Austrian fanatics ruin it for the rest of us
The Adam Smith Institute has long been associated with the Austrian school of economics. There is a picture of Friedrich Hayek on the wall. Our Director, Dr. Eamonn Butler, has written Austrian...
View ArticleHow to fix the Eurozone
It’s rare that an economic question is clear cut. Nearly all issues are two sided, with substantial costs and benefits to all approaches. But the reason the Eurozone crisis has resumed is pretty...
View ArticleThe ECB is fiddling while Europe burns
If not quite burning yet, the eurozone is kindling. For once, most people agree why: money is very tight. The central bank’s interest rate is low, yes, but this is not a good measure of the stance of...
View ArticleWhat Robert Peston gets wrong about QE
I don’t usually read Robert Peston, now the BBC’s economics editor, but I came across this piece he wrote for their website on the end of the ongoing US quantitative easing (QE) programme. Here he...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Free banking in 19th century Switzerland
RePEc is a wonderful service, provided like the fantastically useful FRED by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. It has feeds on twitter and via RSS, which are one of the best ways of keeping up...
View ArticleClik here to view.
QE cannot both boost asset prices and wreck pensions
Quantitative easing is complex and difficult to understand—economists aren’t even sure exactly if and how it works. It would be unreasonable to expect non-economists to fully grok its workings even if...
View ArticleDollarisation in Ecuador
Over at the free banking blog, Larry White has a very interesting post on dollarization in Ecuador. He outlines the history of the dollar in Ecuador and rehearses some of the key arguments in favour of...
View ArticleA miracle cure for central bank impotence
Are central banks ever unable to create inflation? The question may seem absurd – why would we ever want them to create more inflation? The typical answer is that deflation can be a lot worse than...
View ArticleAdam Curtis and the shapeshifting lizards
It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a ‘dismal science.’ But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and...
View ArticleEconomic Nonsense: 45. Unbridled capitalism brought about the Great Depression
In the popular account the stock market went wild in the late 1920s, with people gambling recklessly on stocks and shares, often with money they didn’t have. Shares could only go up, they thought, but...
View Article
