Articles

Brownstone Institute Articles, News, Research, and Commentary on public health, science, economics, & social theory

Ben Bernanke Was the Crisis

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Left alone, recessions are the cure. The problem was that the political class tried to medicate what was healthy.  Bernanke fell hard for the medication part. Fast forward to 2008, a falling dollar under the impressively inept President George W. Bush had instigated what Ludwig von Mises referred to in Human Action as a “flight to the real.” Yes, presidents get the dollar they want, Bush wanted a weak one, and a falling dollar drove massive consumption of housing over investment in new ideas.  

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Australia Will Not Move On Until There Is Justice 

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We’re already seeing prominent perpetrators and collaborators claiming to have, and to have always had, reservations about what happened. They are trying to create for themselves a revisionist backstory that absolves them from their abominable conduct. These perpetrators and collaborators cannot be redeemed without confession. That they must be forgiven is not in question, but apologies to and restitution for their victims are essential.

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Inflation and Recession are Becoming Entrenched

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A bad stagflation is here. Since the Fed will be locked in a battle to tame the price side of the equation even as real output falters for months and years to come, we seriously doubt that the economic contraction to be recorded on Joe Biden’s watch will be described in the history books as a “very slight recession.”

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Cultural Differences Between Scandinavia and the US Could Account for Pandemic Approaches

By / / , / 21 minute read / Articles
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They’ve apologized for killing the mink, which is another interesting thing about Denmark, the apologies. Which I love, even though it’s a little bitter, because like a lot of these things they should have known from the beginning. They also apologized for the child vaccinations by saying, “you know, we were wrong.” Well, they said it, and I think that’s part of the reason trust is so high in Scandinavia, it’s like a partnership between public health and the people. ~ Tracy Beth Hoeg

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Colbert, Fauci, and the Externalization of Mental Illness

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Life is hard. Everyone I know bears some burden or other. Most do so with equanimity and dignity, and without victimizing others. It’s been deeply wrong—and extremely selfish—for Colbert, Fauci and their groupies to have externalized their mental unwellness on hundreds of millions of others by insisting on society-wide, lastingly destructive Coronavirus interventions.

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The Work of Human Hands

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While people stayed in houses, sewage plants and wastewater treatment facilities continued to operate. People had to work at power plants to supply electricity to homes. Hands had built cellphone towers and satellites to enable phone and Internet reception. More hands maintained the towers and satellites. Before 2020, we may not have remembered or seen these real people with real hands doing real work in the physical world. Their lives mattered then and they matter now – even while many others stayed home or are still staying home. 

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What is Populism?

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Political discourse abounds with waywardness in word usage. It’s something you do not want to fall into. Falling into it has two sides, passive and active. The passive vice is going along with the wayward word usage in the discourse you read or listen to. The active vice is discoursing waywardly yourself. Try to be neither sap nor perp of word waywardness. 

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A Nobel Prize for Moral Hazard

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This is what the “experts” have done to the world, a crisis that began in the laboratories of intellectuals who believe they know a better way than freedom to manage the world. Now the rest of us are forced to watch as they all give awards to each other for a job well done, thus adding another layer of moral hazard: there are literally no professional consequences for being terribly wrong.

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