A stock-market bust, on the other hand, is held to result from a drop in consumer and business confidence and spending — due to inflation, rising oil prices, high interest rates, etc., or for no reason at all — that leads to declining business profits and rising unemployment. Whatever the supposed cause, in the common view a weakening economy results in falling company revenues and lower-than-expected future earnings, resulting in falling intrinsic values and falling stock prices.

This understanding of bull and bear markets, while held by academics, investment professionals, and individual investors alike, is technically correct if viewed superficially but is substantially misconceived because it is based on faulty finance and economic theory.

In fact, the only real force that ultimately makes the stock market or any market rise (and, to a large extent, fall) over the longer term is simply changes in the quantity of money and the volume of spending in the economy. Stocks rise when there is inflation of the money supply (i.e., more money in the economy and in the markets). This truth has many consequences that should be considered.

Since stock markets can fall — and fall often — to various degrees for numerous reasons (including a decline in the quantity of money and spending), our focus here will be only on why they are able to rise in a sustained fashion over the longer term. Read More

Where do Libertarians stand?

What if there was a way that voters would not have to face choosing between the lesser of evils? What if there was no concern that voting for one candidate would “steal votes” from another candidate? What if political parties and incumbent politicians had no incentive to exclude choices from the ballot?

For as long as I can remember, the Libertarian Party has advocated giving voters more choices and reasonable reforms to elections. One of the methods that we have found most successful is Approval Voting.

Consider this; you have candidates A, B, and C. Today you can only vote for one of them. But what if you like both A and C? You would approve of both of them to serve in office, but today can only express your approval for one. With Approval Voting you have one ballot and cast a vote for each candidate you approve of. The candidate with the highest approval wins. It is simple and accurately reflects the will of the voters. Read More

That is why our Founding Fathers saw the importance of having a constitutional republic oversee this collection of representative democracies, and for this collection of democracies to be ruled by law. They established what freedoms the people would always be entitled to, and specifically limited the government’s powers, therefore always allowing people to have a certain amount of authority over their government. Anything not addressed within those guidelines could be left up to the local government, so the people living in those areas could be as happy as possible.

All of these thoughts came to me while I traveled to Austin, Texas in February. I was visiting for a national Libertarian Party conference in preparation for my U.S. Congress run in Ohio’s 12th District against Pat Tiberi and Paula Brooks, and was completely blown away by the unique culture, intelligence and overall freedom of the City of Austin. It is hands down the most progressive libertarian city I have ever been to — thanks to its progressive libertarian people and local government. Read More

The “politics of the libertarian mob,” according to Lilla, is “[a] new strain of populism” that is “anarchistic like the Sixties, selfish like the Eighties, contradicting neither.” He points out that “[h]istorically, populist movements [have] use[d] the rhetoric of class solidarity to seize political power so that ‘the people’ can exercise it for their common benefit.” But the “populist rhetoric” of the “libertarian mob” is “something altogether different.… It fires up emotions by appealing to individual opinion, individual autonomy, and individual choice.”

More important, according to Lilla, this new populist rhetoric of the libertarian mob is “all in the service of neutralizing, not using, political power. It gives voice to those who feel they are being bullied, but this voice has only one, Garbo-like thing to say: I want to be left alone.” This rhetoric, Lilla tells us, “appeals to petulant individuals convinced that they can do everything themselves if they are only left alone, and that others are conspiring to keep them from doing just that.”

And, in Lilla’s view, such “petulant individuals” are legion in America today. “Many Americans,” he writes, “a vocal and varied segment of the public at large, have now convinced themselves that educated elites — politicians, bureaucrats, reporters, but also doctors, scientists, even schoolteachers — are controlling our lives. And they want them to stop.” Read More

Presently during the June election, voters affiliated with one of the ballot qualified parties choose their party’s candidate for the November election. Currently in the November election each party’s candidates competes against each other along with any independents, giving voters more than two choices along with the write-in option.

Proposition 14 turns the current system upside down. All voters would get the same ballot in the June election. Voters would choose one candidate from every candidate running from every party. Similar to the free for all California saw when Arnold was first elected; all candidates from all the parties would compete together in the free for all June election. The top two vote getters, even if both of them get less than 10% and they are from the same party, would advance to the November election.

Proposition 14 forbids voters from write-in candidates for the November election, so if Top Two passes California voters will no longer have more than two choices in the November election; except for the Presidential race.

Visit StopTopTwo.org for more information.

Or perhaps it is not so incredible. An overweening government, in an age of despotism such as ours, must deny such a fundamental right simply because it is one of those core issues that speaks to who is in charge: the state or individuals.

We live in antiliberal times, when individual choice is highly suspect. The driving legislative ethos is toward making all actions required or forbidden, with less and less room for human volition. Simply put, we no longer trust the idea of freedom. We can’t even imagine how it would work. What a distance we have traveled from the Age of Reason to our own times.

Referencing the great controversy about the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Karen De Coster put the issue to rest by turning Rachel Maddow’s question on its head. She demanded to know whether a white businessman has the right to refuse service to a black man. Karen asked, does a black businessman have the right to refuse service to a Klan member? Read More

But then the governments began something which I can only describe in general words. The governments began to issue paper, which they wanted to serve the role, perform the service, of money. When people bought something they expected to receive from their bank a certain quantity of gold to pay for it. But the government asked, What’s the difference whether the people really get gold or whether they get a title from the bank that gives them the right to ask for gold? It will be all the same to them.

So the government issued paper notes, or gave the bank the privilege to issue paper notes, which gave the receiver the right to ask for gold. This led to an increase in the number of paper banknotes that gave to the bearer the right to ask for gold.

Not too long ago, our government proclaimed a new method for making everybody prosperous: a method called “deficit financing.” Now that is a wonderful word. You know, technical terms have the bad habit of not being understood by people.

The government and the journalists who were writing for the government told us about this “deficit spending.” It was wonderful! It was considered something that would improve conditions in the whole country. But if you translate this into more common language, the language of the uneducated, then you would say “printed money.” The government says this is only due to your lack of education; if you had an education you wouldn’t say “printed money;” you would call it “deficit financing” or “deficit spending.”

Now what does this mean? Deficits! This means that the government spends more than it collects in taxes and in borrowing from the people; it means government spending for all those purposes for which the government wants to spend. This means inflation, pushing more money into the market; it doesn’t matter for what purpose. And that means reducing the purchasing power of each monetary unit. Instead of collecting the money that the government wanted to spend, the government fabricated the money. Printing money is the easiest thing. Every government is clever enough to do it.

Read more: “Deficit Financing” and Inflation - Ludwig von Mises - Mises Daily