Mark also reacts to the Federal Reserve's report on Silicon Valley Bank published this week, Chairman Kevin Warsh's first rate hike in three years, and the drone attack on Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline that cut Aramco supply to European buyers.

Mark Thornton joins Ilya Spivak on TastyLive.

The original interview is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlzCEchFNOY

Ryan explains why these aren't contradictions. They're symptoms of the same underlying problem: a bubble economy sustained by continuous liquidity injections since 2009 that the Fed has never unwound and never will. He draws a striking parallel to Britain's 1956 Suez Crisis, when an expensive military operation accelerated the decline of sterling as the global reserve currency, and asks whether the Iran war is doing the same to the dollar.

The original interview is available on YouTube.

The original interview is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXm-5wBJm3c

The original interview is online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OiIPVjXILU

The original Investing News Network interview is online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zv1lTKA1aAw.

The original interview is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1HNeez2v1g

The original interview is available on YouTube.

The original interview is available on YouTube.

The original episode is available at https://youtu.be/5pl8sIOvTSA

Dr. Jonathan Newman joins Cheryl Daley on The Homeschool How To Podcast to break down why he and his wife chose to keep their kids out of government schools, how they approach reading and “adulting” skills at home, and why there’s really no such thing as a “neutral” education.

The original episode is available at https://open.spotify.com/episode/0mZzkKFr5RPKO3RAldMZNM

If your living standards are falling while politicians insist everything is fine, this conversation will make sense of it. If you still believe governments can print prosperity without consequences, you won’t enjoy what follows.

The original episode is available at https://www.petermccormack.com/episodes/133-karl-friedrich-israel-the-government-is-lying-about-inflation

The original interview is available on YouTube.

The original interview is available on YouTube. For more information, visit Libertyandfinance.com.

The original interview is available on YouTube. For more information, visit Libertyandfinance.com.

Are tariffs a betrayal of free market principles, or could they be used as a tool against global economic manipulation? And why do mainstream economists ignore the biggest force distorting markets—the Federal Reserve? Tune in for a discussion that challenges economic orthodoxy and exposes how America’s economy has been rigged for decades.

The original episode, "The Trump Reset" (Dinesh D’Souza Podcast, Ep. 1039), is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJEr1CfLZfg

The original episode is available at https://790waeb.iheart.com/featured/bobby-gunther-walsh

The original episode is available at https://rumble.com/v6jqmo4-action-radio-21225-wanjiru-njoya-mises-institute-special-guest..html

The original episode is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNzNj7J5qYY

The original episode is online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVUPTUImnQo

See also, "The Price of Beef" (Minor Issues Podcast): Mises.org/MI_103

Register to attend Educating for Liberty: Mises Circle in Tampa, February 22, 2025, at Mises.org/Tampa25. Use promo code Minor25 for 10% off the ticket price.

The original episode is available at https://tomwoods.com/ep-2595-the-myth-of-social-justice

The original episode is available at https://thedove.us/focus-today/

The original episode is available at RichValdesAmericaAtNight.com

The original episode is available on YouTube.

The original episode is available on Action Radio.

The original episode is available on the Main Street Radio Network.

The original episode is available on Newstalk AM 600 KCOL.

The original episode is available at FinancialSurvivalNetwork.com.

The original episode is available on News Radio WINA 98.9 FM and 1070 AM at https://cvillerightnow.com/podcasts/categories/the-schilling-show/

The original episode is available on TheRichardSyrettShow.com.

The original episode is available on Patriot TV: https://drewallen.substack.com/p/240-harriswalz-want-to-make-america

The original episode is available on Your America TV at https://youramericatv.com/2024/08/how-capitalism-defeats-racism

The original episode is available on TNT News at https://tnt.news/shows/pelle-neroth-taylor

The original episode is available at The Lakey Effect (Newstalk 600 KCOL) on iHeartRadio.com.

The original episode is available at News Radio 1120 KPNW.

Bill Lundun (BL): News Radio 1120 KPNW, thanks for being with us this morning. We have like two different things that we keep hearing when it comes to this particular election period. And it is that Americans overall trust Trump more on the economy. And that's we're talking about voters, whereas the so-called experts don't. Who to believe to discuss it this morning? It is Dr. Jonathan Newman. He is a fellow at the Mises Institute, which is a nonprofit that promotes the teaching and research in the Austrian School of Economics. And it's in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard. And welcome to the show. We appreciate you being here with us. Thank you, Jonathan.

Jonathan Newman (JN): Hey, thanks for having me.

BL: Yeah. Talk a little bit about Ludwig von Mises and kind of what he stood for in his branch of, if you will, economic research.

JN: Sure, Ludwig von Mises is sort of the godfather of Austrian economics, which is a school of economic thought that's very free market. We don't do a lot of mathematical modeling. We consider the individual as having subjective value, and through people's subjective values, they interact in markets, creating market prices, and those market prices are fundamental for developing an economy, for understanding how resources should be allocated. We should be using the profit and loss test to determine how to most efficiently produce things. And so many of the conclusions of the Austrian school are very free market. And of course, Ludwig von Mises was one of the you know the main figures in Austrian economics. He started his career, obviously in Austria, that's why the name of the school's called Austrian economics. But he had to flee the Nazis. So he was he was under pressure from the Nazis, because he was saying things that were critical of government. Obviously he had to flee that area, and he came over to the United States in New York. And had a very famous seminar where many American economists and others were listening to him, and he sort of sparked the Austrian movement in the United States. And so it's grown and flourished since then, and we have the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, that champions his ideas, champions Austrian economics, and is trying to educate everybody about the best way to think about the economy, the best way to analyze policy proposals from politicians and bureaucrats, and promote free markets along the way.

BL: If he were to see the markets today and the way that things are, if you will, manipulated in a number of ways, the way the government policy attempts to manipulate things, what would be his takeaway, do you think?

JN: I think Mises would be most disturbed by the fiat money system that we have in place today. So in the United States, we have the Federal Reserve, which is our central bank. They are the ones who are controlling the supply of money. They're manipulating interest rates. And Mises would pin the blame on this monetary policy by the Federal Reserve for creating booms and busts, for creating these artificial booms where employment goes up, stock prices go up, everything seems to be going well, and then all of a sudden it crashes. And so one of the crown jewels of Austrian economics is Austrian business cycle theory, which explains how it's actually government manipulation in credit markets that causes these booms and busts, that causes the business cycle. So he would definitely not like that, but he also, just in terms of the general effects of inflation, he would say that the fact that savings rates are way down, nobody's really saving for the future, is because people's money is losing value. And so it doesn't really make any sense to save money for retirement if that money is going to be losing its purchasing power over time. And so that forces people to save for retirement, for example, by investing in the volatile stock markets. So he would obviously, he would disagree with the monetary policy, he would disagree with the size and scope of government as it exists today, and he would champion a more free market approach, where markets are the ones that are and regulating themselves, where consumers are the ones that are deciding which companies are producing things that we like, and use the profit and loss test of the market to rationally and efficiently allocate factors of production, so that we have a growing progressing economy.

BL: Alright. To the very basic question. In polling, there's been a lot of polling in regards to this, and that Americans actually trust Trump on the economy, and yet we have these experts, call them so-called or call them actual experts, that don't and the question is so who to believe

JN: Well, I definitely wouldn't put much faith in the so-called experts. The so-called experts have been wrong about so many things in the past. And so I think that the reason why people think that Trump and the Republican Party represents more of a... would represent a turn towards a stronger economy is because they're really the only ones that are talking about decreasing, or at least limiting, the increases in the size and scope of government. So if you look at the rhetoric and the proposals from Democrats, there's this problem in the United States and we can solve it with more government intervention and more government spending. There's this other problem that we can solve with more government intervention and more government spending. And yet only on the Trump side, you have at least some rhetoric about how we need more efficiency in government, we need to decrease the size and scope of government. And so people realize that a lot of the problems that the Democrats are pointing out are ones that are caused or exacerbated by government spending and government intervention. And so it makes sense that Americans are sort of doubtful that the Democrats have any sort of a good plan regarding a stronger economy.

BL: What about the criticism that has been made because, you know, Trump has once again talked about tariffs, in particular regarding China, and a lot of the, as we've talked about them, the experts are like, "Oh my God, it's going to do these horrible things to the economy. It's going to cause prices to spike again." What's your take on that?

JN: I think it's a valid criticism. I think it's good to be distrustful of tariffs because, I mean, in the end a tariff is a tax. And so I'm not going to be the one that says, you know, everything that Trump has ever proposed is a free market and it's going to be good for the economy. But, of course, what Trump is seeing and what the people in the Republican party are seeing is, you know, hollowed out manufacturing in the United States. They see, you know, loss of jobs. So they see these sorts of the things happening, and so they think the tariffs would be a good way to address it. I think that economic theory going all the way back to the 1700s, I mean, you can go back to Richard Cantillon, to Adam Smith, to those guys. And I think that they very compellingly showed that tariffs and protectionism is not a good way to address those sorts of problems. But, in terms of the grand scheme of things, if we're arguing over should we have, you know, this tariff rate versus that marginally different tariff rate, then that's sort of a side issue. Really, the main thing that I think people are focused on is inflation. It's all of the regulations that are imposed on the economy by the government. It's those sorts of things. So, yes, I do have some quibbles with the with the tariff idea, but I still think that it makes sense that Americans are trusting the Trump side and really the distrust of the establishment and the distrust of the so-called experts.

BL: Right. You know, one of the things that you hear from the public individuals is, you know, "I just want to see prices come down," and you look at it and I don't remember any time that prices, maybe a little bit here and there, where once you have a period of inflation, with maybe the exception of gas prices, where prices fall and come down. Unless we're talking about a major case of deflation, which is a whole other you know a whole a whole other can of worms that can be actually worse than inflation. Talk a little bit about that whole idea of prices coming down.

JN: I think people are worried about deflation for the wrong reasons. And I think the reason that they're worried about is because they associate it with what happened during the Great Depression, where we had a huge increase in unemployment, where output shrank, and we also had price deflation happening at the same time. And so people sort of associate those things. They think deflation is associated with recessions. But it's worth pointing out that there are quite a few things that could result in deflation. And one of the healthiest periods of, you know, economic growth in the United States happened when we were under a gold standard, where output was increasing but the money supply was not increasing by the same amount. And so we had, you know, steady deflation. And we didn't have – it was a long-term steady deflation that promoted savings that allowed – made it easy – for businesses and for consumers and households to make decisions over the long term. It made it easy for people to save with money as opposed to investing in the stock market. And so if your money is gaining value over time, then you can imagine how that would totally restructure the way that the whole economy is allocating resources. So, if money is gaining value over time, then people have an incentive to save. If people are saving, then we have more capital accumulation. If we have more capital accumulation, then our economy can grow in a sustainable sort of way as opposed to the booms and busts that we have now. So, I think the fear of deflation, or deflation-phobia as some people call it, is just based on that one episode in economic history in the United States where I think we should be more comfortable with the idea of our money gaining purchasing power over time, and it could be a very healthy sort of thing.

BL: How is that going to happen though? Because you mentioned and you started off by qualifying it with, "While we were under the gold standard." It's a completely different valuation of the way that the dollar is factored right now. Can that could that happen again on a federal reserve system like we have?

JN: Oh, absolutely not. Going back to that sort of system of sound money, and I'm not saying that it has to be a gold standard, but going back to a system where, you know, government is not intervening in money and banking, would require a huge shift. It would require a shift in people's thinking and the way that they vote. It would have to require, you know, ending the Federal Reserve, or at least severely limiting its power. And so you're absolutely right that, you know, going back to a system like that, it would require a big change. But the really the first thing that people think about when somebody proposes ending the Federal Reserve or auditing the Federal Reserve or limiting its power is, they think, "Well, what about deflation?" or "What about booms and busts?" And really what Austrian economists are saying is that, if we did get rid of the Fed, then we would actually have a smoother economic growth. We would have stable deflation where people's money is growing in purchasing power. We wouldn't have all the booms and busts, because Austrian economists point out that it's manipulated interest rates that result in those artificial booms and the painful busts that follow. So, you're absolutely right. It would require a big shift. If people are interested in how we would actually reach that stage where we could go back to sound money as opposed to political money, fiat money, then I recommend that listeners check out the writings by Murray Rothbard. If they go to Mises.org/MyMoney, then they'll receive a free reading from Rothbard, a PDF, where they can get it mailed to them. And so there's great plans offered by Rothbard, a great Austrian economist, that would explain how we get there.

BL: All right. Appreciate you joining us on the Wake Up Call. Dr. Jonathan Newman here on KPNW. Thanks again.

JN: Thanks for having me.

The original episode is available at SalemNewsChannel.com.

For more information visit https://www.ukcolumn.org/video/governments-make-everything-worse-with-wanjiru-njoya-0

"I voted a long time ago, but I learned later on that it was useless."

On the night before election, and again on the Today show on election morn. I appeared on nationwide NBC-TV, denouncing politics and declaring that I never vote. Despite the fact that the interview was a pure fluke, taken while minding my own business on a New Haven bus, that it was severely edited and truncated on TV to fit the anti-politics theme of mass sentiment as picked up by the reporters, I was immediately besieged by phone calls from libertarians throughout the country. Some LP people attacked me for not mentioning Tuccille and the LP, while the anti-politics forces hailed me for — at last — denouncing all politics and voting. Since I have been accused of inconsistency in being one of the few libertarians who favor both the Libertarian Party and Sy Leon's League of Non-Voters, perhaps I can seize this occasion to make my views on the politics and voting question — I hope — crystal clear:

1. I am indeed opposed to the State and therefore to politics. If the State-and-politics disappeared tomorrow no one would be happier than myself.

2. The fewer people that vote in any election, therefore, the better. The fewer the votes, the greater the evident anti-politics sentiment throughout the country, and the greater the implicit repudiation of the entire political system. The fact that only 38% of the eligible voters cast their ballots in the 1974 election — the lowest voting percentage in three decades — is one of the most heartening results of the election. It is no coincidence that all politicians from President Ford on down begged the electorate to endorse the American Way by voting, voting for either party. ("We don't care who you vote for, but for God's sake VOTE!") Think of how glorious it would be if the next President were elected by a popular vote of five to four for his opponent. The smaller the vote, the more ridiculous the claim for a "popular mandate" for the victor.

Unfortunately, politicians tend to interpret low voting as "apathy" instead of hostility to the political system (although that concept is now changing, pace the findings of NBC-TV that throughout the country people are disgusted with all politicians.) Hence the importance of the League of Non-Voters' campaign to transform the alleged "apathy" of non-voters into an explicit repudiation of the political system.

3. I don't vote, and haven't done so in two decades, not because I believe voting itself to be immoral (as do the anti-LP libertarians), but because of the reasons in point No. 2, and because one person's vote is of marginal importance, approaching zero. And for another and for me overriding reason: that the roll for compulsory jury slavery is taken from the voting lists. Compulsory jury duty differs only in degree, not in kind, from the slavery of conscription.

4. However, and unfortunately, neither politics nor voting are going to disappear overnight. Confronted with the fact that tens of millions of Americans are going to continue voting, what party should we support? Whom should we hope wins the elections? Does it make any difference who wins? I contend that it usually makes a great deal of difference. Jefferson was better than Hamilton, Jackson than Adams, Gladstone than Disraeli, Judge Parker than Teddy Roosevelt, etc. A fortiori, the Libertarian Party is infinitely better than any of the other contenders, for many important reasons: as an educational vehicle of unequalled force in influencing the public and the media; as a method of putting pressure on the other parties and on the government to curb their statist policies; and as an eventual conduit for rolling back the State. Of course, there are risks in the LP becoming corrupted if it becomes a major political force, but there are risks in any course of action or inaction. Life itself is a risk. The gripers who sit on the sidelines and carp about the LP have a responsibility, it seems to me, to come up with a course of action that will be at least as, if not more, effective than the LP in spreading the ideas and the influence of libertarianism. So far, the non-party ad hoc organizations have had only a minimal impact. The more impact that any tactical roads may have — be they the LP or any form of non-party organization — the better. This, the area of tactics, is one of the few cases where the pragmatic attitude is the proper one. Let a hundred libertarian flowers bloom. As far as I know, no one in the LP spends any time criticizing the various non-party individuals or organizations; why do the latter expend so much of their time criticizing the LP? Is it because the LP has been so successful?

"We have to educate ourselves, and educate others about our own history, our real history, about what's actually going on these days, about real economics, and the principles of liberty. And I think that is: if we have any salvation, it's through that, and certainly in secular terms."

MOYERS: Welcome to NOW. If you're thinking about money, bills, the job and your pension and not just the war you belong to the largest party in America, the party of angst. The economy's sputtering, the DOW is down, oil prices and health costs are soaring. And over eight million people are unemployed.

The other day the Wall Street Journal ran a page one story on a worker who had sent out over 700 resumes without landing a job. What's clear is that all the talk about tax breaks stimulating the economy is only stimulating fear about deficits. Even the White House now estimates the budget deficit will hit a record $304 billion this year. And that's without figuring in a war, whose cost the government refuses to reveal.

With me now to talk about all this is Lew Rockwell. Mr. Rockwell is a libertarian free market conservative and President of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. That's the organization he founded to advocate and promote the philosophy that the solution to our fiscal and social woes begins with smaller government.

Mr. Rockwell has been a congressional aid, a book editor, a magazine editor, and is now the editor of his own web site. Welcome to NOW.

ROCKWELL: Bill, great to be with you.

MOYERS: Business pundits and the government have been saying for 20 months that this is not really a recession, it's just kind of stumbling a bit. (LAUGHTER) The economy is stumbling a bit. Is it a recession?

ROCKWELL: You know, I remember back when Alfred Kahn, very funny economist, who worked for Jimmy Carter. And he referred to depression and was taken to the woodshed by Carter over this. And when he talked to the reporters afterwards he said, "I'm never gonna say that word again. I'm only gonna say the word banana. But, you know, we're in a banana." (LAUGHTER) So…

MOYERS: So are we in a banana?

ROCKWELL: Sure, we're in a banana.

MOYERS: We're in a bunch of bananas.

ROCKWELL: We're in very serious recession. And it's true…

MOYERS: And what does that mean?

ROCKWELL: Well, it means that the economy is shrinking. If we look at the government's own statistics, and you have to subtract the increase in government spending, which is bad for the economy, not good.

We're getting poorer as an economy. That's what a recession means. For us regular people it means we're getting poorer. And we're gonna continue to get poorer. And I think we can all feel it. Even aside from the statistics we all feel the fear for retirements and our savings. We're worried about our jobs. We see businesses closing.

We're getting poorer. And if the Bush administration set out to do everything possible to make the recession longer and deeper and maybe turn it into a depression they'd be doing exactly what they're doing now.

MOYERS: What's keeping you awake at night?

ROCKWELL: Well, first of all, you mentioned the $304 billion deficit figure, but that's actually a fib. Because what we always need to pay attention to is how much the national debt is going up by, which is always much more significant than the official deficit. Because the government spends money so-called off budget. And it doesn't count in the official budget deficit.

So if we look at the actual deficit that's going on right now it's over $400 billion. That is the difference between income and outgo for the federal government. And again that's without the war and the economy is heading downhill. So I think it's very, very worrisome. Who knows what the deficit could actually be in the next fiscal year, $600 billion, $700 billion.

MOYERS: Yeah, one of my associates just handed me this story from the New York Times. The budget President Bush submitted last month should have come with a warning they're back, deficits are reemerging as a major problem. Goldman Sachs recently raised its estimate of the federal budget deficit to $375 billion. You're saying it could be more than that.

ROCKWELL: Oh sure. It could be — it's already a lot more than that. And these figures are all available at the treasury, although they don't have a nice chart to make it easy on you. But these figures are all available. It's already more than $400 billion, the actual deficit.

I mean, just take the example of foreign aid that Bush has promised to Turkey if they come along with him on the war. That money would come out of the exchange stabilization fund as a loan. But that would not count in the official budget deficit even though it's a debt of the federal government. So it's again the national — the increase in the national debt and it's very, very worrisome.

MOYERS: What does this mean to ordinary people? I mean, the words like deficits and recession come and go among economists and newspaper headline writers. But what does it mean to ordinary working people?

ROCKWELL: Well, it means trouble. Because, I mean, sometimes Republicans and the Democrats for that matter like to pretend that there's some way to fund the government other than the two ways of taxation and inflation. Those are the only two ways they can postpone it through borrowing.

But all those have negative economic effects. And when we have deficits this size first of all it means that everybody's worried that these are gonna be monetized.

MOYERS: Which means?

ROCKWELL: That the federal reserve will in effect print money to pay them. And that has all kinds of bad effects besides rising prices. It's what brings on the business cycle for example. That's what the fed did in the 1990s, the reason that we now are in the longest deepest recession since the Cold War.

MOYERS: You worked in Washington four years as a congressional aid. Do you think everyone in Washington is in denial over the shipwreck that's coming on this issue of deficits? Or is there a conspiracy to look the other way when the emperor passes with no clothes on?

ROCKWELL: Well, there's both of that. But I also think the fact that, you know, these are not necessarily bad for the government. It's bad for the people. But I think the government in these things has a very different interest. Usually in fact the opposite of what the people's interest is.

So however they can expand government spending, and they switch between the various methods of borrowing, taxing and inflating, depending on the political climate, they are benefited. They in the interest groups who receive the dough.

MOYERS: Is this however, what free market libertarian conservatives have been wanting to put the government so much in debt that it can't possibly raise more money to support more government spending? I mean, the conservative activist Grover Norquist was here where you're sitting not long ago. And he says he wants to shrink the government until it can be drowned in the bathtub. And the best way to do that is just to strangle the source of money.

ROCKWELL: You know, I think this is a Republican fib as great a guy as Grover Norquist is. Because of course the government keeps growing. President Bush has expanded the federal budget by 30 percent. I mean, this is the biggest spending administration since Mr. Johnson. And it may be…

MOYERS: You wrote somewhere that Lyndon Johnson and George W. Bush have a lot in common, they like to spend money.

ROCKWELL: Yeah, they do.

If we look at the facts and not the rhetoric, Republicans expand the government much more than Democrats do. If you look at the Reagan administration, the Nixon administration, both Bush administrations, there all big government operation. The smallest government guy in recent times, Jimmy Carter. Even Clinton was a smaller government guy than George Bush.

MOYERS: You advocate low taxes. Do you support Bush's tax cut?

ROCKWELL: Well, you know, I'm all for tax cuts. I think taxes, I mean, the shorthand for taxes is wealth destruction. So certainly the fewer taxes we have the better. On the other hand the government spending has to be paid for somehow. So if he's expanding the government at the rate that he is, at a huge rate, to talk about tax cuts it seems to me is, you know, is irresponsible. Probably the most destructive way to fund the federal government is through inflation through the federal reserve.

So actually I hate to say taxes are better than that, but yes taxes are less economically destructive than inflation. So for him to be — I think it's highly irresponsible. I think it's a trick to fool people. After all his previous so-`called tax cuts have yet to come into effect. They don't even come into effect until next year. And my prediction is they won't come into effect. They'll be some sort of, you know, war emergency and they won't be able to bring them into effect.

MOYERS: There is some talk in Washington that the huge expenditures on a war against Iraq would actually boost the economy by circulating all that spending on defense. What about that?

ROCKWELL: Well, I mean, I know that's the claim. The French economist in the nineteenth century Frederic Bastiat talked about the broken window fallacy. A boy tosses a rock through a baker's window and everybody's very sad for the poor baker. And then the guy in the — maybe an economist in the crowd say, oh, don't worry, you know, this is gonna be great. It's gonna be money for the glazier, then he'll buy a new suit and everything, you know, will multiply and we'll be all better off.

But that, you know, first of all leaving aside property rights and morality questions it ignores what that money would have been spent on otherwise. So to take vast sums out of the private productive economy and spend it on things that are anti-productive, weapons of mass destruction and so forth, that have no economic purpose far from being a help it's a disaster.

I mean, you can think of the U.S. military as that little boy with the rock.

MOYERS: But didn't World War II actually pull the country out of the depression? Didn't the spending on that vast military effort stimulate the economy, give people jobs and enable us to get over the depression in a way that FDR's New Deal programs never did?

ROCKWELL: Well, sure, the New Deal didn't work. And really we didn't get out of the depression until probably 1948 or 1949. What the war did do was help the unemployment statistics by killing a lot of the unemployed. I mean, it did do that.

In fact he, you know, he drafted 20 percent of the workforce at one point or another into the military. So when you had — when you started out with a 12 percent unemployment rate, yes, I mean there was much less unemployment. But the vast expenditures on non-productive goods, the erection of a command to control economy, not that dissimilar from the Soviet economy. Price and wage controls. No, that was not economically good. It was economically bad.

MOYERS: What do you think this war will do to the economy?

ROCKWELL: Well, it's very bad for the economy. It's a vast transfer of wealth from the productive economy into the government sector into what after all is a socialist enterprise, the U.S. military. And therefore economically disastrous.

So you have all kinds of money taken out of productive private savings and investment to build bombs and missiles that it's economically dangerous. And then it of course like every single war in our history it empowers the government to suppress dissent, to abolish civil liberties, to grow. That's one of the reasons governments love a war. Because it does enable them to grow and to brand anybody who disagrees with them as unpatriotic.

MOYERS: But the fact that it's a socialist institution, the military, doesn't make it a disposable institution. I mean, you wouldn't want to live in a country that didn't have a strong military to defend you would you?

ROCKWELL: No. Of course you have to have soldiers, and you have to — you want defense absolutely. Whether this particular arrangement in this vast centralized, you know, the biggest — of course the biggest military empire in the history of the world, the U.S. I mean, far surpassing, I mean, our budget is bigger than the next 27 countries.

MOYERS: Do you feel safer because of that?

ROCKWELL: No, I don't feel safe at all. I mean, none of it is spent on defense, for example. It's all spent on offense. And there's very little defense. It's all, you know, involved in running other people's lives, running other people's countries.

MOYERS: You opposed the war in Vietnam.

ROCKWELL: Yes.

MOYERS: And you oppose this war.

ROCKWELL: Well, I oppose any war that's not absolutely necessary, and absolutely moral and defensive. So that, for example, killing — we don't know how many — three, four thousand people in Afghanistan to go after the Taliban, who are after all, the descendents of the exact same guys that Ronald Reagan was funding during as Mujaheddin, when they went up against the Soviet Union, yeah. No, I don't think that's good.

And I don't think there's, you know, any proof that they had anything to do with 9/11. I think it was just striking out. And I think it's very unfortunate. I think it's just killing.

MOYERS: This morning I heard a chilling report on National Public Radio about how Saddam Hussein tortures people. I mean, he's clearly a demonic man himself. Couldn't you concede that Bush really does believe he's on a moral mission to rid the world of a monster?

ROCKWELL: I'm sure Saddam Hussein is not a good guy, after all he's a politician. But it is the most liberal regime in the Arab world in many senses. You can get a drink in Baghdad. Unlike in Saudi Arabia. Women don't have to wear any particular kind of clothing. Christianity is tolerated.

There are high officials of the Iraqi government who are Christians, unlike in any Arab government that we're pals with. So you can — there was a very interesting story on Morning Edition the other day about a gun…

MOYERS: NPR, right?

ROCKWELL: Yeah, a gun shop in Baghdad. And how there was a run on everybody buying guns. And the fact that you can buy a gun in downtown Baghdad, which of course you can't do in Manhattan is, you know, also an unusual peek into this regime. I mean, we only know what the government is telling us.

MOYERS: But doesn't Saddam Hussein who is obviously himself a megalomaniac, doesn't a Saddam Hussein armed with biological and chemical weapons potentially nuclear weapons, doesn't that scare the hell out of you?

ROCKWELL: Yeah. I mean, I don't like the fact that George Bush has all those things too. And of course we know there's only one government in the world that's ever dropped atomic bombs on civilians and it's not Iraq. So, you know, there are a lot of governments that are run by bad guys. I mean, look at the people who are in Rwanda and killed millions of people by machete. I mean, hard to conceive of anything much worse than that.

So, yes, I don't like the idea of any government like this having those kinds of weapons. But, you know, is it really the job of the U.S. government to run the world? I mean, a lot of my…

MOYERS: Well, what would a libertarian actually say about what the President should do about Saddam Hussein?

ROCKWELL: I think read a book. Think about helping the American people. Think about taking the burden off us. Think about what he could do to lessen this recession that Mr. Greenspan has brought on us. That is by cutting government, not expanding government. Cutting the military, cutting the welfare budget. Cutting the regulations. He's of course vastly increased regulations on business.

MOYERS: But, do you really believe there's nothing the government can do to improve our lot but to get out of the way?

ROCKWELL: Yeah, that's about it. Certainly, that's true in the economy. I mean, now that we're in this recession that's all it could do. And certainly, that's what Mr. Bush ought to be doing. That is, cutting spending, cutting taxes, cutting regulations, get the heck out of the way.

MOYERS: But what about such things as unemployment benefits, all those eight million people, that guy who wrote the 700 letters and can't find a job? I mean, don't we have some — doesn't the moral imperative in all of us, collectively, want to try to help people like that while they're in distress?

ROCKWELL: You know, this illustrates the basic fallacy at the heart of the welfare state. That it seeks to — that it subsidizes what it seeks to prevent, or pretends to cure. So, it subsidizes unemployment.

I remember when Mr. Bush, Sr., when he was running for re-election, and there was concerns about the unemployment rate, and so he passed a vast expansion of unemployment benefits, and gee, just amazingly enough, the unemployment rate went way up when people could get more money for a longer period of time staying unemployed.

So, if the government is subsidizing unemployment, no I do not think that's a good thing. I think it's very socially destructive.

MOYERS: Well, I obviously, as you know, disagree with so much of what you're saying, although I learn from people with whom I disagree more than I learn from people with whom I agree. I just cannot imagine what kind of society it would be if it is every man for himself.

ROCKWELL: Well, but it's not. I mean, that's, you know, that's the what the market brings about, social cooperation. We work together in company.

MOYERS: Didn't bring it to the 30s…

ROCKWELL: The 30s was of course a terrible time, brought about as a result of Federal Reserve inflations during the 1920's, and then the rotten Hoover Administration, which actually was the first part of the New Deal. So, we had again, exactly like in the 90s, we had a boom during the 20's, artificially generated by the Federal Reserve.

And yes, it caused immense human suffering. And again, the Roosevelt Administration, and the Hoover Administration, did everything wrong. It's almost — it was not their intention — but it was almost as if they set out to lengthen and prolong the Depression. And again, that we have Herbert Hoover Bush doing exactly the same thing now.

MOYERS: You are consistently against the warfare state and the welfare state, right?

ROCKWELL: Yes, sir.

MOYERS: But in this discussion, you've been so critical of the Republicans that… am I to assume you're going to enroll as a Democrat next year?

ROCKWELL: Well, you know, there's a professor at Harvard, Jeffrey Frankel, who's…

MOYERS: Yeah, I know Jeffrey.

ROCKWELL: …written a paper arguing that the two parties have switched positions ideologically, and that the Republican Party is, despite rhetoric, is today the party of big government, and the Democrats are the party of lesser government. It's very interesting.

I was raised a Republican. I suppose it bothers me more because they use some of the rhetoric that I believe in to cover up the opposite of what I believe in. So, it's, you know, we'll have to see. I mean, it's possible. If the Democrats are smart, they would indeed come out on a more pro-peace, smaller government side, and that of course is the history of the Democratic Party in the 19th century. It was the good party.

And the Republican Party, the party of Lincoln was a party of militarism, of aggressive war, of inflation, of big business, big government partnership, of suppression of civil liberties and all the other things we're all too familiar with.

MOYERS: There are people who would disagree with you that in the 1950's, the Democratic Party, which upheld slavery and segregation in the South was the good party.

ROCKWELL: Well, I think, you know, I'm not saying that any political party is all good. Obviously, there were bad things about the Democrats. And I wish George Washington hadn't owned slaves either. We've had this unfortunate business in our country for a very long time.

MOYERS: But with all due respect, you didn't answer my question. Are you going to enroll as a Democrat?

ROCKWELL: Well, no, because I must say I'm non-partisan. I don't like any of the parties. So, I also don't think politics, electoral politics is our salvation. I don't.

MOYERS: Well, where do people go, who want to be — who are morally and politically agents?

ROCKWELL: Well, I think, you know, if people want to be in politics, you know, that's their own business. It's just for me, it's not the right thing, and I think that we have to educate ourselves, and educate others about our own history, our real history, about what's actually going on these days, about real economics, and the principles of liberty. And I think that is: if we have any salvation, it's through that, and certainly in secular terms.

MOYERS: If people want to know more about your ideas and your work, what can they do?

ROCKWELL: Well, they can look at the Mises Institute web site. And that's M-I-S-E-S.org. And I have my own daily news site, too. It's lewrockwell.com. L-E-W, Rockwell.com.

MOYERS: Thank you very much, Lew Rockwell.

ROCKWELL: Oh, pleasure.

To learn more about the Future of Freedom Foundation, visit fff.org.

Tho and Jonathan discuss the supposedly transitory aspect of inflation, the overshadowing of economics by central planning, Keynesian economics, and more.

Purchase The Broken Window online at Mises.org/BWindow.

Cronyism: Liberty versus Power in Early America, 1607–1849 by Patrick Newman

"Cronyism from the Constitution to the Mexican-American War": Pete Quiñones interviews Patrick Newman

Jeff Deist and Bob Murphy discuss Mises's views on interventionism and their continued relevance today, particularly after the last year and a half of economic intervention resulting from covid tyranny.

"[Interventionism] preserves some of the labels and the outward appearance of capitalism. It maintains, seemingly and nominally, private ownership of the means of production, prices, wages, interest rates, and profits. In fact, however, nothing counts but the government’s unrestricted autocracy... This is socialism in the outward guise of capitalism. It is the Zwangswirtschaft of Hitler’s German Reich" —Ludwig von Mises, The Middle of the Road Leads to Socialism

Read the full text from Mises here.

Find more from David Gornoski on A Neighbor's Choice.

Does the expansion bill stand any chance in the house? How can conservatives be forward-looking instead of being reactionary all the time? Should we expect a scandal involving Ron DeSantis? What can we learn from Ludwig von Mises about the bureaucratic and working classes in our society?

Find more from David Gornoski on A Neighbor's Choice.

Find more from David Gornoski on A Neighbor's Choice.

Find more from David Gornoski on A Neighbor's Choice.

Find more from David Gornoski on A Neighbor's Choice.

Find more from David Gornoski on A Neighbor's Choice.

Find more from David Gornoski on A Neighbor's Choice.

Find more from David Gornoski on A Neighbor's Choice.

Find more from David Gornoski on A Neighbor's Choice.

Find more from David Gornoski on A Neighbor's Choice.

Find more from David Gornoski on A Neighbor's Choice.

Find more from David Gornoski on A Neighbor's Choice.

Find more from David Gornoski on A Neighbor's Choice.

Find more from David Gornoski on A Neighbor's Choice.

Find more from David Gornoski on A Neighbor's Choice.

Find more from David Gornoski on A Neighbor's Choice.

Find more from David Gornoski on A Neighbor's Choice.

Find more from David Gornoski on A Neighbor's Choice.

Find more from David Gornoski on A Neighbor's Choice.

Judge Andrew P. Napolitano, the Senior Legal Analyst for Fox News and a board member of the Mises Institute, joins Jeff Deist for an in-depth look at the legal crisis facing America in the wake of COVID-19 and ongoing civil unrest. Among the topics:

• What powers do Trump and governors have to quell protests or prevent the spread of disease? Are orders not authorized by legislatures flatly illegal? Do they carry the force of law?
• Can Trump call out National Guard or federal military forces without congressional approval or consent of governors?
• What does due process mean during a crisis? Do constitutional protections disappear when public health is at stake or mass protests overtake the streets?
• What level of constitutional scrutiny should apply to measures taken by governors and mayors—quarantines, business closures, curfews, police mobilizations?
• Are qualified immunity protections keeping dangerous cops and politicians from accountability? Will business owners be able to sue state or local governments for violating their rights?
• Is "property vs. lives" a false choice from a legal perspective? Do police have any affirmative duty to safeguard either?
• What roles do the Ninth and Tenth Amendments play—or should they play—in how various states deal with these crises? Is federalism poised for a resurgence?

This online seminar is a hard-hitting and uncompromising discussion of government malfeasance and lawlessness.

Is the world headed for another Great Depression, or will we enjoy a V-shaped recovery later this year as the virus fades and economies reopen? Are governments and central banks making the situation better or worse? Will stocks bounce back? Do we all face a less prosperous new normal, or will markets and human ingenuity overcome the economic tailwinds?

Mr. Lacalle and host Jeff Deist take an unflinching look at the economic reality.

Topics include:

• Prospects for inflation vs. deflation
• Fed and ECB responses to the crisis
• Effects of government "stimulus"
• Unemployment and small business
• Housing and commercial real estate
• Equities and bonds
• Oil and commodities
• Gold and Bitcoin

Original video © 2020 FOX News Network, LLC. Republished here under "Fair Use" for scholarship and research purposes by a nonprofit educational institution.

David Gornoski's A Neighbor's Choice Radio airs live Monday 7–9pm and Tuesday–Thursday 8–9pm ET on NewsRadio WFLA in Orlando, 93.1 FM and 540 AM

Join us in Texas this Saturday to meet Ms. Prins and receive an autographed copy of Collusion!

Originally broadcast on "The Ingraham Angle" hosted by Laura Ingraham on the Fox News Channel, 21 May 2018.

Dr. Joe Salerno recently addressed these questions in a comprehensive article entitled Mises on Nationalism, the Right of Self-Determination, and the Problem of Immigration. It's a very important piece, and one that every liberty-minded person should read.

In this studio interview, Jeff and Joe discuss Mises's writings on these perennially-timely topics.

Topics for this wide ranging interview include: booms and busts, private money, bitcoin, central banks, Brexit, protectionist policy under Trump, and trade barriers. 

Originally posted at Dushuren123.com/bookmov.

And for more, see Stossel's latest column at Townhall: 

Government programs almost never die.

Businesses in cozy relationships with government don't die either. Jeff Deist, president of the free-market Mises Institute, says when the housing bubble burst, banks should have been allowed to fail and put through "the bankruptcy and liquidation process."

Investors would have lost big, but that's OK, says Deist. "That's the difference between free-market capitalism and state capitalism. With state capitalism, there are upsides for the parties involved -- but no downsides."

Read the full column. 

Topics include: how drug prohibition causes homelessness, the rising heroin epidemic in America, the effects of American foreign policy on opiate supply, and the political lies behind drug prohibition.

See Dr. Thornton's recent article on the Heroin Epidemic here, and visit The Economics Detective website here. 

Visit The Scott Horton Show website by clicking here. 

Quotes discussed in the interview:

"The lowering of the rate of interest stimulates economic activity. Projects which would not have been thought "profitable" if the rate of interest had not been influenced by the manipulations of the banks, and which, therefore, would not have been undertaken, are nevertheless found "profitable" and can be initiated." -Ludwig Von Mises in The Austrian Theory of the Trade Cycle and Other Essays, Page 28

"The crisis and the ensuing period of depression are the culmination of the period of unjustified investment brought about by the extension of credit. The projects which owe their existence to the fact that they once appeared "profitable" in the artificial conditions created on the market by the extension of credit and the increase in prices which resulted from it, have ceased to be 'profitable.'" -Ludwig Von Mises in The Austrian Theory of the Trade Cycle and Other Essays, Page 30

You can find the original interview video here.

Read the Mises Daily article mentioned in the interview here. 

They also examine the negative impact of the minimum wage, and how fair wages are determined by the market.

You can read the Mises Daily article they review by clicking here.

Questions: 

• 2:25 - Most memorable moments teaching Austrian economics
• 11:11 - Do you think the impact (of the Mises Institute) has been significant?
• 16:52 - How many Mises Institutes are there at this point?
• 19:56 - Discussion of the development of Austrian Economics, starting with Mises escaping Austria during WWII 
• 24:46 - Further discussion on Austrian Economics breaking into the mainstream
• 29:07 - Discussion on civil unrest caused by the state
• 34:04 - Discussion of 'free trade' agreements from the quote: "All these free trade agreements are not free trade at all, but actually managed agreements. They're corporatist agreements."
• 37:45 - Discussion of China's foreign policy relative to the United States'

Dr. Thornton has recently written a Mises Daily article on this topic, which can be found here.

This is part one of a two part interview.