According to this article, small businesses are reluctant to hire because of the very real prospect of additional tax and regulatory burdens they will have to bear. The possibility that Obamacare will make them responsible for their employees’ health insurance expenses is but one example of the tax and regulatory burdens that may be...
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Has the recession ended? If not, do “green shoots” foretell a recovery’s advent in the near term? The answer, of course, depends on which indicators we check. Unfortunately, the mainstream economics profession and the public alike place too much emphasis on highly aggregative measures, such as estimates of quarterly GDP and the standard rate...
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How many jobs has the “stimulus” package created? Sensible economists of course know this question cannot possibly be answered. Government spending directs resources toward politically favored projects at the expense of others, but the net effect on resource allocation, including the net effect on “jobs”—a heterogeneous category that depends on hours worked, job characteristics,...
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Dateline: September 9, 2009: Obama speech (as I watch): From the lips of POTUS . . . Introduction: Insurance companies are evil but I do not want to put them out of business. (Huh? After listening to the litany of insurance company evildoing, any sane person would put them out of business.) Middle section:...
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Alternative answers to this week’s Time magazine cover quiz: “What Barack Obama Can Learn from FDR”: Changing the rules of the game prolongs economic downturns: “Regime Uncertainty in 1937 and 2008,” here. “Regime Uncertainty: Why the Great Depression Lasted So Long and Why Prosperity Resumed after the War,” here. “Banking Act of 1935 +...
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Via Google Alerts, I receive periodic e-mails notifying me of online publications (many of them respectable economics and finance blogs) citing Robert Higgs‘s analysis of “regime uncertainty” during the years of the New Deal. (His article “Regime Uncertainty: Why the Great Depression Lasted So Long and Why Prosperity Resumed after the War” first appeared...
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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...
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It’s hardly a news flash that many people who are widely regarded as lions of the pro-market side have gone over to the dark side in recent months. I am not going to name any names; if you are one of the guilty parties, you know who you are; and the rest of us know, too,...
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The New Deal has been a hot topic recently. Aside from the looming likelihood of a new New Deal à la President Obama and company, the present recession, which many fear may turn into a serious depression, has given new currency to assessments of the original New Deal. It says something about the state...
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In an article in the December 2008 issue of GlobeAsia, economist Steve Hanke quotes Senior Fellow Robert Higgs and references Dr. Higgs’s monumental Independent Institute book, Depression, War and Cold War, to show how federal government policies created, deepened and prolonged the Great Depression, killing off the chances for recovery until after World War...
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