Great Depression

Sometimes there are men of principle who live their values and not merely speak or write about them. People who stand up to political evil at their own risk, and then go on to say and do things that help to remake their country in the aftermath of war and destruction. One such individual was the German, free-market economist, Wilhelm Röpke.

Beginning in 1983 the government changed its method of calculation to show lower inflation by excluding food and energy, claiming they were too volatile to be reliable indicators. The result is the so-called “core inflation” CPI, which is a favorite of the Federal Reserve. The latest figure for this CPI reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics is 0.4% (for August and also July), but if calculated by the method used in 1980 the inflation rate would be 7½ percent, as shown by Shadow Government Statistics (ShadowStats.com).

Democratic Party strategist Robert Weiner claims inexpensive domestic oil production via hydraulic fracturing will cause a new Great Depression, yet exactly the opposite is true. Writing in the Lynchburg, Virginia-based News & Advance, Weiner and his colleague Hannah Coombs strangely argue that Americans taking advantage of abundant, affordable energy resources is bad for the economy and will destroy our standard of living. In reality, Weiner and Coombs provide a perfect illustration about how anti-science, anti-fossil fuel hysteria drives leftist crusades against global warming, domestic oil production, and other asserted environmental causes.

Forty years ago, on October 9, 1974, the Nobel Prize committee announced that the co-recipient of that year’s award for economics was the Austrian economist, Friedrich A. Hayek. Never was there a more deserving recognition for one of the truly great free market thinkers of modern times.

Forty years ago, during the week of June 15-22, 1974, the Austrian School of Economics was reborn during a conference in the small New England town of South Royalton, Vermont. Why was this important? Because the economists of the Austrian School have developed the most persuasive understanding of why only economic freedom can give mankind both liberty and prosperity.

Instead of deregulation to reduce unnecessary, stifling regulatory burdens and barriers, as both Carter and Reagan did to such fully documented success, Obama regulates mercilessly as if regulation is cost free to the economy, as the most interventionist President in American history.

President Obama paints pretty pictures with flowery pro-growth and populist rhetoric. But the results are consistently the opposite of his promises.

The full bill for Obama’s failed economic policies has yet to arrive. But no such explosion of debt has ever escaped a day of reckoning, and no such monetary surge has ever had a happy ending.

Earlier this month, President Obama tried to change the subject from Obamacare by pitching some rhetoric on “equality” to rally his Far Left base. Not much thoughtful or helpful is…

As a longtime book reviewer, I have read a growing stack of books warning about a financial collapse, but Holland’s book is not only based in the actual debt, but is written in a manner that even a person who has no knowledge of this issue can understand.

A common fallacy is that the Great Depression was ended by the explosive spending of World War II. But World War II actually institutionalized the sharp decline in the standard of living caused by the Depression.

The unemployment rate dropped dramatically just before the 2012 presidential election. Then we find out the stats were bogus. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

President Obama is going to hit his perpetual campaign trail to tell Americans that the economy is turning around and that his policies of the first four years have worked. They have not.