Category: Economic Theory
The analysis published under this category are as follows.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Can Asset-Price Bubbles Be Harmless? / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Frank_Shostak
There is an increasing concern among some commentators that the current, extremely loose monetary policy of the US central bank could fuel another round of asset-price bubbles. This in turn, it is held, could pose a serious danger to the US economy.
Some commentators, such as John Taylor (the inventor of the Taylor rule), are urging the US central-bank policy makers to start considering a tighter stance as soon as possible, in order to prevent a repetition of the Greenspan Fed's interest-rate policy, which kept rates at very low levels for too long. (The Fed lowered its policy rate from 6.5% in December 2000 to 1% by June 2003. The Fed kept the rate at 1% until June 2004).
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Monday, November 23, 2009
Economic Meltdown, A Call for Systemic Change / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Submissions
John Perkins writes: Whenever I hold my two-year old grandson, Grant, in my arms I wonder what this world will look like six decades from now, when he is my age. I know that if we "stay the course" it will be ugly. The current economic meltdown is a harbinger.
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Friday, November 20, 2009
Keynes the Man as Rotten as His Economic Theory - Part 2 / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Murray_N_Rothbard
Keynes's Political Economy
In The General Theory, Keynes set forth a unique politicoeconomic sociology, dividing the population of each country into several rigidly separated economic classes, each with its own behavioral laws and characteristics, each carrying its own implicit moral evaluation. First, there is the mass of consumers: dumb, robotic, their behavior fixed and totally determined by external forces. In Keynes's assertion, the main force is a rigid proportion of their total income, namely, their determined "consumption function."
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Friday, November 20, 2009
Keynes the Man as Rotten as His Economic Theory / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Murray_N_Rothbard
John Maynard Keynes, the man – his character, his writings, and his actions throughout life – was composed of three guiding and interacting elements. The first was his overweening egotism, which assured him that he could handle all intellectual problems quickly and accurately and led him to scorn any general principles that might curb his unbridled ego. The second was his strong sense that he was born into, and destined to be a leader of, Great Britain's ruling elite.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Communist China, 1995, The Dawn of Capitalism / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Steve_Selengut
The Hong Kong based guide talked about the free enterprise zones, building projects, golf courses, and roads with a chest full of pride and visible excitement. Capitalism was everywhere along the tour route, and judging from the advertisements on billboards and posters, the world was coming to China!
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Friday, November 13, 2009
Krugman's Magic Solution to Budgetary Woes / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Robert_Murphy
Long-time readers know that I am second only to Bill Anderson in my constant criticism of Paul Krugman. Indeed, I quite recently defended the gold standard from Krugman's ridicule.
Given this context, I am very surprised to confess that Krugman has convinced me of the virtues of currency debasement. As I was reading his blog post on the tragic fate of Ecuador, I applied Krugman's lessons to my personal life, and suddenly everything became clear. In a flash, all of my household's financial stresses were solved.
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Thursday, November 12, 2009
Securitization and Fractional Reserve Banking / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Nikolay_Gertchev
For good economists, the link between the operation of a fractional-reserve banking system and the recurrence of boom-bust cycles is of little doubt. One of the paramount figures who has contributed to the intellectual elaboration of this relationship and to its transmission to young economists, among which the present writer has had the pleasure to count himself, is Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Inflation and Deflation; Inflationism and Deflationism / Economics / Economic Theory
By: MISES
The services money renders are conditioned by the height of its purchasing power. Nobody wants to have in his cash holding a definite number of pieces of money or a definite weight of money; he wants to keep a cash holding of a definite amount of purchasing power. As the operation of the market tends to determine the final state of money's purchasing power at a height at which the supply of and the demand for money coincide, there can never be an excess or a deficiency of money.
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Can Capitalism Survive? Creative Destruction and the Global Economy / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Matt_McCaffrey
[Can Capitalism Survive? Creative Destruction and the Global Economy • By Joseph Schumpeter • New York, Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2009 • 208 pages]
The most famous chapters of Joseph Schumpeter's Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy have been republished in paperback under the title Can Capitalism Survive? Creative Destruction and the Global Economy.[1] Republishing these core chapters as a standalone text in a time of economic crisis is timely to say the least.
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Sunday, November 01, 2009
The Nanny State and the Cost of Unfunded Government Liabilities / Economics / Economic Theory
By: James_Quinn
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.” Declaration of Independence
Sunday, November 01, 2009
Economic Crisis in the Post-industrial Age / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Sergey_A_Stroev
Already in the second half of the past century such insightful thinkers as Daniel Bell and Alvin Toffler discerned the beginnings of the transition from the industrial to the information level of social development. By the end of the 20th century and especially today this awareness has become almost universal. The question is now not whether the information society is real, but rather how to define its still forming structure, what are the contradictions that determine the dynamics of its development.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Halloween and it's Candy Economy / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Jeffrey_A_Tucker
Dale Steinreich once wrote that Halloween has a "socialist tenor" because "menacing figures arrive at your door uninvited, demand your property, and threaten to perform an unspecified 'trick' if you don't fork over. That's the way the government works in a nutshell."
And yet, for overall kid excitement, Halloween seems to surpass Christmas, at least from what I can observe. The kids spend months preparing their costumes, and thrill to every detail of the ceremony: pumpkins, scary things, and of course candy. For the children, too, there is the attractive fact that parents are not all that happy about Halloween with its goblins, gore, and gluttony.
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Thursday, October 29, 2009
The Myth of "Free" Enterprise Economic System / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Robert_Singer
Free enterprise, also called free market, is an economy governed by the laws of supply and demand, not restrained by government interference, regulation or subsidy.
Command economy is basically a slave enterprise where supply and price are regulated by the government rather than market forces.
The only thing I will agree with about the “law of supply and demand” is that supply at a downward-manipulated price, can create demand.
Downward manipulation is an uneconomic aberration first discovered in the precious metals market by the noted silver analyst, Ted Butler.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Ludwig von Mises, Henry Hazlitt, and Murray Rothbard Sacrificing for an Idea / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Gary_North
Lew Rockwell gave a lecture on the trials and tribulations of three free market economists: Ludwig von Mises, Henry Hazlitt, and Murray Rothbard. He showed that their commitment to free market economic theory cost them their careers in an era of Keynesianism. Yet today, they are remembered by a growing number of readers. Their bureaucratic opponents are long forgotten: lost in the noise of "we, too."
Thursday, October 29, 2009
The ABCs of the Economic Crisis, Capitalism on the Ropes? / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Mike_Whitney
Interview with Michael D. Yates and Fred Magdoff
1. Mike Whitney---In your new book, "The ABCs of the Economic Crisis: What Working People Need to Know", you allude to right wing think tanks, like the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, which promote a "free market" ideology. How successful have these organizations been in shaping public attitudes about capitalism? Do you think that attitudes are beginning to change now that people understand the role that Wall Street and the big banks played in creating the crisis? ("The ABCs of the Economic Crisis: What Working People Need to Know" By Fred Magdoff and Michael Yates, Monthly Review Press)
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Tuesday, October 27, 2009
How the Free Market Works / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Daniel_Krawisz
In the great book Man, Economy, and State, Rothbard's vast compendium of economic wisdom, we read much that has not yet been properly popularized. Rothbard's production theory, for example, is quite different from the standard account. I have tried to distill this theory into the following synopsis, although it is by no means the only part of the book that warrants exposition.
Economics is about using our available means to achieve the best possible ends. Achieving an end is called consumption and applying a means towards an end is called production.
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Monday, October 26, 2009
The Secret Truth About Karl Marx and His Disciples Part 3 / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Murray_N_Rothbard
Karl Marx: Apocalyptic Reabsorptionist Communist
Karl Marx was born in Trier, a venerable city in Rhineland Prussia, in 1818, son of a distinguished jurist, and grandson of a rabbi. Indeed, both of Marx's parents were descended from rabbis. Marx's father Heinrich was a liberal rationalist who felt no great qualms about his forced conversion to official Lutheranism in 1816. What is little known is that, in his early years, the baptized Karl was a dedicated Christian.[43]
Monday, October 26, 2009
The Secret Truth About Karl Marx and His Disciples Part 2 / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Murray_N_Rothbard
Communism as the Kingdom of God on Earth: The Takeover of Münster
Thomas Müntzer and his Sign may have gotten short shrift, and his body be a-mouldrin' in the grave, but his soul kept marching on. His cause was soon picked up by a Müntzer disciple, the bookbinder Hans Hut.
Monday, October 26, 2009
The Secret Truth About Karl Marx and His Disciples / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Murray_N_Rothbard
The key to the intricate and massive system of thought created by Karl Marx is at bottom a simple one: Karl Marx was a communist.
A seemingly trite and banal statement set alongside Marxism's myriad of jargon-ridden concepts in philosophy, economics, and culture, yet Marx's devotion to communism was his crucial focus, far more central than the class struggle, the dialectic, the theory of surplus value, and all the rest.
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Monday, October 26, 2009
Macro Economics for Dummies / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Bill_Bonner
“He who goes a-borrowing, goes a-sorrowing.”
The quote comes from Ben Franklin. But it was recalled to us neither by America’s president, nor Britain’s Prime Minister. Instead, the
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