Peter's Blog

A decade of populist anger on both the right and left has correctly identified that America’s institutions serve the political class rather than ordinary citizens, yet virtually every goal that anger was meant to achieve, ending DC corruption, winding down foreign wars, reducing inequality, has only gotten worse. Ron Paul’s generation of populists correctly identified […]

Democratic socialists routinely accuse capitalism of producing harmful monopolies, yet their preferred remedy, turning industries into public utilities, simply hands one single entity, the state, total and coercive control instead. Interventionists of all stripes don’t realize that monopoly is enabled and created by government policy, not inherent features of free markets. The following article was […]

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 […]

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 […]

The Fed’s supposed independence from the Treasury has always been more rhetoric than reality, and recent friction between Treasury Secretary Bessent and the Fed over currency intervention shows how that rhetoric bends whenever cooperation is convenient. The claimed separation lets both institutions share credit when policy succeeds and deflect blame onto each other when it […]

Regulation is routinely sold to the public as consumer protection, but its actual effect is to shield incumbent firms from competition by controlling who may enter a market and how they may operate. The airline industry illustrates this dynamic well, where a state-organized cartel produces the illusion of competing brands while regulatory minimums quietly become […]

Keynesian economists often attribute economic downturns to insufficient aggregate demand, arguing that government intervention is necessary to boost spending and restore growth. However, this theory fails to recognize that consumer demand is not an independent variable but rather a consequence of prior production and savings. The following article was originally published by the Mises Institute. […]

Mainstream economists often argue that increasing the money supply is necessary to stimulate economic growth. However, Austrian economists have long recognized that monetary expansion merely creates the illusion of prosperity while sowing the seeds of future crises. Printing money cannot create real wealth or productive resources, but instead distorts economic calculation and leads to malinvestment. […]

Alan Greenspan served as Federal Reserve Chairman for nearly two decades, presiding over the US economy during a period of significant growth and turmoil. While often portrayed as a stalwart defender of free markets, a closer examination of his career reveals a more complex picture. Greenspan’s ability to adapt his views and rhetoric to suit […]

As Trump’s crony capitalism and socialist inroads in the Democratic Party crowd out defenders of free markets, many assume the only choice is between capitalism and socialism. But a third danger lurks — the possibility that rejecting both leads not to liberty, but to feudalism or primitivism, systems where rights collapse and poverty reigns just […]