Skeptic Project

From an email I got from the Ludwig von Mises Institute:

Death of the Fed

Two important events are coming up soon.

Next week, February 26-27, 2010, we hold a conference on the Federal Reserve in Jekyll Island, Georgia, the birthplace of the Fed. The title of the conference: The Birth and Death of the Fed. The idea is to explore its origins and effects with particular focus on the current and ongoing calamity, and to establish, without a doubt, that the root of the problem with the economy traces to the socialization of money and credit and its mis-management by central planners.

Speakers at the event include George Selgin, Christopher Westley, Robert Murphy, Doug French, Peter Klein, Thomas Woods, Joseph Salerno, Lew Rockwell, Ron Paul, Mark Thornton, Gary North, and others. They are covering every area of monetary theory and policy. The conference includes tours, receptions, a huge book table, an oyster roast on the beach and other fun activities. It is the perfect mixture of scholarship plus vacation. Please join us!

I'd bet $1,000 in Federal Reserve Notes that the Fed will outlast the Mises Institute.

In the meantime, we are busily planning what is turning into the biggest and grandest Austrian Scholars Conference in world history, March 11-13, 2010, with more presentations, panels, and papers than any previous conference. Many great thinkers will be with us, including Steve Kates, Robert Murphy, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Caroline Baum, Paul Cantor, Richard Vedder, plus nearly 200 others, in addition to a special (and secret so far) guest that we are sure everyone will enjoy.

"Great thinkers" in the Austrianists' world mean something like "tallest buildings" in Prescott, Arizona.

@advancedatheist,

How do you think Libertarians reconcile their mistrust of collectivism with their trust of corporations? I've asked Libertarians that before, but I never get a good answer. The same when I ask rightwingers about their mistrust of collectivism vs trust of the military.

You know for people who claim not to like Federal Reserve Notes these Austrians certainly have no problem asking for them.

"Githler organized his first International Investors Forum in San Francisco three years ago, attracting 1,400 people at $450 each."

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,949094,00.html#ixzz0g0vUDxpe

It seems that an End the Fed retreat cost about the same in 1978 what it does now. What happened to that inflation?

According to the Time article from 1981 scitops referenced, the U.S. economy crashed during Reagan's administration:

Boom in the gloom-and-doom business of investment seminars They are the rock concerts of the 1980s.

"Woodstocks for rich people," one promoter calls them. But instead of long-haired musicians, the stars of these extravaganzas are investment counselors, who generally hurl around wildly pessimistic prophecies about the future of the economy. Best-selling Author Douglas R. Casey (Crisis Investing: Opportunities and Profits in the Coming Great Depression) last month told an Orlando, Fla., gathering of 2,100: "We are facing the greatest depression in the history of the world." And Howard J. Ruff (How to Prosper During the Coming Bad Years) predicted the destruction of the dollar: "We will look back on 20% inflation with nostalgia.". .

. . . The standard sales pitch on the investment circuit is fear and more fear. Most speakers describe the economy as falling too fast to be rescued by any Administration. They urge audiences to put their money in tangible products, such as gold, diamonds, real estate and Persian rugs. Casey, 34, has advised audiences to leave their property in a basement safe in stead of a safe-deposit box or to speculate in the real estate of countries such as Chile and Colombia when, he says, political troubles have depressed land prices.

How can anyone take these cranks and charlatans seriously, much less give them any money for their bad financial advice?

@advancedatheist

Have you seen Stefan Molyneux's argument for why monopolies would never work under a free market?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQms0-jSYqM

The gross over simplification is mind boggling.

BUT ANYONE CAN START A CAR COMPANY! they'd argue

"How can anyone take these cranks and charlatans seriously, much less give them any money for their bad financial advice?"

Even though they still were able to con people after their predictions of doom failed to materialize in the early 1980s, the reason we are seeing a rise of interest in Austrian economics probably has to do with several reasons. First enough people weren't old enough to be paying attention to Austrian doomsayers or weren't even born in 1981. If you were 30 in 1981 you would be 59 now. Few articles from the 1970s and 1980s about Austrian doomsday have made it to the internet which means few people know what kind of quacks these people are.

I personally believe that is why my former financial planner bought into the hyperinflation doom and last I heard was trying to attend one of these events. He doesn't remember this as he was likely in his teens and little is available online about failed predictions of hyperinflation.

On top of that I often hear Austrians who were feeding us their crap 30 years ago are claiming they were right back then. I've heard individuals like Jim Sinclair, Gary North, and Doug Casey claim to have realized gold was going to crash and got their clients out of it. However I've never seen any hard proof. It's similar to an article I read by Hal Lindsey where he claimed everything he wrote in The Late Great Planet Earth came true.

Times are similar to 1981. We had a huge bump in inflation and rising energy prices and get stuck in a deep recession where unemployment would peek over 10%. I suspect it is a little bit of history repeating itself.

Also as weird as it is now, I believe Austrian theories were more popular and respected in the 1970s/1980s then they are now (despite the internet, Zeitgeist, and the Ron Paul movement). They are charging way more in 1981 adjusted inflation. Gold is also about halfway from its all time 1980(adjusted for inflation).

@ scitops:

Also as weird as it is now, I believe Austrian theories were more popular and respected in the 1970s/1980s then they are now (despite the internet, Zeitgeist, and the Ron Paul movement).

Sometimes a cult will get a second wind after its founder's death, even if the cult's ideology originated as a product of the founder's dysfunctional thinking and doesn't have much reason to justify its posthumous existence. I don't see the point of perpetuating Austrian economics after von Mises's death in 1973, Objectivism after Ayn Rand's death in 1982, and Scientology after L. Ron Hubbard's death in 1986, just based on the value of their respective ideas. (The latter two ideologies seemed to come from Rand's and Hubbard's unconventional sex lives, making them all the more irrelevant after their deaths.) It wouldn't surprise me if the Zeitgeist movement turns posthumous Frescoism into yet another totalist cult which promises to solve the world's problems.

@ Matt:

I draw the analogy between Austrian economics and global warming apocalypticism. Both world views have adherents for emotional reasons, not because they make empirically defensible predictions comparable to, say, the actuarial tables (about as boring and reliable as you can get).

Yet how many Austrianists have dismissed global warming as Chicken Little stuff, while never admitting to error for their economic doomsaying?