Mises Institute

When the recent NFL draft was held in Pittsburgh, city officials declared bus fares would be free so fans would pack the auditorium where the draft was held. Who would have thought that making scarce goods free would bring about chaos with the bus riders?

Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/nfl-draft-and-public-buses

It’s not enough for an ideology to merely have a “good argument.” Historical conditions must also combine to delegitimize the regime and its institutions.

Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/battle-ideas-paves-way-radicals-and-revolutionaries

As the US is involved in yet another pointless war, we would do well to remember the real costs of war, how it strips us of our liberties, and destroys our futures.

Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/remembering-costs-war

The bulk of the US gold reserves held in Fort Knox are made up of impure “non-standard” bars that don’t qualify for use in international settlements.

Original article: https://mises.org/power-market/ft-knox-full-impure-gold-unfit-international-transactions

On the latest episode of Minor Issues, Mark Thornton opens with a detailed analysis of the gold correction. Is the three-month decline a sign that inflation is over, or a temporary reallocation driven by war? The answer is in the data: the CRB commodity index continues to climb, the money supply is at an all-time high, and there is no evidence of deflation anywhere in the price structure. The inflation regime remains firmly in place, and the gold correction is a normal feature of bull markets whose real-world zigzags get smoothed away on long-term charts.

The second half features a panel interview from VRC Media with Rick Rule, hosted by Darrell Thomas. Rule lays out the case for a decade-long commodity super cycle driven by 30 years of underinvestment in productive capacity. He delivers a sobering calculation: $39 trillion in on-balance-sheet federal debt plus $120 trillion in off-balance-sheet unfunded entitlement promises (a combined $160 trillion against $170 trillion in total private American net worth). The only realistic resolution, Rule argues, is a “dishonest default,” inflating away the purchasing power of the dollar, just as happened in the 1970s when the dollar lost 75% of its value. Mark concurs, noting that the money supply is growing at record pace even as Washington insists it’s being “restrictive.”

Mark’s “Gold vs CRB Index” graph is available here: https://mises.org/MI175_Graph

The original VRIC interview is online here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kMiiC08TNo

20% off listener offer on the new insulated Minor Issues tumbler and three of Mark’s books, signed if ordered by the end of April: https://mises.org/MinorIssuesTumbler. Use coupon code Thornton.

Be sure to follow Minor Issues at https://Mises.org/MinorIssues

The UK does not have an energy problem, it has a freedom problem.

Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/freedom-upsets-patterns-deregulation-argument-westminster-will-not-have

Ryan McMaken, Jonathan Newman, and Joshua Mawhorter take a look at the politics of “fedspeak” and what officials at the Federal Reserve really mean when they say they’re going to fix the Fed.

Related:

Jonathan’s Article, “A Look Behind the Fed’s Curtains”: Mises.org/PM43a

NYT, “How Kevin Warsh Could Shrink the Fed’s Footprint in Financial Markets”: Mises.org/PM43b

Luck egalitarians fallaciously declare property and wealth to be illegitimate or at least suspect due to a mysterious, unquantifiable force called luck. Their arguments fail even if what they claim about luck is true.

Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/luck-fallacy-and-luck-egalitarianism

The old republic is gone. The constitutional order of the Jeffersonian years—that is, the so-called “American experiment”—was swept away long ago.

Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/we-are-living-fourth-american-republic

The dearth of child-bearing in western countries like the US is seen as a political crisis. Yet, if there is any place in our lives where government should stay out, it is in the area of childbirth.

Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/tragedy-socialized-fertility