We might define our time in economic history by the prices of various fast food items. When I was growing up, $5 could get you a feast at McDonald’s or any similar establishment—deluxe burger, fries, soda, maybe an apple pie or some fried chicken bits. I saw $5 as the upper limit of what...
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I am not a prophet, nor do I play one on TV. Nevertheless, I will hazard some conjectures here about certain likely legacies of the current crisis. I focus on fiscal and monetary matters. In a future post, I will deal with regulatory and ideological matters. I will try to avoid mere guesses or hunches...
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As I have noted previously, the Fed’s policy of acting to hold interest rates well below free-market rates in recent years has had the effect of greatly diminishing the earnings of people who rely on interest income. Such people include especially many retirees who do not wish to hold risky assets with substantial variability of...
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In claiming during his remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday that he wishes to tax the rich because that is what Jesus would do, President Obama demonstrated he is equally confused on the teachings of Jesus, as he is with history and economics: The rich should pay more not only because “I...
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The Federal Reserve has announced what appear to be inconsistent policy targets for the upcoming year. The Fed says they want to keep interest rates low at least through 2013, meaning a continuation of easy money policy, and has also announced that their inflation target is 2%. The inflation rate for 2011 was 3.2%....
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Senior Fellow Robert Higgs is interviewed here by Thomas Woods on “The Peter Schiff Show.” Dr. Higgs discusses how the federal government prolonged and deepened the Great Depression of the 1930s that lasted until after World War II when such policies were either ended or radically reduced. Moreover, the current attempts at central-government planning...
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About a month ago, I posted in regard to what I called “the euthanasia of the saver.” This comment had to do with the fact that nominal interest rates in the United States for financial investments such as bank certificates of deposit and bank savings accounts—the kinds of investments traditionally employed by retired persons and small savers, who...
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In chapter 24 of The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, John Maynard Keynes laid out his screwball idea that capital might soon become, or be made to become, no longer scarce; hence no payment would have to be made to induce people to save, and that condition would be splendid inasmuch as it would...
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Eastern bloc economists Carmen Reinhart, she of the University of Maryland, and Kenneth Rogoff, he of Harvard, have gotten rave reviews for This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, published in 2009 by Princeton University Press. I started reading it today, now that the book is out in paperback. It didn’t take...
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Dr. Brendan Brown, Head of Economic Research at Mitsubishi UFJ Securities International (London), recently cited Senior Fellow Robert Higgs‘s work on regime uncertainty—both as the cause of the prolongation of the Great Depression as well as today’s economic malaise—suggesting that his premise could well be expanded to explain today’s global economy. In his Economic...
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