The Pro-Growth Progressive: An Economic Strategy for Shared Prosperity, by Gene Sperling The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, by Benjamin Friedman In the 1970s, the Republican Party was known by another nickname than the Grand Old Party. It was also known as “the tax collector of the welfare state.” Hard as it may be for [...]
This line was supposed to be flat. Euro-dollar exchange rate. Spain is now in recession. Greece is bracing for elections, as is France, which could unleash class warfare. Austerity, low growth rates, and debt stalk the continent. The place caught such a cold that even the United Kingdom is not immune, slipping now [...]
As NATO leaders gathered in Chicago, and as France settled in with its new socialist leadership, the word was that to get out of crisis, Europe has to choose between growth and austerity. On its face, this is a false choice. As Milton Friedman always taught, the greatest deadweight drag on economic development is government [...]
What is the set of principles behind the government’s conduct of monetary policy? It’s a hard question to answer. The Constitution gives the United States the power “to coin money” and “regulate the value thereof” and to fix exchange rates with respect to foreign coin. But clearly, the Federal Reserve has moved far beyond this [...]
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has been taking a lot of flak for his series of speeches at George Washington University over the last few weeks. Commentators have marveled at his mischaracterization of the gold standard and his defensiveness at the suggestion that loose Fed monetary policy of the early and mid-2000s played a role [...]
This presentation, “A Brief History of Economic Crisis in the United States,” was part of the Free Enterprise Institute’s Founders’ Day Breakfast, November 2011. […]
John C. Calhoun A hundred and fifty years ago, our country was in the midst of the most difficult and deadly experience of its history, the Civil War, in which 660,000 would perish. How had it come to be that the country was in Lincoln’s words, “half slave, half free,” and because of [...]
Last week in Kansas, President Obama laid out his vision of economic history. In example after example drawn from the last hundred years, he showed that interventions on the part of the federal government in the form of taxes and regulations have proven to bring the free-market system to its optimal best. Restraint on taxes [...]
The following essay is adapted from the book Back on the Road to Serfdom: The Resurgence of Statism, edited by Thomas E. Woods Jr. (ISI Books, 2011). We are perhaps apt to forget that during the Cold War, it was generally conceded that the Soviet Union had a higher rate of economic growth than the [...]
I drive through West Virginia all the time, and it’s hard to give directions there. You always find yourself saying, “Take the Robert Byrd out to the Robert Byrd, and make a left onto the Robert Byrd.” It seems like every road in the place is named after ye olde Senior Senator. It’s long been [...]