A great article posted in WSJ by Bob Gelfond, brought to me by Cafe Hayek briefly lays suggests that the governments influence over the money supply can have a disastrous role. The problem is that he failed to incorporate some very important terminology from Austrian Business Cycle Thoery: malinvestment.
Us Austrians need to point people to fact that malinvestment is the single most destructive product of fiat currencies.
Recently I went to a panel discussion that included UBS’s Art Cashin. He described how Y2K’s money expansion helped lead to a bubble: the run up in tech stocks at the turn of the century and later a housing boom. As we know such investments cost many investors dearly. What Cashin was describing was a classic case of malinvestment, however he, as well as the other panelists, coined such scenario’s as bubbles. I wish we could somehow get prominant speakers to use ABCT terminology such as malinvestment instead of terms like “bubbles” to draw people into reading more Von Mises literature. The literature so compelling I feel it would be hard not to grow are ranks exponentially in the near future.
Wendall Wilkie Federal Reserve Bob Gelfound, Cafe Hayek, money supply
This mission is for Obama guys!
In case you missed it, there was some hulla balloo in downtown New York City Monday when the federal government sent Air Force One (along with its paparazzi) on a secret mission. It seems like the secret mission included a photo op flyby of the Statue of Liberty. The planes logically took a path most similar to the ones taken on 9/11. Genius.
Like any good Austro-libertarian I asked myself if a private company, say XYZ Company, would have the hubris to complete such a mission. In all honesty you know what, perhaps it would. It’s impossible to know for sure. One thing that we do know is that there would be immediate backlash from potential consumers of XYZ Company. In other words, they would be accountable. In this case, however, other than some trumped up anger from the president (and likely a fired employee), the government will go unscathed. After all. what can we really do?
To top all of this off, the government spent $328k on this folly. That should sicken each and every one of you. As Federal Reserve inflates our money supply by the trillion, the same government still has the pretense to send Airforce One on this special mission. Can’t say I’m surprised.
Teacherman General, Government Spending 9/11, airforce one, Federal Reserve, government, money supply, obama
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