The Federal Reserve emerged from the financial crisis of 2007–2009 with new powers to allocate credit to specific firms, including non-bank institutions. This development in effect makes the central bank the U.S. economy’s central planner. But why did Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke lobby for the new lending powers, rather than rely on the Fed’s...
Read More »

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its Consumer Price Index (CPI) figures today, and it shows that inflation has picked up in the past few months. Looking at the past year, the CPI has increased 2.7% from March 2010 to March 2011. But most of that increase has been recent. In the seven months...
Read More »

The Obama administration has detained the alleged Wikileaks whistleblower under torturous conditions—for almost a year, he has been subjected to solitary confinement in a windowless 6×12 cell for 23 hours a day, under constant surveillance, prevented from exercising, lacking a pillow or sheets. For the remaining hour every day, he is allowed to walk...
Read More »

[Cross-posted in the March 22 issue of The Lighthouse, the Independent Institute's weekly email newsletter. Sign up for your free subscription here.] We are delighted to announce the publication of the Spring 2011 issue of the Independent Institute’s peer-reviewed journal, The Independent Review, edited by Senior Fellow Robert Higgs. This issue’s articles and book...
Read More »

MyGovCost.org Director and Independent Research Fellow Emily Skarbek was a guest on the Heartland Institute’s Budget & Tax News podcast. Click to listen to her commentary on the roots of our current spending crisis, what’s at stake in the Congressional budget war, and how to use the Institute’s very timely and user-friendly Government Cost...
Read More »

Despite the astonishing flood of more than a trillion dollars in new commercial-bank reserves that the Fed created in late 2008 and early 2009, when it undertook to rescue the big banks and other institutions from the consequences of their boom-time mistakes, Ben Bernanke has insisted that the Fed can and will contain this...
Read More »

In the run-up to President Obama’s “State of the Union” address this evening, the nation’s monetary and fiscal policymakers seem, as often is true, to be working at cross-purposes. According to reports published in The Wall Street Journal yesterday (January 24, 2011), Chairman Ben Bernanke at long last has concluded that the Fed should...
Read More »

Download mp3 file. Here also are relevant books from Dr. Higgs: Depression, War, and Cold War Neither Liberty nor Safety The Challenge of Liberty Against Leviathan Crisis and Leviathan

Consider the following commentary on the economic situation: Foolhardy procedures which are divorced from economic realities, or whose economic implications are not understood by their promoters, do not perforce become sanctified and wise merely by designating them as “action”; tilting at windmills does not draw water. [W]hen a recovery program, which, while it may...
Read More »

Conservative Party MEP Daniel Hannan was perhaps the first major member of the European Parliament to rebel against the socialism of the European Union (EU) and its creation of the financial debacle of Europe. He has called for the disintegration of the EU and for his attempts, he has been silenced and then expelled...
Read More »