The Human Action Podcast

We've all heard about negative interest rates, but we may not really understand how and why they arises in recent years. Here to explain is our returning guest Dr. Patrick Barron, a longtime professor in the graduate school of banking at the University of Wisconsin.

How and why would interest rates ever be negative, when everyone prefers current consumption to future consumption? Can the "natural" or market rate of interest ever be negative? What going on in Europe that would make negative-rate government and corporate bonds attractive to investors? Will the ECB be forced to raise rates back into positive territory if Janet Yellen continues to raise the Fed Funds Rate here in the US? And will Congress resist steady rate hikes that could radically spike its annual budget outlay for debt service?

Our last show for 2016 is bittersweet, featuring a lecture by our great friend and Senior Fellow Ralph Raico. Dr. Raico, who died earlier this month, was an intellectual giant known for his brilliant — and often revisionist — understanding of history. Speaking at Mises University in 2009, Dr. Raico delivered a witty and razor-sharp exposition of what liberalism really means. We know you'll find it worthwhile to spend an hour during this holiday weekend with the great mind of Ralph Raico.

As our great friend Dr. Bob Murphy said on an earlier show, knowledge of economics is necessary—but not sufficient—to be be a good investor. A new book entitled 'Austrian School for Investors' (https://mises.org/P11022), co-authored by our guest, Ronald Stöferle, bridges the gap between understanding the economy and understanding how to invest money, in a highly readable and succinct format.

The book's co-authors are all economists and financial professionals, versed in both worlds. And, they've written a very different kind of investment book, one that doesn't tout stocks, sectors, industries, or complex timing strategies. It doesn't recommend specific equities or bonds. Instead, it's a fantastic primer on Austrian economics and its application to financial markets.

By understanding money, value, interest rates, business cycles, and capital from an Austrian perspective, the smart investor knows far more about fundamentals than many fund managers and investment advisers. Most of those managers and advisers are dangerously ignorant of monetary policy, and don't understand inflation—so they're stuck trying to time booms and busts. This book won't only change the way you look at making money, but how you look at Austrian economics itself.

Statistics issued by the federal government about the economy—from CPI to GDP—are fake, and our guest John Williams of Shadowstats.com explains how and why.

John is a vocal critic of modern economic reporting, which is manipulated to make the economy appear stronger than it is. So, he devoted his professional life to telling the real story, through statistics he painstakingly compiles himself. And, his statistics paint an alarming picture: virtually all "growth" in the US economy since the Crash of '08 has been artificially engineered by the Fed, while the risk of debt contagion has increased.

Jeff and John discuss the "Fed tax," what a radical increase in the monetary base means for your financial future, and whether Janet Yellen will be forced to resort to more QE in 2017.

This is a must-hear interview if you're interested in sober economic reality.

The western media's fawning treatment of Fidel Castro demonstrates the enduring mystique of socialism-- while recent Harvard and Rasmussen polls suggest that perhaps half of young Americans hold unfavorable attitudes toward capitalism. No matter how many millions perish in collectivist bloodbaths, the Left remains committed to its ideology of radical egalitarianism and enamored of murderous revolutionary figures like Che Guevara.

Our great friend Yuri Maltsev, a victim of Soviet totalitarianism in his youth, joins us to explain how and why westerners still don't understand what socialism really means. He recounts his many trips to Cuba, and demolishes the myths surrounding that country's vaunted "healthcare" and "education" systems. He explains how socialism actually produces a superclass of elites and a form of socio-economic apartheid, rather than egalitarian nirvana. And he reminds us that the romantic vision held by western elites is best defeated by those who have lived through the ravages of collectivism firsthand.

Justin Raimondo, editorial director of Antiwar.com, joins Jeff for a great discussion of what Trump's election really means for libertarians. Does 2016 mark the end of globalism's inevitability, or are Brexit and Trump mere speed bumps for progressive elites? Does Trump represent a real threat to the War Party, or will he succumb to neoconservative control over foreign policy? What are the best-case and worst-case scenarios for libertarians in the first year of a Trump administration, and will his cabinet picks contain any happy surprises?

Nobody is better suited to untangle the Trump uprising than the no-holds barred Mr. Raimondo. Stay tuned.

How We Will Win by Justin Raimondo: http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2016/11/15/how-we-will-win/

Jeff Deist and James Rickards to discuss 'The Road to Ruin', his latest book outlining what financial elites have planned for the next financial crisis. Rickards highlights a number of policy tools governments and central bankers have created for themselves, and points to their handling of recent crises in Cypress and Greece bail-in approach as patterns for the rest of the world.

But, with the Federal Reserve and their peers around the world still unable to normalize their balance sheets following 2008, the real question is: “who is going to bail out the central banks?” Jeff and Jim discuss the answer to that question—and how people can protect themselves—in an interview you won’t want to miss.

On this week's Mises Weekends, Jeff Deist is joined by Allen Mendenhall of the Blackstone & Burke Center for Law and Liberty (http://allenmendenhall.com/the-blackstone-center) to discuss the aftermath of Donald Trump's surprising victory in this week's presidential election. Jeff and Allen discuss questions such as: Will Trump's election genuinely transform American politics? Why aren't progressives cheering the Republican Party being led by a cosmopolitan New York City protectionist? And, should libertarians celebrate the defeat of the Bush and Clinton political dynasties? Plus, Allen gives his analysis of Trump's proposed Supreme Court justices, and whether the importance of the Supreme Court is overstated by conservatives and libertarians.

On Mises Weekends this week, Jeff Deist joins Andy Duncan of the Fin Tales podcast (finlingo.com/podcast) to talk about next week's Presidential election. Going beyond the electoral horse race, Jeff and Andy also discuss the impact each candidate could have on the Federal Reserve, gold prices, and US foreign policy.

Our guest this weekend is Nomi Prins, a prolific writer and speaker on the subjects of central banking, financial markets, and Wall Street cronyism. She is a former managing director at Goldman Sachs and Bear Stearns, but left investment banking to speak out against what she perceives as global financial malfeasance by commercial, investment, and central banks. Nomi is a dedicated progressive who supported Bernie Sanders, but she's also a harsh critic of the Fed and sympathetic to Austrian depictions of malinvestment and artificially-created bubbles.

Nomi and Jeff discuss the role of central banks in creating an unworthy financial elite, the revolving door between the Treasury Department, the Fed, and banks like Goldman Sachs, how the Fed is necessarily and unavoidably political, how central banks historically have financed interventionist wars, and how the Fed could be the great populist issue that further unravels the Left/Right paradigm.

Learn more about Nomi at NomiPrins.com