Peter's Blog

Introductory economics courses teach students that money serves three functions, a medium of exchange, a unit of account, and a store of value, but they rarely explain why money came to serve those roles in the first place. Following the Austrian School of economics, the medium of exchange function is primary and logically prior, while […]

The Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, PCE, has now come in above its 2 percent target for 65 consecutive months, with core PCE running at 3.3 percent year over year in July and CPI up 3.4 percent through August. The dollar has lost 28 percent of its purchasing power since January 2020, and with wages falling […]

Commentators have labeled the divide between soaring asset prices and stagnant wages the “K-shaped economy,” but slapping a name on the pattern is not the same as explaining it. The real driver is the Cantillon effect: new money enters the economy through the banking system first, inflating the assets held disproportionately by the wealthy while […]

Long-term Treasury yields are surging to levels not seen in decades, with the 10-year climbing above 4.9 percent and the 30-year above 5.3 percent, as investors brace for a flood of new government debt. Fiscal year 2026’s cumulative deficit has already reached $1.79 trillion, the largest outside the Covid era, while the national debt closes […]

As Washington continues piling up debt, deficits, and monetary intervention, meaningful reform is increasingly unlikely to come from the federal level, pushing the real action down to the states. Florida offers an imperfect but instructive model of lower taxation, spending restraint, and sound money, including its move to recognize gold and silver as legal tender, […]

Former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke is celebrated for the unprecedented interventions that supposedly saved the economy from depression after the 2008 financial meltdown, expanding the Fed’s role well beyond its traditional purchase of short-term treasury bills into buying private stocks, mortgage securities, and long-term government debt. Rather than allowing the malinvestments of the housing boom […]

Monetary authorities increasingly argue for eliminating physical cash altogether, citing tax evasion, the shadow economy, and the instability caused when people run for cash during a crisis. But money is a commodity that emerged through voluntary market selection, not something a central bank can conjure by decree, and abolishing cash strikes at the medium of […]

Mainstream economists insist that recessions can only be cured by increasing government spending, a doctrine popularized by Keynes and his followers and defended even by prominent economists who have only half-jokingly suggested manufacturing crises to justify it. Murray Rothbard’s Austrian analysis turns this on its head, showing that government intervention prolongs downturns by further distorting […]

California’s proposed billionaire tax promises to raise $100 billion by taxing the state’s wealthiest residents, but Sweden and Colombia already ran this experiment for decades, and both saw wealth taxes chronically underperform while accelerating capital flight. Confirmed departures from California billionaires like Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Peter Thiel have already erased a large share […]

Politicians consistently defend business regulation as a shield for consumers, but the airline, healthcare, and banking industries show how these rules actually protect incumbent firms from real competition. The result is a state-enforced cartel that limits market entry, keeps service quality at the regulatory floor rather than pushing it higher, and leaves consumers footing the […]