With Barack Obama’s delusional belief in massive expansions in government spending and power as a means to overcome the economic recession and create human welfare, Senior Fellow Robert Higgs‘s discussion on war, taxes and economic crises could not be more timely and instructive. Dr. Higgs is the author of the award-winning Institute book Depression,...
Read More »

To follow up on his comments in the U.S. Senate hearings for his confirmation, Attorney General Eric Holder has recently reiterated his call for a new ban on “assault weapons.” As President Obama indicated during the campaign, there are just a few gun-related changes that we would like to make, and among them would...
Read More »

What is the right word to describe the U.S. government’s current and proposed fiscal condition: fantastic, unbelievable, surreal? The Obama administration now expects a budget deficit in fiscal year 2009 of $1,750 billion, or more than 12 percent of GDP. Total federal spending this year is expected to be $3,940 billion, or 27 percent of GDP. President Barack Obama promises that the...
Read More »

We wrapped up our discussion of Karl Marx in my “Classical & Marxian Political Economy” class today, and I posted what follows at Division of Labour this morning. What are we to do with Karl Marx the economist and with Karl Marx the social thinker more broadly? I rely here on the Oxford University...
Read More »

From President Obama’s speech to Congress Tuesday evening: I’m proud that we passed the recovery plan free of earmarks, and I want to pass a budget next year that ensures that each dollar we spend reflects only our most important national priorities. No earmarks among the $787 billion authorized in the bill’s 1,073 pages?...
Read More »

Radley Balko has gained some notoreity around the blogosphere for documenting rights violations by police departments conducting military-style drug raids under cover of night. Today, he offered one of the best blog post titles ever: “Tearful Atlanta Cops Express Remorse for Shooting 92-Year-Old Kathryn Johnston, Leaving Her to Bleed to Death in Her Own...
Read More »

Scott Horton interviews Bob Higgs for Antiwar Radio. They discuss “regime uncertainty,” the 1921 depression, the 20′s Fed bubble, regime certainty in the 1940s, the Cold-War buildup, the empire’s winners and losers, trade, the financial crisis, bogus economic models, cartelized ratings, inflation and war, our current prospects, the empire’s prospects, the threats of nationalization...
Read More »

Note: In part, this post is an answer to a query by Mark Hatlie. This following is an excerpt of a post at the blog of Historians Against the War. Comments are welcome: While it is perilous for any historian to predict the future, we may well be headed for the Waterloo of Keynesianism...
Read More »

For nearly a decade, Americans acted as though taking on more debt posed no problem. After all, they owned real estate, and all the experts told them that real-estate prices always go up. The mightiest magnates of finance acted as if they believed this stupid story—I say stupid because the merest child might easily...
Read More »

Check out cartoonist Mark Fiore’s hilarious, new animated video on Obama’s support for the U.S. government’s “state secrets,” rendition and torture program, “Chains We Can Believe In.” Under a rule of law, individuals are presumed innocent until convicted of harming others, and America was founded on the natural law principles that every person has...
Read More »