The EU Crackup

by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

Lew Rockwell

Political upheaval has hit Finland, and it’s merely a foreshadowing of bigger changes ahead. The core issue is whether Finland ought to be paying for bailouts for other EU states. In reaction to establishment support for the bailout, voters ousted the pro-bailout ruling party and gave an upset victory to the bailout-critical conservative party. Against every expectation, the eternal rule of the social democrats is at an end.


But most striking of all are the gains made by a previously invisible party called True Finns. This is the only party to take a hardcore position: no bailouts at all. It also so happens that this party is predictably nationalist on issues of trade and immigration. But that’s not the source of the appeal. The bailout is what is on everyone’s mind. And you know that the anger must be palpable if it fired up the usually sleepy world of Finnish politics.


In the sweep of history, few issues are as politically volatile as tax-funded bailouts of foreign countries, especially during difficult economic times. It’s a policy that provokes dramatic political change. The 20th century’s most famous case was in interwar Germany, when nationwide resentment against payments to conquering allied nations ushered in National Socialist rule.



It should be no surprise that over-taxed Finns have no interest in sending their tax dollars to bail out the banking industry of Portugal, a country that is 2,500 miles and two days travel away. Even governments should have learned long ago that it is never a good idea to enact these sorts of policies. In this case, however, every EU nation is bound by a political contract to bail out any other; the bailouts are embedded in the very structure of how the political, financial, and monetary sector is currently structured.

The Promise of Human Action

by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.




This speech was delivered at the Mises Institute, September 14, 1999, the date on which Human Action was published 50 years earlier. The Mises Institute has just published the pocket paperback edition.

In a 1949 memo circulated within Yale University Press, the publicity department expressed astonishment at the rapid sales of Ludwig von Mises's Human Action. How could such a dense tome, expensive by the standards of the day, written by an economist without a prestigious teaching position or any notable reputation at all in the United States, published against the advice of many on Yale's academic advisory board, sell so quickly that a second and third printing would be necessary in only a matter of months?

Imagine how shocked these same people would be to find that the first edition, reissued 50 years later as the Scholar's Edition of Human Action, would sell so quickly again.

How can we account for the continuing interest in this book? It is unquestionably the single most important scientific treatise on human affairs to appear in this century. But given the state of the social sciences, and the timelessness of Mises's approach to economics, I believe it will have an even greater impact on the next century. Indeed, it is increasingly clear that this is a book for the ages.

What's Wrong With the Jobs Market?

by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.



Lew Rockwell

 The terrible job market has vexed an entire generation. It shows no hope of improving anytime soon. Young people are shut out. College students are taking refuge in matriculation without end. Thirty-somethings are zoning out in their parents' basements and attics. Despair for the future has become a theme of American public life.

The question we must ask is: why is unemployment stuck at 10% in the narrowest measure and as high as 30% for some demographics?

The usual answer is that the broad economy is not recovering. That's true but superficial; it explains nothing. We have a problem of a specific kind with the jobs market. To see it as just a symptom of slow growth is an excuse for politicians and central banks to resort to reckless policies in the name of fixing the big problem without addressing the reality on the ground.

Some new data reported by the Wall Street Journal helps get to the core of the problem in greater detail. In the current environment, which the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) laughably calls a recovery, business start-ups of job-creating companies have not kept up with closings.

Freedom Watch 6/17 Part 4

Freedom Watch 6/17 Part 3