Mises Media

What role does the Constitution play when one state has a different understanding of “American values” than another? Unfortunately, the responses have been inconsistent, depending upon which “values” one wishes to promote.

Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/calhouns-answer-abolition-petitions

Bob sits down with fund manager and author Lawrence Lepard to discuss his book The Big Print, which argues that the core problem with modern America is not corporate greed or partisan politics, but a monetary system deliberately structured to benefit those closest to the Fed at the expense of wage earners and savers.

Related:

• The Big Print: What Happened To America And How Sound Money Will Fix It: Mises.org/HAP555a

Lew Rockwell takes on the deepest puzzle in economic theory: why booms and busts recur so regularly. He lays out the Austrian answer—credit expansion and malinvestment—against the classical economists’ very different question of how economies grow.

Mainstream economists claim that understanding and observing reality is not really “doing economics.” Instead, they believe that all we need are abstract theories that predict events well. But over time, financial markets must bend to the real world.

Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/state-financial-markets-tells-us-what-investors-really-believe

On this July 4, Americans will celebrate 250 years of independence. However, what are people really celebrating, freedom or a militaristic regime?

Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/july-4-will-you-be-celebrating-founders-or-status-quo

Mark Thornton opens this episode of Minor Issues by tracing how politics shifted from the classical ideal of justice and community order into a Machiavellian struggle for power, privilege, and control. He argues that modern politics is dominated by entrenched elites, special interests, propaganda networks, and a two-party system designed to keep ordinary voters alienated and powerless.

On Side B, Mark joins Adrian Day and Rich Checkan for a wide-ranging discussion of inflation, debt, financial repression, gold, commodities, artificial intelligence, the Austrian business cycle, and the rise of socialist sentiment among younger Americans. Mark explains why learning Austrian economics is essential for understanding markets, government failure, and the crises ahead.

2026 is the Year of Rothbard—Murray's 100th birthday—and we're celebrating by giving away free copies of Keynes the Man through June 30. Grab yours today at https://mises.org/issuesfree

20% off listener offer on the insulated Minor Issues tumbler and three of Mark's books: https://mises.org/MinorIssuesTumbler. Use coupon code Thornton.

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

Pandemics offer an alleged challenge to libertarians, as some argue that governments should have the power to order quarantines and impose vaccine requirements. It turns out that statism makes things worse—and that free markets offer the best solutions.

Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/hantavirus-market-versus-government-disease-control

Rothbard’s summation: the Federal Reserve was a government-sanctioned cartel engineered by the Morgan, Rockefeller, and Kuhn, Loeb interests to enable coordinated inflation—achieved only with the legitimizing support of technocratic experts and academics.

With the Democrats ascendant under Wilson, the reformers repackage the Aldrich Plan as the ostensibly decentralized, government-supervised Federal Reserve—essentially the same central bank under a new name, with Morgan-allied interests securing control.

The Panic of 1907 becomes the catalyst. Rothbard traces the response—the Aldrich-Vreeland Act and the Aldrich-led National Monetary Commission—as elites studied European central banks and mobilized expert and business opinion toward a central bank.