patrick Barron rewrites the famed Keynesian equation as C + I + G = BALONEY and states: “Wrongheaded governmental interventions are preventing the world’s largest economies from recovering from massive malinvestment.” Read his entire article here. It is a worthwhile, common sense approach that non-economists can appreciate. Who but statists [...]

Atlas is shrugging. John Galt has his bags packed and his plane is warming up for a one-way trip. As this scenario plays out, the Lords of the Political Realm don’t appear to care. They either have no understanding regarding what is happening or they just don’t care. Or possibly [...]

Inflation is Inevitable The debate continues over whether inflation or deflation is our fate. I believe that we will ultimately end up in a massive inflation, possibly hyperinflation. My reasoning has always been based on how I anticipate politicians to react to the soon-to-be recognized Depression that we are in [...]

The Failure of Keynesian Economics by Steven Kates That anyone can still believe Keynes’s General Theory holds any answers to the world’s economic problems is one of those sad facts that make one realize just how difficult it is to gain headway in the dismal science. An article on John Maynard [...]

From Mish comes a perfect explanation as to how Keynesians must think.

A Mind-Changing Page Thomas Sowell Thursday, June 17, 2010 Sometimes you can read a book that will change your mind on some fundamental issue. Rarely, however, is there just one page that can undermine or destroy a widely-held belief. But there is such a page– page 77 of the book [...]

Karl Denninger explodes on Paul Krugman and other establishment economists in Proof: Economists Claim 2 + 2 = 8134. Denninger attacks their vulnerability in a different fashion than I have, but reaches similar conclusions: the economic emperors have no clothes. John Maynard Keynes has to be rolling in this grave….. [...]

Macroeconomics does not work for a multitude of reasons. First and foremost is that it does not pick up the “changes” at the microeconomic level. That is, it does not deal with changes in incentives and disincentives that individual decision-makers like business owners, consumers and investors use to fashion their [...]

Bill Gross shows signs of losing his mind. He suggests the government should direct the allocation of resources. Most of the time, I agree with Mr. Gross’ analysis. His firm is filled with sharp people (and well-connected). Now I am wondering whether he has gone crazy or have I. Perhaps [...]

It appears that members of the G20 don’t like root canals any more than I do (see yesterday’s post on subject to understand). The G-20 meeting did not quite go the way the US wanted. It may be just another sign of the world getting fed up with US policy. [...]

As the economic crisis approaches the two-year point, it is apparent that “this time is different.”  Few analysts believe that we are going to recover from this Great Recession in a fashion that resembles prior recoveries. Most argue about how long it might run (Japan’s recovery is now two decades [...]

Here is a summary of conventional economic wisdom: Many people claim today that the U.S. economy is in a “liquidity trap” and only government can spend us out of this mess. Commentators from Paul Krugman to Martin Wolf of the Financial Times assert we are in a “Keynesian situation”; unless government spending [...]