Here is a half-hour audio discussion of Austrian economics and the current state of the world economy with the Mises Institute’s Bob Murphy, who also runs the website http://consultingbyrpm.com/blog. Murphy gives a broad outline of how Austrian economic analysis differs from Keynesian analysis, and how this leads economists from these rival schools to propose radically different policy recommendations.
He pays particular attention to the example of the Great Depression, where conventional (Keynesian) wisdom holds that FDR’s stimulus measures contrasted with “tight wad” Hoover’s fiscal austerity, and that the former were instrumental in ending the Depression. But as Murphy discusses in his book The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal, this narrative is seriously misleading.
Turning to current events, Murphy discusses how governments are engaged in a never-ending effort to “postpone the day of reckoning” as far as the economy is concerned: in the late 1990s, the bursting of the tech bubble led the Fed to pump up a housing bubble. When the housing market collapsed in 2008, threatening major bank failures, this led governments to step in and guarantee bad bank debts. But given that these bailouts now threaten the solvency of governments themselves, Murphy thinks that governments and central banks have run out of road, and that we risk currency crises if the authorities continue to resort to money printing as a solution.
Murphy is optimistic on precious metals, and thinks “the only long-term direction is up” for gold and silver prices, owing to the continuing money printing he expects from central banks.
This podcast was recorded on Aug. 24 and released by GoldMoney on Wednesday.
About the Author
Alasdair Macleod is head of research for GoldMoney. He also runs FinanceAndEconomics.org, a website dedicated to sound money and demystifying finance and economics. He has a background as a stockbroker, banker and economist. He can be contacted at Alasdair.Macleod@GMYF.org and followed on Twitter @MacleodFinance.
