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By Ryan McMaken

Michael Pollaro, Mark Thornton, and I went looking for some good introductory materials to help newcomers understand Austrian Business Cycle Theory.

Pollaro posted this helpful article over at Forbes, noting:

Indeed, we would say that without ABCT investors are at a competitive disadvantage, for it is only through ABCT that one can truly understand what is underpinning the economies and financial markets of today.

And he links to several resources including this journal article by Joseph Salerno, and this very easy breakdown by John Cochran.

There are many other resources, Mark and I might point you to as well.

For starters, there is Rothbard’s Economic Depressions: Their Cause and Cure, and Richard Ebeling’s collection of essays, including works by Hayek, Mises and Garrison.

Other resources include:

This survey of ABCT on the Mises Wiki.

Manipulating the Interest Rate: a Recipe for Disaster by Thorsten Polleit

Austrian Business Cycle Theory: A Brief Explanation by Dan Mahoney.

And several videos including:

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Source: MISES INSTITUTE

By Ryan McMaken

Mises Daily Friday by Robert Murphy:

Robert Murphy, contra Real Clear Markets and Forbes, explains why money is not like a ruler and doesn’t measure value.

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Source: MISES INSTITUTE

By K. William Watson

K. William Watson

In the guise of informing consumers, U.S. country-of-origin labeling (COOL) regulations are being used to protect a small number of cattle growers from competition at the expense of everyone else. This week, a World Trade Organization dispute panel found that the program violates U.S. trade obligations for unjustifiably discriminating against foreign cattle. With the threat of trade retaliation from Canada and Mexico looming, the loss at the WTO strengthens domestic opponents of COOL and makes it more likely that Congress will finally act to end this shamefully protectionist boondoggle.

Under current U.S. COOL rules, retailers selling beef and pork must include labels stating what country the animal was in when it was born, raised, and slaughtered. This information might be interesting to a curious shopper, but it is completely useless in determining the quality or safety of meat. The same U.S. food safety standards apply regardless of where the animal came from.

“Ending the protectionist country-of-origin labeling regime is good policy because the law harms U.S. consumers and businesses.”

Consumers are, of course, welcome to care about things that don’t really matter, and generally, more information is a good thing to have. Sometimes, though, the cost of providing that information is greater than its value. Mandating that companies provide consumers with information will overcome that hurdle by removing the low-information option and forcing consumers to pay the higher price. Making labels mandatory also introduces opportunities for rent-seeking by companies looking to shift costs onto their competitors.

That’s exactly what’s happening with the COOL regulations, and is the crux of the WTO complaint. Canada and Mexico are not complaining that American consumers, armed with their dinner’s travel itinerary will eschew immigrant cattle. Rather, they point out that complying with the rules imposes huge costs on U.S. meat processors who buy cattle that once lived across the border. If a slaughterhouse buys any cattle that rode on a truck traversing the 49th parallel, it must segregate those animals and their meat through the entire production and delivery process.

The arbitrary burdens imposed by COOL regulations create a strong incentive for meat packers to purchase only cattle that was born and raised in the United States in order to avoid segregation costs. The labeling rules create artificial demand for domestic cattle while increasing the cost of beef for all American consumers.

So far, this dynamic has made COOL very popular in Washington. The …read more

Source: OP-EDS

By Ryan McMaken

Jeff Deist and Patrick Barron address the issue of monetary imperialism. How does the US use the dollar as a weapon of economic and cultural power? How long can it last? What might the unprecedented collapse of a worldwide reserve currency look like? And how do the BRIC nations and Asian central banks fight back?

Patrick Barron is a private consultant in the banking industry. He teaches in the Graduate School of Banking at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and teaches Austrian economics at the University of Iowa, in Iowa City, where he lives with his wife of 40 years.

Also available at Stitcher and Mises.org.

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Source: MISES INSTITUTE

By Ryan McMaken

Mises Daily Friday by Nicholas Freiling:

Public accommodation laws that prohibit discrimination render property rights moot and create a legal system designed to force agreement with the state’s official moral code.

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Source: MISES INSTITUTE

By David Howden

With the IRS scandals of early 2014 all but a distant memory, some closure is coming to the groups that the long arm of the tax law harassed. Unfortunately the verdicts aren´t going the way the affected would like.

The IRS may have inadvertently figured out how to win its legal battles against aggrieved tea party groups: Give them what they wanted in the first place — tax-exempt status.

That was a major reason a Republican-appointed federal judge on Thursday threw out two lawsuits brought by more than 40 conservative groups seeking remedies for being singled out in the tea party targeting scandal, a victory for the IRS.

Judge Reggie Walton of the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia dismissed almost all counts brought against the tax-collecting agency in two cases, ruling that both were essentially moot now that the IRS granted the groups their tax-exempt status that had been held up for years.Walton, a President George W. Bush-appointee, also said individual IRS officials could not be fined in their individual capacity for allowing such treatment because it could hurt future tax enforcement.

If you think …read more

Source: MISES INSTITUTE

By Paul C. "Chip" Knappenberger

Paul C. “Chip” Knappenberger

Recent “record high” global temperatures are more significant for what they are not than for what they are. While September was reported to be the warmest month on record averaged over the earth’s surface, it was not anywhere near as warm as climate alarmists and the climate models that they rely on projected it would be.

For those worried about climate catastrophe, the latter situation should be far more important than the former. But you’ll never catch them, or their let’s-regulate-away-fossil-fuels cheerleaders, admitting to that.

The data show that the current rate of global warming is far less than computerized climate models had projected and far less than environmental activists expected. Rather than rethink their positions against fossil fuels in light of the dearth of warming, opponents of our modern energy society dig in their heels and respond with excuses and misdirection.

“Global warming is proceeding at a rate much slower than the one upon which climate alarm is built.”

All week long, headlines coming out of federal climate centers (amplified by many sympathetic media outlets) have been all about record high global temperatures, not only for the past month, but for year to date — with speculation about 2014 becoming the warmest year on record.

“Pause” deniers — folks unwilling to admit that there has been little to no reliably identifiable rise in the earth’s surface temperature for the past 18 years or so — are quick to jump on these announcements in their desperation to relight the global warming bonfire that has now burned down to a few faintly glowing embers.

But in doing so, they expose the lengths that they’ll go to hide the bigger truth — that global warming just isn’t proceeding according to (their) plan.

For example, global warming fear-mongers point out that the average global temperature so far this year is a few hundredths of a degree higher than the previous record. Yet they fail to point out that the same temperature is more than two-tenths of a degree (about 10 times as much) below where it was supposed to be based on computer model projections of climate change resulting from the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

They throw out statistics like “the 12 hottest years on record have come in the past 15 years.” And yet never mention the fact that 15 of the past 15 years are cooler than their …read more

Source: OP-EDS