ECONOMICS

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us

Ever since the days of Herbert Hoover and the official start of the Great Depression the concept of trade tariffs has been readily demonized across most of academia and among the majority of modern economic ideologies. It is actually one area where globalists and free market economists tend to align (though each group has very different reasons).

Proponents of Adam Smith’s free market philosophy or Ludwig Von Mises and his Austrian school (more…)

Today just after midnight, US tariffs on steel and aluminum have come into force, and in response the European Commission announced its plans to retaliate to a similar degree (albeit on a different range of imports from the US).

While the impact on certain sectors and product lines could be large, the aggregate macroeconomic effect on Europe is likely to be small. Of more concern, according to Nomura's George Buckley, is that this is only the opening gambit – Europe is now firmly (more…)

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

From my first class in national income accounting, I’ve had grave doubts about how government spending has been part of the Gross Domestic Product numbers. The decision to do that came in 1934, about the time that most governments in the world were trying to cure the Great Depression by spending money and running deficits.

Two years later, John Maynard Keynes, the world’s most respected economist, said that this is (more…)