The notion that “easy money” created asset booms is levelled (famously by Austrian school economists such as von Mises and Hayek) against the 1920s boom and by a range of commentators about the Great Moderation boom. In both cases, the Fed (dominated by Benjamin Strong as New York Fed Governor up to 1928 and by Alan Greenspan as Fed Chair 1987-2006) is held to be to [...]
By Lorenzo
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Also posted in Economics, History, Law, Public Policy
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Tagged Alan Greenspan, asset markets, Austrian business cycle, Austrian school, Bank of France, Benjamin Strong, bimetallism, bubble economy, china, ECB, expectations, FDR, Frederich Hayek, George L Harrison, GFC, gold standard, Great Depression, Great Moderation, Great Recession, housing booms, India, lost decades, milton friedman, monetary policy, natural interest rate, NIRA, permanent income effect, railway manias, Roger W. Garrison, silver standard, theory of the unsustainable boom, Time and Money, US Federal Reserve, von Mises, world war one
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April 23, 2013 – 12:10 am
A Michigan judge whose smartphone disrupted a hearing in his own courtroom has held himself in contempt and paid $25 for the infraction. Judge Raymond Voet has a posted policy at Ionia County 64A District Court stating that electronic devices causing a disturbance during court sessions will result in the owner being cited with contempt, [...]
April 17, 2013 – 10:30 am
That modernising societies experience a “demographic transition“–a change from high fertility and high death rates to low fertility and low death rates with an intermediate period of high fertility and low death rates–is well known. The likely reason is lags in adjusting to changes in death rates. The price of children Having children is a [...]
By Lorenzo
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Also posted in Economics, History, Marriage, Parenthood, Public Policy, Society, Welfare
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Tagged asset booms and busts, death rates, debt bondage, debt foregiveness, demographic transition, embedded transactions, fertility rates, gold standard, human capital, inflation targeting, manorialism, public bonds, public goods, railway mania, risk premium, serfdom
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January 16, 2013 – 9:30 am
Conservative humourist P J O’Rourke once observed, after flying over West and East Germany, that one should probably try to avoid public policy mistakes you can see from 20,000 feet up. Then there are public policy mistakes one can see from orbit. The two Germanys and the two Koreas constituted natural public policy experiments. Take [...]
By Lorenzo
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Also posted in Economics, History, Politics, Public Policy, Sexuality, Society
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Tagged Botswana, Castro regime, Chiang Kai-shek, china, CPC, Cuba, cult of personality, DPP, East Germany, hyperinflation, Ian Smith, KMT, Latin America, legitimacy, Mao Zedong, Nelson Mandela, North America, north korea, P J O'Rourke, property rights, Rhodesia, Robert Mugabe, south korea, Taiwan, West Germany, Xavier Marquez, Zimbabwe
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January 10, 2013 – 9:30 am
The further back you can look, the further forward you are likely to see. Winston Churchill. With the release of the first film of The Hobbit trilogy, An Unexpected Journey, the blogosphere is rife with Middle Earth allusions. My favourite is Frances Woolley’s wonderful post (with some great comments) The Macroeconomics of Middle Earth, though [...]
By Lorenzo
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Also posted in Blogging, Economics, England, Environment, History, Law, Literature, Marriage, Politics, Popular culture, Public Policy, Religion, Sexuality, Society, Welfare
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Tagged Andy Warhol, consanguinity, deepak Lal, Distributism, Eric Crampton, Fascism, films, Frances Woolley, Industrialisation, J R R Tolkien, Kingdom of Wessex, luxury good, Matthew Akers, Morton, Niall Ferguson, Pope Gregory, Scott Sumner, Winston Churchill, world war one
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January 8, 2013 – 9:30 am
The always worth reading Prof. Gene Callahan recently posted – citing Jared Diamond’s example of warfare among the Dani of New Guinea — that violence is rooted in human nature, not the state. Prof. Callahan observes: The problem isn’t the State: the problem is human beings. And the problem with admitting that problem is you’re not left [...]
By Lorenzo
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Also posted in Defence, Drugs, Economics, History, Law, Personal liberty, Public Policy, Religion
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Tagged democide, Gene Callahan, gun control, homicide rates, Jared Diamond, Leninism, monopoly, Nazism, paradox of politics, paradox of rulership, R J Rummel, Somalia, Steve Sailor, steven pinker, violence, war on drugs
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October 16, 2012 – 9:30 am
We think of the World Wars of the C20th as being unprecedented in their death tolls. That is not true in either total deaths or, still less, death rates. While the 1939-45 War did have the largest death toll of any war in history, the 1914-19 War does not come second. When one considers the huge [...]
By Lorenzo
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Also posted in History, Law, Philosophy, Public Policy, Religion
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Tagged chaos, china, Confucianism, Leninism, north korea, order, war
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October 2, 2012 – 9:30 am
I recently had the unexpected experience of reading a book that appalled me; this is not a reaction I can remember having to a book before. The book has a title I agree with: Ideas Have Consequences. Regarded as a classic text of postwar American conservatism, the book is a long jeremiad at the corruption [...]
By Lorenzo
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Also posted in Books, History, Philosophy, Politics, Society, The Right
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Tagged Beethoven, Dostoyevsky, Etienne Gilson, Great Depression, Impressionism, Jazz, Leninism, Modernism, nominalism, Plato, Richard Weaver, Scientific Revolution, steven pinker, Walter Bagehot, William of Ockham
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August 30, 2012 – 10:30 am
I am a single person and–due to an upbringing starved of physical affection or praise interacting with unfortunate adult experiences (the former making the latter both more likely and more likely to be of a traumatic nature)–am likely to remain so. I also like cafes, perhaps more than I should, given my low income. (Yes, [...]
August 17, 2012 – 3:35 am
Ecuador has granted asylum to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange two months after he took refuge in its London embassy while fighting extradition from the UK. It cited fears that Mr Assange’s human rights might be violated. Foreign Secretary William Hague said the UK would not allow Mr Assange safe passage out of the country. But [...]
By DeusExMacintosh
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Also posted in Australia, Britain, Free Speech, Funnies, Human/Civil rights, Internet, Law, Politics
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Tagged asylum, Ecuador, Julian Assange, sweden, USA, WikiLeaks
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