The House Republican Conference has just released the following graph on the unemployment effects of Barack Obama’s “stimulus” package:
Also, please see the following, award-winning Independent Institute book:
Out of Work: Unemployment and Government in Twentieth-Century America, Updated Edition
By Richard K. Vedder and Lowell E. Gallaway, Foreword by Martin Bronfenbrenner
(New York University Press)

In a recent commentary titled “Diagnostics and Therapeutics in Political Economy,” I endeavored to show that an analytical understanding of past growth in the government’s size, scope, and power does not permit us to prescribe effective means of stopping or slowing this growth, particularly any simple “silver bullet” remedy, and I specifically disclaimed any personal [...]

Independent Institute Senior Fellow Robert Higgs is interviewed here by Judge Andrew Napolitano on Fox News’ program, “Freedom Watch,” regarding the utter folly of the gigantic federal spending programs first started under George W. Bush and now enormously expanded by Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress. Prolonging the recovery amidst enormous economic confusion and new [...]

The United States enacted its minimum wage law in 1938.  It didn’t cover all workers, and still doesn’t, but establishes a policy that in some cases government should abridge people’s freedom of contract to mandate a wage different from the one people might agree upon.  The “principle” appears to be that some wage levels are [...]

The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) is a year old now.  On September 19, 2008, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson announced the need for a $700 billion program to purchase toxic assets held by banks to prevent a financial meltdown, and after some modification TARP was rapidly approved by Congress on October 3.  Looking back after [...]

Dear Anonymous Donor:
Thank you for your contribution of a 2008 1,000,000,000,000 Zimbabwean dollar (ZWD) note, received by mail today. We note that the Zimbabwean government redenominated the ZWD again on February 2, 2009, at a rate of 1,000,000,000,000 old ZWD to 1 new ZWD, and as I write this your donation is currently valued at [...]

The Federal Reserve Bank (Fed) has proposed a plan to regulate the pay of bank employees by allowing the Fed to reject compensation schemes it views would encourage excessively risky behavior. Regardless of whether one thinks bankers’ compensation should be regulated, the Fed should not be doing this.
The Fed’s major responsibility is controlling the [...]

I’ve seen lots written in the past year on the Federal Reserve Bank’s (Fed’s) expansion of the monetary base, but almost nothing written about changes in the Fed’s policy to target its funds and support toward specific institutions.  Prior to Bernanke’s reign as Chairman, the Fed acted in a way that was neutral toward specific [...]

President Obama announced that he will reappoint Ben Bernanke as Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Bank (Fed), and I’m more than OK with the president’s decision.  Bernanke’s policies over the past year and a half have put the Fed in a precarious position, but Bernanke says he has an “exit [...]

I recently read a book titled Banking and the Business Cycle: A Study of the Great Depression in the United States, by C. A. Phillips, T. F. McManus, and R. W. Nelson.  It was originally published by Macmillan in March 1937, later became a hard-to-find, almost-forgotten book, and in 2007 was reissued by the Mises Institute in an inexpensive paperback edition.
No [...]