The Economics Behind the Fall of the Berlin Wall – Ryan McMaken – Mises Daily. Sunday marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Like most historical events that are commemorated as if they took place on a single day, the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989,…
American Tariffs and Wars From the Revolution to the Depression – James Bovard – Mises Daily. Fair trade is once again a rallying cry for many Americans. Many contemporary leftists believe that the U.S. government should impose restrictions or tariffs on imported goods that are alleged to have been produced by underpaid or…
It’s monthly PMI time again, so we’ll be checking around to see how everyone is doing. Remember, the PMI data are based on opinion surveys of companies, and not necessarily on hard numbers. 50 is the break-even point between feeling that a sector is in contraction (less than 50) or expansion (greater than 50) in…
This one I found from my friends over at Nousonomics Puerto Rico Will Default and That’s a Good Thing Amid a surfeit of debt and other downward-trending economic indicators, Puerto Rican legislators put it all on the line last week when it added an additional $3.5 billion worth of IOUs to its balance sheet. Island…
Londoners Priced Out of Housing Blame Foreigners: Real Estate “The U.K. capital’s status as a magnet for wealthy foreign home buyers is helping to drive prices in many areas beyond the reach of most Londoners. That’s putting pressure on politicians and developers to convince locals that they haven’t been forgotten in the rush to court…
This article was recently posted at Mises.org by Andrew Syrios, and I thought it was worth passing on. Andrew Syrios is a Kansas City-based real estate investor and partner with Stewardship Properties. He also blogs at Swifteconomics.com. See Andrew Syrios’s article archives. Economic inequality is the big thing these days. Barack Obama has called it the…
China Home Sales Fall in Jan-Feb as Local Curbs Dent Demand China’s home sales fell in the first two months of the year as local government property measures to rein in rising prices weakened buyer sentiment. The value of homes sold fell 5 percent to 598.5 billion yuan ($97.5 billion) from the same two months…
Economic Roundup 3-4-14 General US News: Time for the monthly housing recap, where we put together all the housing data that came out in January: + The US Census Bureau Report on Put-in-Place Construction shows that construction spending during December 2013 was estimated at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $930.5 billion, up 5.3% from…
This article was previously posted on LewRockwell.com and later at Mises.org by Kathryn Muratore, who “is a full-time mom and a former Chemistry professor. She holds a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from UC Berkeley. Visit her blog protesting the TSA’s naked scanners.” All rights belong to these people and organizations. The Horrific California Drought Everyone is well-aware…
“Mises’s treatment of the importance of financial markets is also the key to his final rebuttal in Human Action to Lange, Lerner and the other market socialist critics of his calculation argument (pp. 694-711). The market socialists had claimed that a central planner could solve the calculation problem by ordering managers of industrial enterprises to…
Economic Roundup 2-25-14 General US News: >< Bureau of Labor Statistics data on the CPI are in for January: The All Items index percent change was a seasonally-adjusted increase of 0.1% from last month, and an unadjusted increase of 1.6% year-on-year. “Core” inflation (less food and energy) increased 0.1% from last month and 1.7% year-on-year. The Food…
This article was originally posted at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and was written by Andrew Cullen, who is a freelance analyst and writer, whose new blog is TheCantillonObserver.com. Previously, he has worked as a freelance project manager for over 20 years across EMEA and SE Asia. Austrian business cycle theory explains that the “bust” phase of that…
India Unexpectedly Raises Rate as Rupee Risks Inflation Goal “India’s central bank unexpectedly raised its key interest rate, signaling it’s ready to implement the most sweeping changes in its 78-year history to fight the fastest consumer-price gains in Asia. Governor Raghuram Rajan boosted the repurchase rate to 8 percent from 7.75 percent, the Reserve Bank…
India Predicts Climb From Decade-Low GDP Growth Amid Risks “India forecast a faster acceleration in economic growth than analysts estimated, a prediction facing risks from interest-rate increases to quell inflation and expenditure curbs by the government. Gross domestic product will rise 4.9 percent in the 12 months through March 2014, compared with the decade-low 4.5…
Economic Roundup 2-18-14 General US News: >< According to the ADP National Employment Report, January saw the economy add 175,000 jobs on a seasonally-adjusted basis. This was down from December’s revised 227,000 (down from 238,000), and way down from November’s 289,000 (revised way up from 229,000). Small businesses (1-49 employees) led the way again this…
Shade Tree Economist 