Interviews

Consumer Protection: An Interview with Robert Murphy 2005

Robert P. Murphy · 1:00:17 · 20.7 MB · Recorded 14 June 2005

Murphy, a Hillsdale College economist, outlines free-market mechanisms for consumer protection. He argues regulators like the FDA are biased toward excessive caution, that licensing often protects producers rather than consumers, and that Hayekian and Misesian calculation problems make it impossible for regulators to set correct safety standards.

InterventionismLegal System

Read the transcript 10,270 words

The Economics and Politics of Education: An Interview with Robert Murphy 2005

Robert P. Murphy · 1:10:52 · 24.3 MB · Recorded 29 June 2005

Murphy critiques the public-goods case for compulsory, tax-funded schooling as not justifying it. He argues government control has produced ideological capture and weak outcomes, opposes vouchers as a means of extending state regulation into private schools, and describes how homeschooling, tutoring and market reputation could replace public education.

Political TheoryEducationTaxes and Spending

Read the transcript 12,185 words

An Interview with Friedrich Hayek: Part I

Friedrich A. Hayek · 1:32:21 · 21.1 MB

Hayek recalls the Austrian School's Vienna circles and his path to the London School of Economics. He describes Mises's private seminar at the Chamber of Commerce, disputes that antisemitism alone barred Mises from a professorship, and credits his fluent English and knowledge of English monetary history for winning him the LSE post that eluded Mises.

Austrian Economics OverviewBiographies

Read the transcript 10,199 words

An Interview with Friedrich Hayek: Part II

Friedrich A. Hayek · 1:11:27 · 16.4 MB

Hayek continues on interwar Vienna, his work The Sensory Order, and Austria's hyperinflation. He recounts Mises's hidden hand in ending that inflation through the League of Nations, his own Chicago post funded by the Volker Fund, and his break from Mises's rationalist utilitarianism toward a theory of cultural evolution.

Austrian Economics OverviewBiographies

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An Interview with Walter Block and Bill Barnett 2005

Walter Block · 1:13:48 · 12.7 MB · Recorded 28 November 2005

Block and Barnett, Loyola professors displaced by Katrina, describe writing roughly ten papers. They criticize FEMA for obstructing private relief such as Walmart's, argue Chicago School monetarists share Keynesian methodology, and outline papers questioning Hayek's triangle diagram and treating demand curves and time preference as non-mathematical concepts.

Austrian Economics Overview

Read the transcript 11,117 words

My Visit to DC: An Interview with Lew Rockwell 2005

Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr. · 57:47 · 13.2 MB · Recorded 10 December 2005

Rockwell recounts a Washington visit hosted by Ron Paul's Liberty Study Committee. He argues central banking has historically enabled wars by letting rulers print rather than tax for military spending, condemns the Iraq war's civilian toll, and praises China's market opening as a triumph of trade over war.

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The Path to Lower Gas Prices: Free Trade

Robert Karl Merting · 18:30 · 4.2 MB

Wofford senior Robert Karl Merting argues a federal tariff on imported gasoline raises pump prices. He traces the US refinery shortage since 1976 to environmental regulations favoring large incumbents, and says cutting the gasoline tariff to match oil's would let cheaper imports compete.

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An Interview with Joseph Salerno

Joseph T. Salerno · 37:13 · 8.5 MB

Salerno describes teaching entrepreneurship and the socialist calculation debate since 1989. He distinguishes teaching genuine Austrian theory from merely discussing Austrian themes, credits the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics with advancing the school, and describes research identifying two distinct Austrian traditions descending from Wieser and Boehm-Bawerk.

Read the transcript 5,453 words

An Interview with Jeffrey Herbener

Jeffrey M. Herbener · 33:02 · 7.6 MB

Herbener, a Grove City economist, discusses Mises's view that animals exhibit time preference. He credits Frank Fetter with purifying Boehm-Bawerk's capital theory, cites Salerno's article on Keynes's goal of eliminating interest through socializing investment, and describes Grove City's Mises archive, acquired in 1978, and plans to publish a volume of Mises's correspondence.

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An Interview with Walter Block 2006

Walter Block · 36:54 · 8.4 MB · Recorded 19 August 2006

Block discusses his book The Privatization of Roads and Highways, modeled on Hazlitt's Economics. He argues private road competition would cut the roughly 40,000 annual US road deaths, addresses the holdout problem through purchased options and tunnels that respect neighboring property rights, and describes Loyola's unusually large concentration of Austro-libertarian faculty.

Austrian Economics Overview

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An Interview with Guido Hülsmann

Jörg Guido Hülsmann · 31:48 · 7.3 MB

Hülsmann discusses a new introductory lecture on the division of labor for Austrian teaching. He connects Bastiat's economic harmonies to Mises's 1919 Nation, State, and Economy, and describes his forthcoming Mises biography and his book The Ethics of Money Production, which defines inflation as money produced through the violation of property rights.

Read the transcript 4,644 words

An Interview with David Gordon

David Gordon · 30:50 · 7.1 MB

Gordon, editor of the Mises Review, explains how he selects and evaluates books for review. He favors analyzing the structure of an argument over minor factual slips, holds popular works to a lower standard than scholarly ones, and recommends underread titles such as Mises's Bureaucracy and Omnipotent Government and Hayek's Counter-Revolution of Science.

Read the transcript 3,992 words

An Interview with George Reisman

George Reisman · 32:10 · 7.4 MB

Reisman argues environmentalism is driven by a hatred of human beings, not economic error alone. He recounts a trip to China illustrating capitalism's power to transform an economy, criticizes fair-trade coffee and Western aid to socialist states as counterproductive, and predicts globalization would sharply raise living standards worldwide if secure property rights take hold.

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An Interview with Mark Thornton

Mark Thornton · 39:13 · 62.6 MB

Thornton discusses using Rothbard's History of Money and Banking to teach history at Auburn. He compares Hurricane Katrina's levee failure to the Great Flood of 1927, argues that market lending and insurance discipline risky building practices, and describes his research tracing Adam Smith's invisible hand to Cantillon's essay.

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An Interview with Ralph Raico

Ralph Raico · 29:52 · 6.8 MB

Raico, a historian trained under Hayek, argues historians idolize statist and war-making presidents. He discusses the forgotten German liberal Eugen Richter, his own dissertation on Benjamin Constant and Tocqueville, revisionist work on World War I and Harry Truman, and his path from a Taft Republican to a radical libertarian under Rothbard's influence.

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An Interview with Thomas DiLorenzo 2006

Thomas J. DiLorenzo · 34:46 · 8.0 MB · Recorded 22 August 2006

DiLorenzo, promoting Lincoln Unmasked in New Orleans, blames the Army Corps for the city's flooding. He criticizes FEMA and post-9/11 government growth, previews his forthcoming book Hamilton's Curse on Hamiltonian central banking and protectionism, and argues the Constitution and the Civil War together destroyed the states' check on federal power.

Austrian Economics Overview

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Walter Block, Guest Appearance on "Our Story"

Walter Block · 55:56 · 112 MB

Block argues free markets punish mistakes through profit and loss, unlike government. He cites the botched government rescue during Katrina as proof, defends Wal-Mart and Microsoft as serving consumers voluntarily, and argues market competition, not government, would erode racial pay discrimination since employers seeking profit would hire underpaid black workers.

Read the transcript 7,270 words

Free Market Environmentalism, 1980s

Walter Block · 43:29 · 68.5 MB

Block explains his book on privatizing environmental resources as the answer to pollution. He proposes auctioned pollution rights and privatized lakes and forests, and argues the Exxon Valdez spill stemmed from anti-discrimination law and liability capped at the ship's value, not market failure.

Free Markets

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Environmentalism and Privatization

Walter Block · 9:23 · 13.8 MB

Block, then a Fraser Institute economist, argues privatizing resources would curb pollution. He reframes pollution as unpunished trespass under common law, cites rising elephant herds in African countries that granted local wildlife ownership rights, and argues a lake's private owner would weigh recreational against industrial bids rather than favoring either exclusively.

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Banning the Ivory Trade

Walter Block · 10:46 · 17.5 MB

Block, debating MP Patrick Boyer on TV, opposes a global ivory trade ban after Kenya burned tusks. He argues bans only raise ivory's black-market price and worsen poaching, and proposes privatizing elephant ownership, contrasting the near-extinct, commonly owned buffalo with the always-thriving, privately owned cow.

Read the transcript 1,611 words

'Post-Katrina' Radio Interview 2006

Walter Block · 33:04 · 7.6 MB · Recorded 21 December 2006

Block, on a post-Katrina call-in show, blames rising costs on ethanol mandates and Fed money. He defends high post-storm prices as a market signal that draws in relief supplies, citing Walmart trucks FEMA turned away, and opposes both proposed rent control and mortgage-relief bailouts as violations of free-market pricing.

The EnvironmentU.S. Economy

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Crime and Drugs

Walter Block · 13:55 · 25.0 MB

Block, on a New Orleans panel with a DEA agent, argues drug legalization would cut the murder rate. He compares drug prohibition to the violence of alcohol Prohibition and calls the Harrison Narcotics Act's origins anti-Chinese and its modern enforcement racially skewed, while his opponents warn legalization would create a new addicted underclass.

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Walter Block, Second Guest Appearance on "Our Story"

Walter Block · 56:33 · 104 MB

Block argues legalizing drugs, not using them, would cut New Orleans murders. He says legal drugs would fall from about $2,000 to $10 a week, ending the crime addicts commit to pay for them, much as ending alcohol Prohibition stopped mafia violence; guest Kimberly Parker counters that former dealers, lacking education and jobs, would simply turn to other crime.

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Interview with Mark Thornton

Mark Thornton · 19:32 · 3.4 MB

Thornton argues rising taxation and government income make shrinking government difficult. He cites a study finding Swedish living standards near Mississippi's, calls Europe's underreported unemployment a disguised depression, and describes France's roughly 70 percent tax burden fueling a black market, arguing private services outperform government monopolies.

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What Constitutes Price-Gouging in the Oil Industry?

Mark Thornton · 4:24 · 1.0 MB

This NPR report examines calls by Congress to penalize oil companies for price gouging. Economist Mark Thornton argues anti-gouging laws backfire, since keeping prices low during hurricane evacuations led stations to run out of gas and left later evacuees stranded, while economist Sam Peltzman finds no evidence of collusion behind rising prices.

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Abraham Lincoln 2008

Thomas J. DiLorenzo · 59:19 · 82.0 MB · Recorded 30 May 2008

DiLorenzo argues Lincoln fought an unnecessary war to crush secession, not to free the slaves. He cites the Corwin Amendment, the suspension of habeas corpus, and the Emancipation Proclamation's limited scope, and calls historians who idolize Lincoln, such as Doris Kearns Goodwin and Harry Jaffa, court historians.

BiographiesU.S. History

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Economics of Oil, Hurricane Katrina, and the Real Estate Bubble 2008

Walter Block · 45:04 · 10.3 MB · Recorded 10 July 2008

Block traces the spike in oil and gas prices to government causes, not speculation or greed. He blames OPEC, dollar inflation, and drilling restrictions; argues speculators stabilize rather than raise prices; defends Katrina-era price increases as a needed market signal; and attributes the housing bubble to Fed rate cuts and pressure on banks to lend without traditional collateral standards.

Booms and BustsThe EnvironmentGlobal Economy

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Defending the Undefendable: An Interview with Walter Block

Walter Block · 1:49:50 · 25.2 MB

Block defends anarcho-capitalism, arguing government itself violates the non-aggression axiom. He applies libertarian theory to private roads, wage disparities, Hurricane Katrina price gouging, common-law pollution suits, and drug and prostitution prohibition, and rejects intellectual property while praising Ron Paul's congressional record.

Read the transcript 15,882 words

Current Market Conditions: 30 Sept. 2008 2008

Frank Shostak · 28:50 · 9.9 MB · Recorded 1 October 2008

Shostak explains why Congress's rejection of the bailout will not stop the Fed from expanding money. He traces the crisis to Greenspan's 2001-2004 rate cuts, argues falling prices are a healthy correction rather than a danger, and predicts that banks hoarding reserves, as in Depression-era America and post-1990s Japan, will delay rather than prevent future inflation.

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Current Market Conditions: 2 Oct. 2008 2008

Joseph T. Salerno · 18:48 · 7.5 MB · Recorded 2 October 2008

Salerno, interviewed after the Senate passed a bailout bill, argues Washington remains Keynesian. He says tightening credit reflects markets correctly repricing risk rather than a genuine freeze, warns that raising deposit insurance limits worsens moral hazard, and traces the crisis partly to Bernanke's 2002 promise that the Fed could always prevent deflation.

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Current Market Conditions: 6 Oct. 2008 2008

Robert Higgs · 28:12 · 11.3 MB · Recorded 6 October 2008

Higgs compares the 2008 financial bailout to the interventions that deepened the Great Depression. He calls the bailout a moral-hazard reward for reckless lenders at taxpayer expense, traces the credit bubble partly to Fed policy easing the financing of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and warns a wider war could bring 1970s-style wage and price controls.

Financial MarketsU.S. Economy

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Current Market Conditions: 8 Oct. 2008 2008

Kevin Duffy · 19:44 · 7.9 MB · Recorded 8 October 2008

Duffy, co-founder of short-selling fund Bering Capital, says the bailout enriched connected banks. He describes the short-selling ban redirecting speculation into a commodities bubble that then collapsed, reports widespread public anger at the bailout across the political spectrum, and expresses hope the crisis marks the unraveling of the fiat monetary system created in 1913.

Financial MarketsGlobal Economy

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Current Market Conditions: 13 Oct. 2008 2008

Roger W. Garrison · 22:53 · 7.9 MB · Recorded 14 October 2008

Garrison, author of Time and Money, argues the crisis fits Austrian business cycle theory better. He traces the boom's malinvestment to interest-rate-sensitive sectors like housing and leased vehicles, criticizes the Federal Reserve's ad hoc, meeting-by-meeting rate setting, and warns that propping up bad loans with cheap credit only delays and deepens the eventual correction.

U.S. Economy

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Current Market Conditions: 13 Oct. 2008 2008

Frank Shostak · 13:27 · 4.6 MB · Recorded 13 October 2008

Shostak, interviewed after a massive one-day stock rally, doubts money pumping can create wealth. He argues bailouts transfer wealth from an already impoverished private sector to insolvent banks, cites Iceland's currency collapse as a warning, and expects coordinated central bank money printing to keep major currencies depreciating together rather than the dollar alone losing reserve status.

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The Bailout, Libertarian Principles and Solutions

Walter Block · 1:02:43 · 14.4 MB

Block argues bailouts create moral hazard by rewarding reckless risk-taking. He blames the financial crisis on Community Reinvestment Act pressure for risky mortgage lending and on Alan Greenspan's artificially low interest rates, defines libertarianism as opposition to initiating force, and calls for a laissez-faire response with no bailouts or regulation.

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Current Market Conditions: 14 Oct. 2008 2008

Jesus Huerta de Soto · 35:41 · 12.3 MB · Recorded 15 October 2008

Huerta de Soto discusses his book Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles as the crisis unfolds. He dates the bubble to the Federal Reserve's 2001 response to the dot-com bust, argues fractional reserve banking is inherently crisis-prone, proposes 100 percent reserve requirements and privatized commodity money, and describes Spain's parallel real estate bust under the euro.

Financial MarketsU.S. Economy

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Current Market Conditions: 21 Oct. 2008 2008

Robert P. Murphy · 38:17 · 13.1 MB · Recorded 21 October 2008

Murphy defends Austrian business cycle theory against rational-expectations objections. He attributes the 2008 crash to Fed-driven malinvestment, defends falling prices and tighter lending as a necessary correction, and criticizes bailout rhetoric and the Depression-era wage rigidity that prolonged unemployment.

Read the transcript 6,334 words

Hamilton's Curse

Thomas J. DiLorenzo · 18:56 · 4.3 MB

DiLorenzo discusses Hamilton's Curse, casting Hamilton as architect of American crony capitalism. He traces Hamilton's tying of wealthy bondholders to expansive government, contrasts this with Jefferson's limited-government vision, and links Hamiltonian central banking directly to the Wall Street bailout.

Read the transcript 2,516 words

Current Market Conditions: 22 Oct. 2008 2008

Frank Shostak · 13:52 · 4.8 MB · Recorded 22 October 2008

Shostak argues the Fed's monetary expansion under Bernanke fails to halt the 2008 market decline. He contends decades of malinvestment have destroyed real savings, dismisses market psychology as a symptom rather than a cause, and cites Anna Schwartz's criticism of Bernanke's money pumping as vindicating the Austrian view that markets should be left to adjust.

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Current Market Conditions: 28 Oct. 2008 2008

George A. Selgin · 37:50 · 13.0 MB · Recorded 29 October 2008

Selgin discusses his book on private copper and silver coinage in industrializing Britain. He explains how privately issued coins were often heavier and harder to counterfeit than official currency, reframes Gresham's Law as arising only from government-enforced parity, and describes how Parliament suppressed private coinage to protect its own coinage monopoly rather than for quality or revenue reasons.

Financial MarketsU.S. Economy

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Current Market Conditions: 5 Nov. 2008 2008

Mark Thornton · 29:52 · 10.2 MB · Recorded 5 November 2008

Thornton argues the Federal Reserve, not housing policy, caused the 2008 housing bubble and bust. He cites the failure of housing to decline during the 2001 recession and expansion across every measure of the money supply as evidence, and argues Greenspan and Bernanke's public reassurances fostered a too-big-to-fail psychology that fueled reckless lending.

Read the transcript 2,666 words

Political Correctness

Walter Block · 26:22 · 6.0 MB

Block defends a talk that drew a faculty apology from Loyola Maryland's economics department. He cites the near-vanishing wage gap among unmarried 18 to 24 year olds, argues men are overrepresented at both extremes of ability using jail and genius statistics, and criticizes campus political correctness and drugging schoolboys with Ritalin.

Read the transcript 3,204 words

Hayek on 'Meet the Press'

Friedrich A. Hayek · 20:16 · 13.9 MB

Hayek warns on Meet the Press that ending inflation requires tolerating high unemployment. He blames American inflation on Keynesian demand-management policy, predicts Britain's soaring inflation will force a painful reckoning, and recommends equities as a hedge.

Read the transcript 2,784 words

Current Market Conditions 2008

Mark Thornton · 39:04 · 13.4 MB · Recorded 15 December 2008

Thornton walks through the Mises Institute's financial markets data page and True Money Supply. He reads recession signals in oil price spikes, the federal funds rate, unemployment, and savings data, and contrasts today's chronic budget deficits and ballooning national debt with the deficit-free era before the United States left the gold standard.

Read the transcript 4,364 words

Current Market Conditions: 6 Jan. 2009 2009

Frank Shostak · 17:02 · 5.8 MB · Recorded 6 January 2009

Shostak warns that Bernanke's expansion of the Fed's balance sheet is setting up future inflation. He argues the Fed misdiagnoses falling prices as the disease rather than a symptom of malinvestment, predicts runaway inflation once bank lending revives, and compares the policy unfavorably to Japan's failed post-1990s money pumping.

Read the transcript 2,260 words

Current Market Conditions: 15 Jan. 2009 2009

Robert A. Lawson · 35:01 · 12.0 MB · Recorded 16 January 2009

Lawson, a new Auburn economics professor, argues financial markets are heavily regulated. He blames federal housing policy through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for the crisis, and cites the 1988 ban on lawn darts, which killed three people in millions sold, to argue consumer-safety regulators cannot know what risks are worth taking on someone else's behalf.

Financial MarketsGlobal Economy

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Free Markets: An Interview with Walter Block

Walter Block · 42:37 · 9.8 MB

Block argues FEMA blocked private relief after Katrina, and government levees caused flooding. He compares Obama's bailouts and stimulus to FDR's New Deal, traces the mortgage crisis to 1992 Boston Fed pressure on banks over redlining, defends high CEO pay as checked by market discipline such as Michael Milken's takeovers, and calls for privatizing roads, highways, and oceans.

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Meltdown: An Interview with Tom Woods

Thomas E. Woods, Jr. · 41:45 · 9.6 MB

Woods, promoting his book Meltdown, argues Fed rate suppression, not greed, caused the housing bust. He traces earlier panics to chartered banks with similar money-creation privileges, argues free markets outperform welfare states like Sweden at aiding the poor, and ties a central bank's war-financing power, as in Vietnam and Iraq, to anti-war politics.

Read the transcript 4,997 words

Against Intellectual Monopoly 2009

Michele Boldrin · 31:29 · 12.6 MB · Recorded 26 March 2009

Boldrin argues patents and copyrights restrict competition and slow growth, not reward innovation. He cites Watt's steam engine patent, which halted improvements in engine efficiency for 25 years, and aspirin's unpatented success, and says imitation, not monopoly, drives most economic progress.

Capital and Interest TheoryPrivate Property

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Free Markets: An Interview with Joseph T. Salerno

Joseph T. Salerno · 35:43 · 8.2 MB

Salerno explains calculation is impossible under socialism, illustrating with Soviet shortages. He traces the financial crisis to the Fed's creation of two trillion dollars between 2001 and 2005, argues for returning to a gold standard as sound rather than stable money, and predicts a drift toward socialism as Keynesian stimulus fails intellectually.

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Free Markets: An Interview with Robert P. Murphy

Robert P. Murphy · 43:35 · 10.0 MB

Murphy compares Bush to Hoover and Obama to FDR under a false laissez-faire label. He attributes 1930s mass unemployment to Hoover's wage-rigidity policy, blames the 2008 crash on Fed-driven malinvestment, and predicts continued stagnation and eventual inflation from unprecedented Fed money creation and expanding bank and auto-industry bailouts.

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Scott Horton Interviews Walter Block 2009

Walter Block · 25:28 · 5.9 MB · Recorded 19 June 2009

Block argues for anarchism, contending free markets, not a state, keep a society safe from conquest. He applies private property theory to species depletion, contrasting farmed cattle's abundance with the near extinction of unowned buffalo, elephants, and ocean fish, and argues private insurance-backed navies would protect shipping better than public ones.

Read the transcript 3,922 words

Free Markets: An Interview with David Gordon

David Gordon · 42:28 · 9.7 MB

Gordon explains Rothbard's ethical case against taxation, the draft, and minimum wage laws. He also describes Rothbard's split from Mises over whether free-market conclusions rest on value-free economics or objective ethics, Rothbard's path from limited-government views to anarcho-capitalism, and his complicated friendship with Ayn Rand.

Read the transcript 5,266 words

Free Markets: An Interview with Thomas E. Woods, Jr.

Thomas E. Woods, Jr. · 32:13 · 7.4 MB

Woods argues Federal Reserve rate cuts, not free markets, caused the housing bubble and crash. He blames Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and political pressure for risky lending; contrasts the fast, hands-off recovery from the 1920-21 depression with the prolonged 1930s intervention; and calls for auditing and abolishing the Federal Reserve.

Read the transcript 5,128 words

Scott Horton Interviews Thomas E. Woods, Jr. 2009

Thomas E. Woods, Jr. · 20:32 · 4.7 MB · Recorded 27 June 2009

Woods discusses Melman's research on how military spending diverted scientists from production. He cites the American machine tool industry's decline once the Pentagon became its top customer, argues defense spending is economically parasitic and inflates GDP figures misleadingly, and applies Bastiat's seen-and-unseen argument to military budgets.

Political TheoryWar and Foreign Policy

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Libertarianism: Is it Conservatism’s Future?

Walter Block · 49:38 · 11.4 MB

Block explains how libertarianism differs from conservatism on drug and prostitution legalization. He blames economic illiteracy, seen in Katrina price-gouging arrests, on an evolved instinct favoring small groups over markets, criticizes bailouts like AIG's Goldman payments, and calls unions incompatible with libertarianism when picketing replacements.

Read the transcript 7,855 words

Can We Have a World Without Taxes? 2009

Walter Block · 16:06 · 3.7 MB · Recorded 21 August 2009

Block, interviewed amid anger over British Columbia's new HST, argues all taxes are compulsion. He proposes privatizing roads and healthcare to bring competitive discipline, calls public-private partnerships a form of fascism, and credits Ayn Rand's lectures with converting him from socialism to libertarianism.

Read the transcript 2,812 words

Man, Economy, and Liberty 2009

Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr. · 14:05 · 4.8 MB · Recorded 18 November 2009

Rockwell recounts organizing the festschrift Man, Economy, and Liberty for Rothbard's 60th birthday. He describes contributors including Hoppe's first essay on argumentation ethics, recalls Margit von Mises's and JoAnn Rothbard's tributes at the surprise dinner, and credits Henry Hazlitt's bequest with sustaining the young Mises Institute.

History of the Austrian School of EconomicsBiographies

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The Continuing Housing Bust 2010

Doug French · 25:30 · 8.8 MB · Recorded 20 January 2010

French says falling housing starts and prices are a healthy correction, not something to reverse. He discusses rising strategic defaults on underwater mortgages, credit score inflation, spillover into commercial real estate, and argues near-zero interest rates discourage bank lending rather than spur it.

Read the transcript 3,176 words

That Hayek-Keynes Rap Video 2010

John Papola · 18:02 · 6.3 MB · Recorded 15 March 2010

Papola describes making the Hayek-Keynes rap video and releasing it free on YouTube. He explains that open distribution built its audience faster than a paywall would have, and recounts how the recent boom and bust and Ron Paul drew him into Austrian economics before he wrote its lyrics drawing on Mises, Hayek, and Garrison.

Austrian Economics OverviewBiographiesMedia and Culture

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Privatizing Rivers, Voluntary Slave Contracts, Environmentalism 2010

Walter Block · 17:15 · 4.0 MB · Recorded 14 May 2010

Block argues privatizing the Mississippi and the Gulf would beat government ownership. He blames the 2008 crisis on Fed-driven malinvestment rather than Wall Street greed, contrasts Keynesian demand management with the Austrian self-regulating market, and defends legal drugs, prostitution, and even hypothetical voluntary slave contracts as consensual acts.

Private PropertyThe EnvironmentFree Markets

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Is Statism Safer for the Environment? 2010

Walter Block · 6:21 · 42.2 MB · Recorded 2 June 2010

Block, questioned by Judge Napolitano, argues caps on BP's spill liability created the moral hazard. He contends private enterprise faces market feedback for failure that agencies like FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers escape, and proposes private ownership of the Gulf of Mexico with full, uncapped liability as the free-market remedy.

The EnvironmentFree Markets

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The Impact of the BP Oil Spill

Walter Block · 7:08 · 1.9 MB

Block discusses the economic fallout of the BP oil spill on Louisiana's fishing and oil jobs. He blames government restrictions that pushed drilling into more dangerous deep water, holds BP primarily responsible, and compares the disaster's aftermath to the Army Corps of Engineers' failures during Katrina.

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Pictures of the Socialistic Future 2010

Bryan Caplan · 22:38 · 7.9 MB · Recorded 13 July 2010

Caplan discusses Richter's dystopian novel Pictures of the Socialistic Future. He highlights Richter's prediction, decades early, of Berlin Wall-style shootings of emigrants, and argues the novel's account that its socialist founders were sincerely bad from the outset, differs from Acton's power-corrupts and Hayek's worst-rise-to-the-top theories.

Read the transcript 3,972 words

An Interview with Thomas E. Woods, Jr. 2010

Thomas E. Woods, Jr. · 26:00 · 273 MB · Recorded 16 July 2010

Woods explains nullification, letting states refuse to enforce laws they judge unconstitutional. Interviewer Susan Modaris and Woods trace the idea to Jefferson and Virginia's ratification debates, and Woods argues his book Nullification answers a real grassroots movement and that competing state jurisdictions serve liberty better than a single national government.

InterventionismBig GovernmentLegal SystemTaxes and Spending

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The Economy: What's Next?

Walter Block · 20:47 · 5.0 MB

Block, in a call-in radio interview, argues the United States is in a depression. He blames the Jones Act and FEMA for blocking BP oil-spill relief, describes libertarianism as neither left nor right, favors privatizing roads, and advises listeners to hold gold and silver and consider moving to a freer country.

Read the transcript 3,126 words

The Roots of Nullification

Thomas E. Woods, Jr. · 20:16 · 4.9 MB

Woods explains Jefferson's nullification, under which states refuse unconstitutional laws. He cites historical cases, including the Fugitive Slave Act, alongside modern examples such as state resistance to the Real ID Act and California's continued allowance of medical marijuana, arguing that mass state refusal can defang federal enforcement.

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How the BP Spill is Not a Failure of Free Markets

Walter Block · 44:08 · 10.2 MB

Block argues the BP Gulf oil spill stems from government ownership and regulatory failure. He proposes privatizing the Gulf and rivers like the Mississippi through shareholder corporations to align safety with liability, criticizes the Jones Act and Obama's drilling moratorium, and extends his homesteading argument to Arctic oil claims.

Read the transcript 6,243 words

The New Deal: History, Economics, and Law

Thomas E. Woods, Jr. · 7:45 · 33.6 MB

Woods describes his Mises Academy course covering the New Deal's economics, history, and law. He plans to examine the stock market crash, Austrian business cycle theory, Herbert Hoover's policies, Roosevelt's programs, and Supreme Court cases, arguing that close study of the actual numbers undercuts the claim that the New Deal was an economic success.

Read the transcript 1,434 words

An Essay on Economic Theory 2010

Mark Thornton · 29:18 · 10.1 MB · Recorded 28 August 2010

Thornton discusses his new translation of Cantillon's Essay on Economic Theory. He describes restoring the word entrepreneur in place of the older translation's undertaker, tracing Cantillon's influence on Adam Smith's invisible hand, and the six years spent with a French co-translator resolving obscure eighteenth-century French references.

Biographies

Read the transcript 4,316 words

We Who Dared to Say No to War

Thomas E. Woods, Jr. · 30:23 · 319 MB

Woods discusses his anthology We Who Dared Say No to War, co-edited with Murray Polner. He traces his own shift from supporting the 1991 Gulf War to opposing US wars generally, describes recurring wartime propaganda from 1812 through Iraq and Afghanistan, and argues the unaudited military budget diverts research talent from universities and civilian innovation.

Read the transcript 5,423 words

Rethinking Intellectual Property: History, Theory, and Economics 2010

Stephan Kinsella · 25:10 · 8.7 MB · Recorded 9 October 2010

Kinsella previews his Mises Academy course arguing patent and copyright are not property rights. He traces copyright's origins to church and state censorship of the printing press and patents to Francis Drake's crown-granted piracy license, and argues China's growth has benefited from weak intellectual property enforcement.

Philosophy and MethodologyPrivate PropertyValue and Exchange

Read the transcript 4,152 words

Scott Horton Interviews Robert P. Murphy 2010

Robert P. Murphy · 20:11 · 7.0 MB · Recorded 28 October 2010

Murphy argues the US economy remains fragile and inflationary rather than recovering. He cites producer price data showing crude goods up over 20 percent year over year, contends bailouts and Federal Reserve policy favor large incumbent firms over competitors, and argues Bush and Obama pursued essentially the same interventionist economic policies.

Read the transcript 2,982 words

Like Saving Ten Cents on a Trip to the Moon 2011

Thomas E. Woods, Jr. · 10:32 · 3.7 MB · Recorded 15 February 2011

Woods, discussing his book Rollback, dismisses Obama's budget as trivial next to the national debt. He calls the Social Security trust fund an accounting gimmick funded by IOUs that require taxing citizens twice, cites Sweden's retreat from its welfare-state model, and praises Rand Paul's proposed cut as a rare serious budget plan.

Read the transcript 1,718 words

The Economics of Sports 2011

Frank Daumann · 19:11 · 6.7 MB · Recorded 28 February 2011

Daumann discusses his book on the economics of sports, focusing on Germany. He argues state subsidies, tax breaks, and TV-rights monopolies distort German sports markets, disputes empirical claims for external benefits, and says a free market would let unpopular sports decline while soccer dominates.

Read the transcript 2,334 words

Rollback: An Interview with Thomas E. Woods, Jr.

Thomas E. Woods, Jr. · 52:06 · 15.0 MB

Woods discusses his book Rollback, arguing unfunded entitlements will force drastic government cuts. He cites Social Security and Medicare obligations near $114 trillion, criticizes Obamacare, TARP, and too-big-to-fail banking, and calls for radically shrinking or eliminating the Federal Reserve.

Read the transcript 7,064 words

An Austrian Take on Bernanke and Fed Policy

Mark Thornton · 13:04 · 4.6 MB

Thornton contrasts Austrian and Keynesian views of Fed policy after Bernanke's press conference. He says Bernanke's academic work defending bank bailouts predicted his later Fed actions, criticizes the CPI for excluding food and energy, and blames Fed-driven easy money for rising oil prices and recessions.

Read the transcript 2,227 words

The Economy and Drugs 2011

Mark Thornton · 1:04:21 · 14.8 MB · Recorded 11 May 2011

Thornton, a Mises Institute fellow, discusses the economics of drug prohibition with a radio host. He argues prohibition creates black markets, more dangerous products, and organized crime, advocates full drug legalization paired with cutting the social safety net, and warns that deficit spending and Fed money creation risk hyperinflation, calling gold and silver insurance rather than investment.

Read the transcript 8,881 words

The Debt Ceiling 2011

Mark Thornton · 1:04:21 · 14.7 MB · Recorded 21 May 2011

Thornton argues drug prohibition raises potency, crime and violence rather than reducing use. He advocates full legalization of all drugs alongside eliminating the social safety net, and briefly warns that mounting government deficits and Fed bond purchases raise the risk of future hyperinflation.

Read the transcript 9,257 words

Tom Woods Guest Hosts the Peter Schiff Show 2011

Thomas E. Woods, Jr. · 1:18:52 · 27.2 MB · Recorded 14 October 2011

Guest hosting the Peter Schiff Show, Woods critiques Herman Cain's Federal Reserve record. Napolitano discusses civil liberties and the Patriot Act from his book, Thompson critiques neoconservative foreign policy, and callers raise an Article V convention, deflation, and Ron Paul's stance on Iran.

Read the transcript 11,847 words

What's Wrong With Keynes?

G. P. Manish · 20:17 · 9.8 MB

Manish explains Keynes's claim that markets are inherently unstable and need government demand. He argues from an Austrian view that Federal Reserve credit expansion, not sudden pessimism, causes the malinvestment behind booms and busts, that idle resources have alternative uses and remain scarce, and that government intervention, not market forces, prolongs recessions.

Read the transcript 3,504 words

So Where’s the Inflation? 2013

Mark Thornton · 7.4 MB · Recorded 16 April 2013

Thornton explains why Fed money creation has not shown up in consumer prices. He argues the new money is flowing into banks, bonds, stocks, and real estate rather than consumer goods, and separately discusses Germany's request to repatriate its gold from the Federal Reserve.

Read the transcript 3,244 words

Bitcoin 2013

Mark Thornton · 5:15 · 1.9 MB · Recorded 31 May 2013

Thornton explains Bitcoin as a digital currency competing with depreciating government money. He describes its capped, increasingly difficult-to-mine supply, notes a federal seizure of a major Bitcoin exchange's assets, and expects government efforts to tax Bitcoin capital gains and require user registration.

Monetary TheoryValue and ExchangeMoney and Banks

Read the transcript 784 words

Prohibition Caused the Greatness of Gatsby 2013

Mark Thornton · 34:51 · 8.5 MB · Recorded 17 June 2013

Thornton argues Prohibition-era black markets, not its parties, drive the plot of The Great Gatsby. He describes pharmacies that legally sold medicinal whiskey as a loophole exploited during alcohol prohibition, draws a parallel to marijuana laws today, and cites Prohibition-era data showing the murder rate doubled and then fell after repeal.

InterventionismMedia and Culture

Read the transcript 4,206 words

The Rise and Fall of the Dollar

Mark Thornton · 29:24 · 10.6 MB

Thornton warns Federal Reserve inflationary policy is eroding the dollar's reserve currency status. Discussing Barry Eichengreen's book Exorbitant Privilege, he cites China's shift from dollars to gold, Germany's stalled request to repatriate gold from the New York Fed, and tensions over Syria as signs a dollar crisis could disrupt trade and social order.

Read the transcript 4,438 words

Unintended Consequences of NSA Spying 2013

Mark Thornton · 5:27 · 2.4 MB · Recorded 19 June 2013

Thornton argues NSA's PRISM program cannot prevent attacks, only clean up after them. He says NSA claims about prevented attacks have shifted and some plots were FBI/CIA setups, that private individuals and cameras, not the government, typically solve such crimes as with the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, and that the $10 billion program is unconstitutional and drives technology jobs overseas.

Big Government

Read the transcript 873 words

Big Brother 2013

Mark Thornton · 21:23 · 7.9 MB · Recorded 20 June 2013

Thornton defends Edward Snowden as a patriot for exposing the NSA's PRISM surveillance program. He argues government regulation, including the financial oversight that failed to catch Bernie Madoff's fraud, cannot keep pace with complex markets, and warns the surveillance revelations are pushing skilled graduates to seek jobs overseas.

InterventionismBig GovernmentWar and Foreign Policy

Read the transcript 2,819 words

The NSA's Spying and Why It Matters 2013

Mark Thornton · 23:27 · 8.6 MB · Recorded 21 June 2013

Thornton argues the NSA's bulk collection of records, exposed by Snowden, is unconstitutional. He cites contradictory testimony on thwarted terrorist plots, defends Snowden against Dick Cheney's charge of treason, and argues that trading liberty for security mainly benefits defense contractors and big banks.

InterventionismBig GovernmentThe Police State

Read the transcript 3,464 words

Bitcoins, Greenbacks, and the Fed

Mark Thornton · 56:02 · 19.2 MB

Thornton explains Bitcoin's mining mechanics and compares it to Civil War-era greenback dollars. He recounts how wartime money printing caused inflation and a postwar deflationary gold redemption, links fiat currency to war finance and the 1913 founding of the Federal Reserve, and restates his Iron Law of Prohibition, under which drug bans push production toward more potent, more organized black markets.

Read the transcript 6,012 words

As the Bubble Bursts 2013

Mark Thornton · 16:18 · 6.1 MB · Recorded 25 June 2013

Thornton describes a renewed housing bubble driven by funds buying foreclosed homes with Fed credit. He points to rising long-term interest rates and foreign central banks favoring gold over US bonds as signs the dollar is losing its reserve-currency dominance, and endorses DiLorenzo's critique of Milton Friedman as an enabler of crony capitalism.

Monetary TheoryBooms and BustsU.S. Economy

Read the transcript 2,486 words

Why Central Bankers Are Liars

Mark Thornton · 26:51 · 9.8 MB

Thornton says central bankers, especially Bernanke, cannot be trusted to mean what they say. He says the Fed's quantitative easing pushed savers into riskier assets, calls the Goldman Sachs alumni running economic policy evidence of crony capitalism, notes central banks worldwide are net gold buyers, and advises holding gold and silver as insurance, not for profit.

Read the transcript 3,888 words

More Bank Runs in Our Future?

Joseph T. Salerno · 9:58 · 98.5 MB

Salerno explains how the panic became a run on shadow-banking short-term funding. He warns of a renewed housing bubble, favors Congressional oversight of the Fed over unaccountable bureaucrats, and proposes barring Fed open-market purchases and repealing legal tender laws so currencies like bitcoin could discipline the dollar.

Read the transcript 1,548 words

The Tip of the Financial Iceberg 2013

Mark Thornton · 7:33 · 70.0 MB · Recorded 29 June 2013

Thornton argues NSA surveillance exposed by Snowden threatens financial markets via insider trading. He also warns that Japan's currency devaluation exemplifies a beggar thy neighbor policy risking trade conflict, and that Federal Reserve purchases of long term bonds could leave it technically insolvent if long term interest rates keep rising.

Big GovernmentThe FedFinancial Markets

Read the transcript 1,167 words

The Free Market

Mark Thornton · 41:25 · 14.3 MB

Thornton of the Mises Institute discusses Mises and Hayek's lives and ideas, and deficit spending. He argues prohibition of any kind, using alcohol Prohibition as the model, breeds organized crime and social decay, and that repeal, not enforcement, historically resolved it.

Read the transcript 5,274 words

Bitcoin Boom?

Mark Thornton · 1:46 · 19.1 MB

A news segment reports a Senate committee investigating Bitcoin after its price passed 200 dollars. Economist Thornton says the Federal Reserve and Treasury are concerned that virtual currencies will siphon long-run demand away from the US dollar.

Read the transcript 187 words

Higher Rates are Coming

Mark Thornton · 11:08 · 5.6 MB

Thornton argues bond yields signal markets breaking free of Fed suppression of interest rates. He explains why the bond market, roughly ten times larger than the stock market, underlies pensions and most real assets, and predicts continued central bank money printing will push global investors away from the dollar toward higher rates and falling stock and bond prices.

Read the transcript 1,454 words

Inflation and Austrian Economics 2013

Mark Thornton · 21:26 · 7.9 MB · Recorded 28 August 2013

Thornton explains how Federal Reserve money printing gets exported abroad as other banks devalue. He cites Japan's self-defeating yen depreciation and rising trade deficit as an example, distinguishes the Austrian definition of inflation as monetary expansion from government-measured price inflation, and warns two trillion dollars in bank excess reserves could unleash sharp price rises if lent out.

Capital and Interest TheoryMoney and BankingValue and ExchangeBooms and Busts

Read the transcript 2,670 words