"Near Perfection from Paul Krugman (and the Disorder)" via Robert Wenzel»
Please read this piece, follow its links, and then forward it to friends.
The Austrians get it.
Enjoy Israel Kirzner’s lecture from the FEE Advanced Austrian Economics seminar.
“If everything possible is done to prevent the market from fulfilling its function of bringing supply and demand into balance, it should come as no surprise that a serious disproportionality between supply and demand persists, that commodities remain unsold, factories stand idle, millions are unemployed, destitution and misery are growing and that finally, in the wake of all these, destructive radicalism is rampant in politics … With the economic crisis, the breakdown of interventionist policy — the policy being followed today by all governments, irrespective of whether they are responsible to parliaments or rule openly as dictatorhsips — becomes apparent. Hampering the functions of the market and the formation of prices does not create order. Instead it leads to chaos, to economic crisis.”
Ludwig von Mises via mises.org
from The Austrian Economists: "How Corrupt is Our Language in Economic Discourse?"»
a great read. spot on.
Milton Friedman pleasantly and lucidly praised capitalism on Donahue in 1979. Hat tip to Reason Magazine. Please read “Do more than light a candle for the patron saint of capitalism.”
“This is probably the worst bill that has been put forward since the 1930s. I don’t know what to say. I mean it’s wasting a tremendous amount of money. It has some simplistic theory that I don’t think will work, so I don’t think the expenditure stuff is going to have the intended effect. I don’t think it will expand the economy. And the tax cutting isn’t really geared toward incentives. It’s not really geared to lowering tax rates; it’s more along the lines of throwing money at people. On both sides I think it’s garbage. So in terms of balance between the two it doesn’t really matter that much.”
“An interview with Robert Barro” via The Atlantic
“Beware conventional wisdom and groupthink. Be skeptical of tidy explanations for complex past events. Be even more skeptical of confident predictions of future human behavior. Don’t fight the last war.”
[from “Davos 2009: Beware the Tide of Groupthink” via BusinessWeek. Hat tip to Tim O’Reilly’s excellent Twitter feed.]
Pretense of knowledge, anyone? What if the Austrian school of economics is right? If so, what happens next?
What builds trust? What destroys it? What store of value is safe?
Finally, Tom Keene, who runs a great show, includes an Austrian view on “Bloomberg on the Economy.” May he host many more such guests.
Gerald O’Driscoll, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and former vice president of the Dallas Federal Reserve, talks to Bloomberg’s Tom Keene about fiscal discipline and the U.S. government’s response to the financial crisis, the gold standard, Austrian economics and economist Friedrich Hayek, and President-elect Barack Obama’s economic team.
