What really drives financial booms and devastating busts? In this insightful interview, economist and author Douglas E. French dives deep into the historical roots of speculative bubbles and the critical role money supply plays in shaping economic cycles. From early market manias to modern day financial instability, French unpacks how expansions in money supply have repeatedly fueled unsustainable growth only to end in collapse. This 4th expanded edition brings fresh analysis, updated insights, and a compelling look at patterns that continue to influence global markets today. If you’re interested in economics, financial history, or understanding the forces behind inflation and market crashes, this conversation offers powerful perspectives you won’t want to miss.
N.b.: Malone may be insightful on this issue, but according to one comment: “Malone has spent a lot of time recently spreading Israeli propaganda on Palestine, Iran, Trump, Tucker Carlson, and opponents of Israel. I am suspicious of him, and suspect he was parachuted onto the medical freedom movement to use his credibility to push war.” See: Jeremy R. Hammond, The Health Ranger’s Denouncement of MAHA’s Alliance with Zionism (Oct 30, 2024): “Health freedom advocates are faced with a choice this election of whether they believe that all children’s lives matter, or not.” And various tweets by Hammond: 1, 2, 3, 4.
What a century-old school of economics predicted about the pandemic state — and why its vocabulary still fits the record better than anything in mainstream discourse
One tradition predicted what happened during the pandemic with unsettling accuracy. Most readers will have brushed against it only in passing, because its central figures wrote in the twentieth century, worked outside mainstream academic economics, and have been treated, where taught at all, as historical curiosities rather than live tools. The Austrian school, named for the nationality of its founders and built by Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Murray Rothbard, and their heirs, produced a body of analysis whose central claims line up with the pandemic record closely enough to demand attention.
What follows is not a full treatment of Austrian economics, which fills the many volumes its founders wrote. It is a guided application of a few Austrian ideas to the patterns the pandemic exposed. The goal is to give a coherent vocabulary for what the record establishes, and to show that the patterns are not quirks of the COVID era but expressions of forces the Austrians named decades earlier. The essay builds toward the framework that gives the rest its force: Rothbard’s account of state coercion as the foundation the whole apparatus rests on, and the reason these patterns could be enforced on entire populations. [continue reading…]
Arch-enemy of Covid lockdowns and hysteria Jeffrey Tucker,1 previous PFS speaker2 and founder of the heroic anti-lockdown Brownstone Institute and architect of the Great Barrington Declaration, often rightly criticizes libertarians who supported lockdowns or vaccine funding or mandates, or who were slow on the uptake.3
Hoppe, Debatte: Staatliches Coronafiasko, The State’s Corona Fiasco, Schweizer Monat (February 28, 2021) (“Politicians believe they are handling Covid-19 with competence. Were it not for activist politics and a sensationalizing media, a situation like the one we are currently experiencing would never have arisen in the first place.”)
When Javier Milei took office as president of Argentina in December 2023, the global libertarian movement witnessed something that had never happened before: an avowed anarcho-capitalist became a head of state. Milei had come to power, moreover, having frequently cited legends of the Austrian School of Economics such as Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard. Yet, like any political movement, Mileism[1] would also draw on the ideological support of intellectuals. In this case, these were not the usual intellectuals of statism, but rather intellectuals who had built their careers by advocating against statism itself. From the outset, this posed a challenge to justifying full support for any head of state. And this support arrived. Academic leaders from all over the world endorsed Milei. Nonetheless, some academics associated with the Mises Institute—the global hub of Austro-libertarianism—played a prominent role. Led by Jesús Huerta de Soto (JHS), a scholar of exceptional prestige and Senior Fellow at the Mises Institute, these academics took it upon themselves to promote Milei and his administration as a kind of Austro-libertarian revolution for posterity.
By Dr. Robert Malone who discovered Austrian economics by reading What Has Government Done to Our Money and Anatomy of the State by Murray Rothbard two years ago. He was so excited by his discovery that he devoted one of his 500,000 reader Substack columns to it. Upon hearing of this, Karen DeCoster and I immediately invited him to speak at Mises University, which he did. His lecture is the most viewed video in the history of the Mises Institute with almost 2 million views.
He was fascinated by the tour of some of Rothbard’s original works that we took him on and sent him home with a box of books. I subsequently invited him to speak at a Mises Circle (along with Tom Woods and myself) on the topic of “Our Enemy, The Bureaucracy”). He is an awfully quick study, as shown in the linked article.
Before the Hoppening—when the Mises Institute removed Hoppe as its Senior Distinguished Fellow—1 the MI displayed playful life-sized cardboard cutouts of Hoppe, Rothbard, Hoppe and Gülçin Imre Hoppe, for attendees to use for photos. [continue reading…]
In Loving Memory ★ 22/02/1948 † 24/05/2026 Death Notice With deep sorrow we announce the passing of Anton Peter Müller. He was a beloved man who leaves behind memories that will remain forever in our hearts. May God grant strength and comfort to his family members and friends in this time of grief. The funeral service will take place on the 25th at 07:00 in the OSAF – R. Itaporanga, 436. The family thanks you for your participation and loving support.
We are saddened to announce the passing of our friend and fellow PFS member Antony Müller (Feb. 22, 1948–May 24, 2026), an economist from Germany and professor of economics at the Federal University of Sergipe (Brazil) (more detail at Rest in peace, Antony Mueller).
Antony P. Mueller holds a doctorate in economics from the Friedrich-Alexander-University of Erlangen and Nürnberg (FAU) and teaches currently at the Mises Academy in São Paulo, Brazil.
The ruling model of the liberal democracy is in crisis. In the United States and many European countries, confidence in the political system is in decline. There have been many attempts to explain this disenchantment with politics and the state. Few, however, consider the role of political parties. For the public in general but also for most political theorists, a social order without politics and thus without political parties seems inconceivable. In this article, we investigate the proposition, eloquently put forth in the early 1940s by Simone Weil, that political parties should be banned. [continue reading…]
The first two chapters—my “Preface” and Hans’s “Introduction”—were published the week of Rothbard’s birthday here on the Property and Freedom Podcast (PFP315 and PFP314). The other main chapters will be released sequentially weekly on Mondays. The next in the queue:
Tom, Hans’s comments here also remind me of other point he has made about it is typically those states with large economies and relatively liberal internal policies that tend to be more aggressive and imperialistic. From Hoppe on Liberal Economies and War:
Hans’s comments about how “bad people” rise to the top in “large” democracies reminded me of the sentences following Lord Acton’s famous “power corrupts” quote. The full quote is as follows:
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority.
This was from an April 3, 1887 letter to Biship Mandell Creighton. In that letter Lord Acton also wrote that “There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.” I would argue that ever since Lincoln the office of American president has been “sanctified” by the state and its minions in the media, a politicized clergy, and popular culture in general. That in turn led to a “sanctification” of the state in general.
Here is a source for this and other Lord Acton quotes.
From The Editorial Board, “Old McDonald Had a Race Preference: A lawsuit settlement helps end discrimination at the USDA,” Wall Street Journal (May 22, 2026):
One of the worst sources of race preferences has been the federal government, so cheers to the news that some discriminatory programs have been sent out to pasture. The Agriculture Department recently settled a lawsuit and agreed to end race and sex preferences in federal farm programs.
Adam Faust is a Wisconsin dairy farmer who found his Holstein milking operation harmed by USDA programs that used race or sex preferences to allocate financial benefits. The Dairy Margin Coverage Program, which farmers use to cover fluctuations in milk prices, charged him a fee that wasn’t paid by farmers USDA designated as “socially disadvantaged.”
Grok: In this 2012 interview, Doug French, then-President of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, joins Scott B. to discuss the enduring relevance of Austrian economics. French explores the Institute’s mission, his studies under Murray Rothbard, and why the 2008 financial crisis validated the Austrian theory of business cycles. He warns of the massive bubble in U.S. government debt, explains why Wall Street listens while Washington doesn’t, and makes the case for gold and silver as protections against monetary expansion. French also highlights the Mises Institute’s educational programs and emphasizes that real change comes through long-term education in sound economics rather than politics. A compelling discussion on economic freedom, financial reality, and the power of ideas.
Dr. Scott Beaulier, of the Manuel Johnson Center for Political Economy, hosts EconVersation, a program that explores the role of free markets in promoting prosperity through conversations with Manuel Johnson Center faculty and guests. In this episode, Dr. Beaulier interviews the president of the Mises Institute, Doug French
Die Ökonomie und Ethik des Privateigentums: Studium der politischen Ökonomie und Philosophie, Zweite Ausgabe (2026), a translation of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, The Economics and Ethics of Private Property, Second Edition (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2006) has been prepared. Text below and pdf here. Translated by Andreas Tank. The paper version will be available for purchase presently.
In the summer of 2021, Lordstown Motors held a ceremony.
Cameras. Executives in hard hats. A gleaming electric pickup truck rolling off the line in rural Ohio. Politicians gave speeches about the future of American manufacturing. CNBC ran the footage on a loop.
Eighteen months later, Lordstown Motors filed for bankruptcy. [continue reading…]
As noted here, the 2026 Twentieth Annual Meeting of the Property and Freedom Society will be held from Thursday, September 17, 2026 to Tuesday, September 22, 2026.
To donate with BITCOIN please use the address below. If you would like us to credit your payment (for dues, conference fees, etc.) please email Stephan Kinsella ([email protected]) when you make the bitcoin payment.
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“Property does not exist because there are laws, but laws exist because there is property.” — FrédéricBastiat
“Because the concept of property, for instance, is so basic that everyone seems to have some immediate understanding of it, most people never think about it carefully and can, as a consequence, produce at best a very vague definition. But starting from imprecisely stated or assumed definitions and building a complex network of thought upon them can lead only to intellectual disaster. For the original imprecisions and loopholes will then pervade and distort everything derived from them. To avoid this, the concept of property must first be clarified.” —Hans-Hermann Hoppe, TSC, ch. 2
The Property and Freedom Society (PFS; Facebook) stands for an uncompromising intellectual radicalism: for justly acquired private property, freedom of contract, freedom of association—which logically implies the right to not associate with, or to discriminate against—anyone in one's personal and business relations—and unconditional free trade. It condemns imperialism and militarism and their fomenters, and champions peace. It rejects positivism, relativism, and egalitarianism in any form, whether of "outcome" or "opportunity," and it has an outspoken distaste for politics and politicians. As such it seeks to avoid any association with the policies and proponents of interventionism, which Ludwig von Mises identified in 1946 as the fatal flaw in the plan of the many earlier and contemporary attempts by intellectuals alarmed by the rising tide of socialism and totalitarianism to found an anti-socialist ideological movement. Mises wrote: "What these frightened intellectuals did not comprehend was that all those measures of government interference with business which they advocated are abortive. ... There is no middle way. Either the consumers are supreme or the government."
(A more complete statement of our Principles can be found here.)
In the summer of 2021, Lordstown Motors held a ceremony.
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Jay Baykal
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