Free Markets

  • “Easy Money: Prelude to Recession” – Freeman

    “Why is the American economy plagued by recessions? The simplest way to answer this question is to focus our attention on individuals. Once we know why individual businessmen experience economic setbacks, we will have the key to understanding why the entire economy intermittently goes through periods of recession. A businessman suffers heavy losses when he…

  • “Can Government Manage the Economy?” – James Payne

    “For 98 years the federal government has been attempting to prevent asset bubbles, recessions, and spasms of unemployment. In 1913, Woodrow Wilson created the Federal Reserve System, telling the country that this new institution would be “a safeguard against business depressions.” In 1929, with the Fed in operation for 15 years, the United States plunged…

  • “Transcript: GOP Response From Rep. Paul Ryan” – NPR

    “Millions of families have fallen on hard times not because of our ideals of free enterprise — but because our leaders failed to live up to those ideals; because of poor decisions made in Washington and Wall Street that caused a financial crisis, squandered our savings, broke our trust, and crippled our economy. Today, a…

  • Liberty Forum and Freedom Dinner, November 9 & 10, 2010

    Join hundreds of freedom’s allies at the world’s largest gathering of free market champions from the United States and around the globe. Atlas’s annual Liberty Forum has become a “must-attend” event for members of the worldwide think tank community. Now in its 10th year and moved to November to complement our annual Freedom Dinner, the…

  • The German Miracle: Another Look

    Earlier this summer George Soros and some leading Keynesian economists criticized what they regarded as Germany’s overly strict fiscal discipline. Yet Germany’s real output expanded at a robust 9% annual rate in the second quarter, while the U.S. economy grew at an anemic 1.6% rate. So is Germany now a role model for how to…

  • “A Free-Market Monetary System”

    “When a little over two years ago, at the second Lausanne Conference of this group, I threw out, almost as a sort of bitter joke, that there was no hope of ever again having decent money, unless we took from government the monopoly of issuing money and handed it over to private industry, I took…

  • I, Pencil

    “I, Pencil, simple though I appear to be, merit your wonder and awe, a claim I shall attempt to prove. In fact, if you can understand me—no, that’s too much to ask of anyone—if you can become aware of the miraculousness which I symbolize, you can help save the freedom mankind is so unhappily losing.…

  • “Academia’s War Against Free Market Money”

    “In a confrontational and much-needed LewRockwell.com article, Prof. William Anderson launched a counter-attack against mainstream academic economists’ refusal to consider seriously the Austrian School’s theory of money. Despite the fact that Ludwig von Mises’ 1912 theory of money explains booms and busts better than rival theories, and despite the fact that Austrian School disciples predicted…

  • “Free Market Money – Instead of Political Manipulation”

    “Money is the most important commodity in an economic system Indeed, money ‘makes the world go ’round.’ This is because money is the general medium of exchange. We sell our products and services for money, and then use it to buy the products and services of others. Money also permits us to comparison shop. Since…

  • An Economy of Liars

    Free markets depend on truth telling. Prices must reflect the valuations of consumers; interest rates must be reliable guides to entrepreneurs allocating capital across time; and a firm’s accounts must reflect the true value of the business. Rather than truth telling, we are becoming an economy of liars. The cause is straightforward: crony capitalism. Thomas…

  • The Swinging Pendulum

    On Monday, April 5, the Future of Freedom Foundation and the George Mason University Econ Society hosted a lecture1 by Dr. Richard Ebeling, professor of economics at Northwood University and former president of the Foundation for Economic Education. Dr. Ebeling is an excellent speaker, eloquent and motivated, and this lecture did not disappoint. According to…

  • “Break Up the Banks”

    “Big banks are bad for free markets. Far from being engines of free enterprise, they are conducive to what might be called ‘crony capitalism,’ ‘corporatism,’ or, in Jonah Goldberg’s provocative phrase, ‘liberal fascism.’ There is a free-market case for breaking up large financial institutions: that our big banks are the product, not of economics, but…