14 Jun 2012

Prison Break From the Historical Narrative of Webster Tarpley

Conspiracy, Economics, Mises, Ron Paul 169 Comments

I don’t even want to post the YouTube here, but if you are curious here is the link to “PrisonPlanet” host Alex Jones’ interview with Webster Tarpley. I am commenting on this because different people emailed me asking me for a reaction, since Tarpley shares their views that an elite group of bankers is taking over the world, but yet Tarpley also hammers Austrian economics and the gold standard.

Here’s my quick answer: I had to stop it by the 10:00 mark, because it was causing me physical pain. This guy has a PhD in history, and yet he was botching basic historical facts. Let me just give you two whoppers.

First, he says that the “wave of deregulation”–which he associates with the Austrian School–began under Richard Nixon. (!) This literally could not be more wrong. Richard Nixon instituted wage and price controls, and took the dollar off the gold standard (which was just barely hanging on at that point, in its weakened form under Bretton Woods). Indeed, Ron Paul went into politics to undo the monetary policies of Richard Nixon. So for Tarpley to say that Richard Nixon instituted a wave of deregulation that is associated with the Austrian School, is kind of like saying the Joker works hand-in-hand with the Justice League, because after all he helped a young Bruce Wayne become Batman.

Second–and this is the one that made me stop the video–Tarpley says that the very term “Austrian economics” is a misnomer, because the School wasn’t really from Austria. Instead, Tarpley claims that the ideas of Mises and Hayek (yes he says both of their names) come from the London School of Economics.

This is just so wrong it’s hard to know how to respond. Go look at Mises’ Wikipedia entry. The term “London School of Economics” only appears once, and that’s in reference to it saying that Mises’ friend was Lionel Robbins at the LSE. Contrary to Tarpley, yes indeed the term “Austrian School” comes from the fact that–wait for it–the School was founded by Austrian guys in the country of Austria. Carl Menger was the founder of the school, and his disciple Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk was indeed a famous finance minister in Austria (among his academic contributions). Mises’ famous seminar, where he influenced Hayek and many others, was held in Vienna.

Now it’s true, after Hayek had absorbed the teachings of the Austrian economists, Hayek then brought these ideas to the English-speaking world by taking a position at the LSE. But to make an analogy to Tarpley’s description, would be like saying: Yeah, a lot of people think the actor and filmmaker Roberto Benigni is Italian. Yet this is a misnomer; Benigni’s most famous movie, “Life Is Beautiful,” had an English title.

Last point: For all of Tarpley’s claims about how wonderful Alexander Hamilton’s “American System” of tariffs and government investment spending are, see Tom DiLorenzo’s book Hamilton’s Curse.

169 Responses to “Prison Break From the Historical Narrative of Webster Tarpley”

  1. Daniel Kuehn says:

    Letting the dollar float seems like it could reasonably be called “deregulation” to me.

    [I partly believe that, and partly just want to see smoke come out of Bob Roddis’s ears]

    • Richie says:

      Hopefully Roddis won’t take the bait from someone like you.

      • Ken B says:

        Ahh, the triumph of hope over experience!

      • Bob Roddis says:

        After having previously stated that “Glenn Greenwald bothers me in a really deep, genuine way…” and that we cannot call the loss of purchasing power from money dilution “theft” unless we also call a purposeful central bank failure to inflate “theft of people’s employment”, DK has set the bar very high for which of his “interesting” comments requires a response. This one is just run-of-the-mill, “progressive” finger-in-the-wind pabulum.

        http://tinyurl.com/6ugoqo8

        However, there is “some” truth in the statement because banks after 1971 were subsequently able to create fiat funny-money loans without significant constraints and were thus “deregulated”. Since I’m VERY interested in all the religious denominations of Keynesianism, I’ve heard John Quiggin use this language when interviewed by Russ Roberts. I’ve heard Steve Keen use it. LK always uses it. Etc…

        As always, “progressive” analysis of anything depends upon the distortion of the language. Heck, anti-libertarian and anti-Austrian analysis depends upon the distortion of the language. Simply trying to focus in on violations of basic English common law concepts like private property and contract by “progressive” policies should not take 15 years of debate about definitions. But they do when “debating” a “progressive”.

    • Bob Murphy says:

      DK wrote:

      Letting the dollar float seems like it could reasonably be called “deregulation” to me.

      Then I have an even better way for you to defend Obama’s drone policies: He is deregulating the standard prohibitions on murdering people. Laissez-faire, Barry!

      • Bob Roddis says:

        Excellent response.

        This line of “argument” usually takes the form of “You guys believe in the strictest of the strict protection of property rights in things and bodies and in an anal-compulsive universal application of the non-aggression principle? SOMALIA!!! Ha ha!”

        • Mike says:

          I always laugh when some moron brings up Somalia as if it has anything to do with it. Thanks for the laugh.

        • In Disbelief says:

          Wow! An economic argument from someone who cites Wikipedia and doesn’t know the definition of “deregulation”. ALso, instead of presenting your own rebuttal to Tarpley’s arguments, you tell your audience to go read a book. Damn, you’re convincing. No wonder you are listening to Alex Jones – lazy half-assed arguments across the board.

          • In Disbelief says:

            My previous comment was meant for the author of this blog, not Bob Roddis.

      • Ken B says:

        Kind of like legalizing assisted suicide?

    • Kaj Grüssner says:

      Daniel,

      could you please explain how taking the dollar off the gold standard can be considered deregulation, other than the deregulation of government?

      Would you consider the suspension of habeas corpus deregulation too? Or how about the 16th amendment, allowing the government to collect income taxes, is that deregulation too in your opinion?

      • Bob Murphy says:

        To be more specific, Daniel: It’s not right to say that Nixon let the dollar “float,” because that makes it sound as if there were a formal price control before. No, there wasn’t. Currency speculators were free to trade dollars against gold at whatever price they wanted. It’s just that it would be stupid to sell for less than the USG was offering.

        So in no sense was this deregulation.

        • Silas Barta says:

          To take the analogy further, imagine the coat-check guy who goes off the coat-standard, and instead of redeeming your coat-ticket for a specific coat, he gets “deregulated” so he can trade the coats on his rack for whatever the market will bear (which, is, of course, a lot more than some little paper stub).

          • Daniel Kuehn says:

            Well, it’s more like Burlington coat factory saying “I will freely buy and sell coats for $X” and then discontinuing the deal.

            • Silas Barta says:

              No, it’s more like the coat check, because the very reason people gave up their gold for Federal notes was the expectation that they would be redeemed.

              • Major_Freedom says:

                Winner.

              • Daniel Kuehn says:

                Um, no. Gold was still for sale after 1971. There are plenty of reasons for holding federal notes other than the guarantee that one particular buyer would be in the gold market at one particular price.

                First among those reasons is, of course, to exchange them for goods and services. Certain types of expectations and guarantees were dashed in 1971, but nothing like your “now I own all the coats” non-sequitor went on.

              • Silas Barta says:

                There are plenty of reasons for holding a coat check ticket — kindling for fire, for example. Therefore, people who got screwed by the coat check desk aren’t real victims, especially since the coat was used to create jobs.

                ???

              • Major_Freedom says:

                I said winner!

            • Bob Murphy says:

              DK wrote:

              Well, it’s more like Burlington coat factory saying “I will freely buy and sell coats for $X” and then discontinuing the deal.

              OK, I can work with your analogy, and so when they discontinued the deal, nobody would say they lifted regulations off of the coat market. Yet that’s how you characterized Nixon’s move.

              • Daniel Kuehn says:

                You really underestimate how much I was just trying to bug Bob Roddis 🙂

              • Ken B says:

                Question: Was it illegal or red-tapey to buy and sell gold at a different price before Nixon’s action?

        • MamMoTh says:

          You are wrong. Deregulating a fixed price is deregulation.

          • Bob Murphy says:

            MamMoTh wrote:

            You are wrong. Deregulating a fixed price is deregulation.

            OK, and then when an Army commander tells his artillery guys, “Fire at will!” that’s more example of the damage Milton Friedman caused.

            • MamMoTh says:

              Milton and Jesus.

            • Daniel Kuehn says:

              I don’t get all these non-market examples you’re bringing up.

              • Major_Freedom says:

                I don’t get all the non-market institutions, like central banks, that you advocate in the market process.

          • Major_Freedom says:

            I get it.

            When a prison guard deregulates the attack canine cages, and let’s them run free in the prison cells, the inmates are experiencing “deregulation.”

            When the executive and legislative tells the courts “Put away anyone for any reason you desire!” that’s justice “deregulation”.

            Now it makes sense! When a state rule is relaxed to make way for another, more insidious state rule, that’s deregulation.

      • Daniel Kuehn says:

        As I said initially, I was mostly joking. However, if you don’t like the government setting the value of the money it seems to me you should prefer a floating dollar (where market forces play an important role) to a predetermined value, come hell or high water.

        I have no idea why you think this relates to habeas corpus, etc. Bretton Woods, in my opinion, is a convention the maintenance of which is only defensible insofar as it proves useful. I’m not sure I’d say the same of the various Constitutionally protected rights (certainly these too ought to be judged by their usefulness, but they aren’t simple expedients in the same way that a given monetary system is).

        • Silas Barta says:

          Do you like the coat check guy fixing the value of your coat check ticket?

        • Scott Angell says:

          The value of gold was free to float under the gold standard. As such, so was the dollar.

        • Kaj Grüssner says:

          Daniel,

          When Nixon took the dollar off gold the purpose wasn’t to allow it float, the purpose was to free the US Government from its committment to sell gold at 35 dollars an ounce.

          Likewise, suspending habeas freed the government from its committment to follow due process and giving people a free trial.

          If you for one second stopped being so appalled that intelligent people might object to your fallacious claims, maybe you would have seen this rather obvious connection.

          Bretton Woods was a disaster from start to finished which Hazlitt was quick to point out. I know you and most Keynesians claim Hazlitt “didn’t get Keynes”, but the simple truth is that he understoond Keynes way better than you or most Keynesians today. As did Hayek, for that matter, who actually knew Keynes personally.

          Your claim that these two didn’t understand Keynes is solely based on the fact they both demolished him intellectually, which is why you’ve never even tried to show how Hazlitt and Hayek “misunderstood” the great Lord.

          • Daniel Kuehn says:

            First, I have serious doubts Hazlitt ever really understood Keynes, but I’ve never said Hayek didn’t understand him (maybe there have been a few points where I’ve noted that Hayek dumbed down the Keynesian point or early on points that he missed, but I think you’d have a tough time catching me saying that Hayek didn’t understand Keynes.

            Even if Hazlitt didn’t understand him and Hayek did, I don’t recall any instance where either of them “demolished him intellectually” (was “intellectually” really necessary there? Do you think anyone would have confused you for saying that they demolished him physically?).

            • Richie says:

              You have yet to understand the ABCT.

            • Kaj Grüssner says:

              Daniel,

              Hazlitt spent a very large part of his intellectual life exposing the fallacies in Keyens’ economics. In addition to numerous articles and op-eds, who wrote entire books on the subject.

              Have you read “Failure of the New Economics”, Hazlitt’s line-by-line refutation of the General Theory?

              https://mises.org/store/Product2.aspx?ProductId=337

              I guess you haven’t. How about you read the book and write an review in which you point out Hazlitt’s failures to understand Keynes? When you’ve done that, and showed your review to be correct, your claim that Hazlitt didn’t understand Keynes may have some validity. Before that, it’s just white noise.

              But to return to the point of order. Do you know understand why taking the dollar off gold isn’t any more “deregulation” than suspending habeas corpus, or does the analogy still escape you?

              • Richie says:

                DK hasn’t read any books on the ABCT, so asking him to read Hazlitt is wasting your time.

    • Major_Freedom says:

      Money printing is not “theft” of purchasing power, as long as the money printers do not have a monopoly backed by the state’s guns, where monetary competition is more or less squashed by law, through the state’s mandatory taxation in US dollars, and the state’s legal tender laws.

      Of course some people can always believe they prefer this system, that it is what they want, but because it rests on coercion, on force, it is theft of purchasing power.

      If the state made money competition legal, by removing taxes in US dollars on all barter and gold transactions, and only taxing the commodity in question (which would be “difficult” for the state yes, but I’m not interested in making it “easy” for the state to tax anyone, so any “difficulty” for the state to tax me cannot be put over my own head), then I will be fine with the Fed printing as many pieces of toilet paper as it wants. I will also be OK with fiat bugs accepting such toilet paper as their store of value.

      It will fun watching them drop the dollar on their own free will, one by one.

      • Matt Tanous says:

        “Money printing is not “theft” of purchasing power, as long as the money printers do not have a monopoly backed by the state’s guns”

        It’s not theft either way. It’s insidious legalized counterfeiting, but the moral (and legal) problem with counterfeiting is properly understood not as “theft of purchasing power”, but FRAUD. Which is still theft, but not of purchasing power. The moral problem with legalizing it is the monopoly necessary to do so – the violence against anyone who desires to use anything else.

    • Martin Brock says:

      Letting the dollar float seems like it could reasonably be called “deregulation” to me.

      Proprietors exchange property in markets, and property rights themselves are regulations. Since no markets are unregulated, “deregulation” presumably removes regulations and either leaves regulations or replaces regulations removed with other regulations.

      As long as the state does not impose gold as a standard of value for extending credit, particularly credit extended to the state itself, I have no problem with it. If people may select any standard of value they like in a free banking system, a gold standard doesn’t concern me.

      Fiat money with a gold standard can finance tyranny as well as fiat money without a gold standard.

  2. David R. Henderson says:

    Bob, Deregulation under Nixon? I agree that that’s crazy. Nixon brought us not only wage and price controls but also EPA, OSHA, arguably affirmative action, and the truckers’ hated “double nickel.”
    One little piece, though, on deregulation that Nixon, or his people, kept going: when I was a summer intern at the Council of Economic Advisers in summer of 1973, my boss, Bob Tollison, persuaded his boss, Herb Stein, to make me an acting senior economist after Bob left in late June. I had that job until early August, when Bob’s replacement arrived. I was pushing for trucking deregulation and saw some of the seeds of it around town. After one meeting I attended at DOT, Herb asked me if I thought we should just drop it because it was going nowhere. I said no, that the cost of my keeping this thing going– time for a meeting and a memo or two per week–was low and it was important to keep up the little momentum we had. Herb agreed and it kept going through the rest of Nixon’s time, all through Ford’s, where it picked up more momentum, and into Carter’s.

  3. Ken B says:

    Lowered the American living standard by 2/3 in the past 40 years!

  4. Ken B says:

    I have flitted around in the video and listened to a few clips.

    The “Robber Barons” sent communism to Russia for their own ends.
    Marx was a British agent.
    Libertarianism is designed to promote false consciousness.
    NATO tried to assassinate de Gaulle 35 times.
    Al Qaida works for the CIA.
    (OK, that last one sounds like it will sell well on this blog!)

    • Major_Freedom says:

      Al Qaida is just a CIA database of “assets”, some of whom have gone rogue, some of whom remain on the payroll.

      It’s documented proof Osama Bin Laden was paid by the CIA.

      Lesson: Never take money from the CIA.

      • Silas Barta says:

        Al Qaeda is kinda Ulfric Stormcloak in Skyrim, with the Thalmor being the CIA and the Aldmeri Dominion being America, if the Stormcloaks started doing raids on elvish settlements.

      • MamMoTh says:

        Jason Bourne is Al Qaeda?

        • Major_Freedom says:

          Bourne is a fictional character in a children’s book called “The 7 Deadly Innocent Frauds of Economic Policy”

          • MamMoTh says:

            Blimey! I thought that Al Qaeda was fictional. And Jesus.

    • Kobayashi Maru says:

      Al Qaeda was actually set up by the CIA. Suddenly, Bin Laden “went rogue” and the CIA lost control of him. (ooh scary!) Then 9/11 happened and we decided we had to give up our freedom, because that’s why Bin Laden hated us. Somewhere in there the Airlift of Evil happened. We sure showed him! While Bin Laden was never charged with the crime officially, he obviously did it… that’s what they told us he was saying in all those videos. Now, we’ve made amends with Al Qaeda and they are our friends and are doing odd jobs for us in Libya and Syria. The End.

      • Bob Murphy says:

        When does the Big Bad Wolf make an appearance?

        • Matt Tanous says:

          Right after we find out who is running Operation Treadstone.

          • Major_Freedom says:

            Except that’s fiction. It doesn’t fit.

  5. Corey says:

    I also had to shut the interview off. In my opinion, this was a PsyOps operation of the highest order. How Alex Jones let it go on is beyond me.

    • Ken B says:

      I gave up at the point where he put a theistic spin on evolutionary biology.

  6. konst says:

    About time someone called him on all the economics fallacies he makes. Calls into question his knowledge of history. Not that he doesn’t get some things right.

    He and Jones seem to have differing opinions on economics. Jones seems to hold the view of the government printing it’s own “interest free” money under the control of Congress. That way he thinks the people wouldn’t have to pay interest on the money the government prints. He seems to agree with the second part of the popular “Debt as Money” youtube video, the part where the video goes into fantasy economics land.

    Tarpley seems to be a Democrat who wants to use the dictatorial powers of the government and Federal Reserve to serve legislate a utopia into existence.

    • Eustace sutton says:

      Tarpley’s a socialist and is associated with larouch–another New Dealer, who at one time was calling himself a socialist and must be one of the strangest people ever to walk on planet earth.

      I’ve noticed lately the guy really has it in for Ron Paul, which is odd to me, because given the real tenor of history tarp levy seems to be intimately familiar with, Paul is irrelevant. The elites will do as they please, ans when you see Rand Paul’s stated obeisance to Israel coming out after he was elected, you see he is bought and paid for–and therefore irrelevant too.

      Evil people are erunning the world now.

  7. Jack says:

    So there was a wave of deregulations under Nixon because of Austrian influence? Yet after taking the dollar of the gold standard didn’t Nixon say “I’m a Keynesian now” or “we’re all Keynesians now” or something to that effect?

  8. Bob Roddis says:

    More variations on the “progressive” theme of playing Whac-a-Mole* with definitions.

    L. Randall Wray, crown princeling of the MMTers and “Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City”:

    Q: Philip: Austrians use a bait and switch operation—denying that what we have is capitalism and comparing it to some sort of ideal utopian capitalism.

    A Wray: Agreed. That makes it easy to blame all of real world capitalism’s problems on its deviation from utopia. It is fundamentally an anti-scientific approach. Let’s analyze what we have and try to make it better. We cannot have utopia. We’re dealing with human society, after all.

    http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2012/03/responses-to-blog-41-mmt-austrians-and-ideology.html#more-1758

    Remember the 752 times “AP Lerner” lectured us on how everything changed in 1971?

    *aka “trying to nail Jello to the wall”

    • Major_Freedom says:

      I laughed at this part:

      “Let’s analyze what we have and try to make it better.

      I laughed because he is presuming what we have is unsatisfactory, and that we can improve things by getting closer to Utopia.

      Is he a closet Austrian? Hahaha

  9. Major_Freedom says:

    I think Webster Tarpley wants to believe 1971 was the year of “deregulation” because it just happens to conveniently match the time at which real wages began their 40 year stagnation.

    • Bob Murphy says:

      Ah but MF, Scott Sumner can explain why living standards hit a wall in 1971: It was because right at that time, people ran out of innovations. (I’m not making that up people, Sumner actually said something very close to that once on his blog.)

      • konst says:

        Sumner and his ilk are living in a bubble of their ignorance and/or they are being true to the true nature of sociopaths.

      • Major_Freedom says:

        Wow. I don’t even know what to say.

        I guess anything and everything seems to be used as an excuse, except of course the abolition of the last link to sound money.

        He reminds me of the morose guy who wrote this:

        “You must know that the world has grown old, and does not remain in its former vigour. It bears witness to its own decline. The rainfall and the sun’s warmth are both diminishing; the metals are nearly exhausted; the husbandman is failing in the fields, the sailor on the seas, the soldier in the camp, honesty in the market, justice in the courts, concord in friendships, skill in the arts, discipline in morals. This is the sentence passed upon the world, that everything which has a beginning should perish, that things which have reached maturity should grow old, the strong weak, the great small, and that after weakness and shrinkage should come dissolution.” – Roman merchant, 3rd century AD.

        Incidentally enough, this was during the time of money devaluation in Rome.

        How’s that for an empirical dataset!

        • Major_Freedom says:

          Actually, it was a bishop named Cyprian, of Carthage, who said it, in response to charges that Christianity was to blame for why the plague, drought, and famine ravaged the world.

          Maybe Sumner is like this bishop, defending charges against monetarism.

  10. Dyspeptic says:

    Speaking of A.P. Lerner I have noticed for months now that this blog is a lot less annoying that it used to be. I couldn’t figure out why until Roddis mentioned Lerner. His fanatical MMT screeds were very annoying and distracting. I seem to remember him as a tag team with Lord Keynes on Bill Andersons blog also. What do you suppose happened to him? Did his parole get revoked or something. Maybe the psych. meds finally kicked in. 🙂

  11. Dan says:

    That was brutal. I got a little further than you but not much.

    • Ryan says:

      Yeah, I refused to listen to more than the first few sentences. I’m not sixteen years old anymore, I have to be mindful of my health.

  12. Ryan says:

    Bob, I’m surprised and delighted to see you challenging this jerk. He’s one of the most insufferably arrogant statolaters I’ve ever had to listen to. He’s also totally ignorant. He fits Bob Roddis’s characterization of anti-Austrians and anti-libertarians to a T:

    1) Totally ignorant of even basic Austrian concepts
    2) Extremely lazy
    3) Intellectually dishonest

    For the most part, Alex and his guests have at least some dim clue of the damage that government interference does to the economy, even though they tend to explicitly support high tariffs and protectionism and have a weird thing about China, Wal-Mart, and so forth. But Webster Tarpley is just the worst.

  13. Mike says:

    It’s funny that you site a historian who is a known hack. DiLorenzo is laughed at by real historians for his extremely shoddy and sloppy work. Is that all the Austrian school can find? Why do you worship an economic philosophy created by the Hapsburg Empire?

    • Major_Freedom says:

      Were you being sarcastic?

      • Mike says:

        I was being sincere.

        • Richie says:

          What’s a “real” historian? Someone who has more time to pour through historical documents as an academic hack?

          • Mike says:

            DiLorenzo is an economics professor at Loyola college so that may be the definition of an academic hack. A real historian is somebody who knows not to take quotes out of context, not to rely on questionable secondary sources, and not to deliberately ignore contradictory data, especially from primary sources. I don’t trust academic establishment history. either, and I usually don’t read it. But there are a few rules of the game all historians must follow to have any credibility. Based on some of the reviews I’ve read on Amazon, DiLorenzo is even off on some dates. That’s pretty pathetic. He’s been commissioned by the Alabama Von Mises Institute, klan element and all, to write the Austrian School’s version of history. He’s a fraud.

            • JFF says:

              So you’ve read reviews on Amazon but not his books. Who’s the fraud, really?

              Ah, the old south bashing. “klan elements and all.” Classy.

              • Mike says:

                No, the Von Mises institute specifically has ties to the klan and that’s what Im talking about. its a neoconfederate organization.

                And I have read the real Lincoln I was just saying that some reviewers pointed out instances of him having dates wrong, and I didnt notice that when I read the book, which was years ago so I credited my source.

              • Richie says:


                the Von Mises institute specifically has ties to the klan and that’s what Im talking about. its a neoconfederate organization.

                Prove it.

              • Dan says:

                “No, the Von Mises institute specifically has ties to the klan and that’s what Im talking about. its a neoconfederate organization.”

                Mike reminds me of someone I saw in a video once.

                http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrcM5exDxcc&feature=youtube_gdata_player

              • Major_Freedom says:

                Mike:

                I’ve heard that you like to murder babies.

                The PhDs say so on 4chan.

                I’m not interested in writing an essay to prove it to you.

                You didn’t credit any source.

            • Major_Freedom says:

              DiLorenzo is an economics professor at Loyola college so that may be the definition of an academic hack.

              Yay circumstantial ad hominem!

              A real historian is somebody who knows not to take quotes out of context, not to rely on questionable secondary sources, and not to deliberately ignore contradictory data, especially from primary sources.

              Examples?

              Based on some of the reviews I’ve read on Amazon, DiLorenzo is even off on some dates.

              Which dates?

              He’s a fraud.

              What is he intentionally lying about?

              • Mike says:

                I’m not interested in writing an essay here. But do this, I urge you: go to amazon and look up the real Lincoln, click on the 1 star reviews, read them. There are many lengthy, scholarly reviews written there, which point out specific examples of his shoddy work and of his having dates wrong. Some of those reviews are written by PHD’s.

              • Richie says:


                go to amazon and look up the real Lincoln, click on the 1 star reviews, read them. There are many lengthy, scholarly reviews written there, which point out specific examples of his shoddy work and of his having dates wrong. Some of those reviews are written by PHD’s.

                Ok, so I’ll go to Amazon, write a review, give myself a PhD, and write glowingly about the book. There, now prove I’m not a PhD.

                You say DiLorenzo is “shoddy” with his work, but you want us to go by reviews on Amazon? You are insane.

              • Dan says:

                “I’m not interested in writing an essay here. ”

                You don’t have to write an essay. Just point out a couple of examples where Dilorenzo does what you accuse him of doing.

              • Major_Freedom says:

                Mike:

                So in other words, you have never read the book.

                Which scholarly reviews?

                You got nothing.

            • Richie says:


              A real historian is somebody who knows not to take quotes out of context, not to rely on questionable secondary sources

              But you want us to trust the scholarly sources from Amazon reviewers.

              • Dan says:

                Hahaha

        • Major_Freedom says:

          Well, then I must task:

          Where is DiLorenzo’s work “shoddy and sloppy”?

          How was Austrian economics “created by the Hapsburg Empire”? And if so, are you saying that is some sort of criticism of it? You aren’t making the Marxist claim that a theory is wrong if the person who expounds the theory is of a certain role in society, are you?

          Even if a scientist were motivated by hate when researching and building a nuclear weapon, he’d still be doing science. You can’t argue against his claims by attacking his motives. That’s an argumentative fallacy.

          • Mike says:

            Oh, there goes the fascists’ favorite weapon again, calling someone a Marxist. I’m saying that the Hapsburgh’s and their British allies probably didn’t have the best interest of the United States in mind when they expounded their theories. In fact the Austrian school began as the feudalists retort against what they saw of the threat of American style nationalism spreading throughout Europe, which would make it harder for them to run their looting operations.

            • MamMoTh says:

              Admit you are a commie. Or, worst, a Krugmanite

            • Major_Freedom says:

              Mike:

              I didn’t call you a Marxist, I was asking if you were making the Marxist argument that ideas carry validity only if they come from certain classes of people.

              You mentioned the Hapsburgs, and you obviously intended for that to be some sort of cloud that casts doubt on the ideas themselves.

              You claim the theory of human action is specific to Austrians and the Brits, and against the interests of the US? You’re crazy. Human action transcends nationality.

              Mises’ ideas were certainly in line with the interests of the US, because Mises was pro-free market. He even escaped to the US from Nazi occupied Austria.

              As for the “looting operation’, that’s just mental.

              You’re completely misinformed. You’re imagining things that are not true, because they match your conspiracy theory.

  14. Dan McCall says:

    I watched the interview in horror as well. It was a train wreck.

    It isn’t like the Austrians hide their intellectual heritage. It’s actually a pretty HUGE academic pastime of the Austian movement to document, reflect, analyze, critique, and build upon the Austrian contributions of the past. It’s quite striking how much props they pay to all those who influence the science. Of course they hide all that shit in books, so…

    Tarpley is like pretty much all FDR-loving progressive statist, aka fascists. (Which, by the way, he even stated in the interview if I remember correctly, that FDR was the World’s biggest enemy of fascism. Really? Is that why he was a huge fan of Mussolini? Thumbs up for accuracy, buddy!)

    It really is too much to take. It’s amazing how people of all levels of education just go off on subjects they know nothing about. You’d think if you had an intellectual dispute with, say, libertarianism or austrian economics you would actually try and learn about them backward and forward, and honestly challenge their IDEAS. Heck, maybe study their fucking intellectual history so you don’t think Ludwig von Mises was rubbing shoulders with Alfred Marshall smoking cigars at the LSE. But no. Straw men, ad hominems, and fallacious rhetoric is all we get. It’s why NOBODY ever takes up an Austrian’s challenge to debate them I think.

    Anyway. Like I said before, Tarpley may be correct about certain dates and facts about history. He may even have the partial truth about past conspiracies. But he has no fucking idea how the world works, and he’s certainly a fucking dipshit if he believes the government is run by a small cabal of fascist globalists, so he wants more government to – uh, wait.

    With friends like Tarpley, the “truth movement” doesn’t need enemies.

    • Mike says:

      You can read a book called The Ugly Truth About Milton Friedman if you want to learn about the Austrian School’s links to fascism.

      • konst says:

        What does a book about Milton Friedman have to do with Austrian economics?

        Tired of people who conflate issues/philosophies cause they’re too lazy to do some basic research.

        • Mike says:

          Oh you mean like when libertarians call someone who’s for the American System a socialist or Marxist? Yeah, I hate that too. The book has a couple of chapters on Austrian economics. Whether or not Friedman fully represented the Austrian School, his doctrine certainly encompassed some of it.

          • konst says:

            First I’ve heard of the so called “American System” unless you mean the imperialist aspirations of Hamilton to become the new brutal empire of the 19th century and beyond.

          • Major_Freedom says:

            Oh you mean like when libertarians call someone who’s for the American System a socialist or Marxist?

            That depends. Is the particular “American System” action in question socialist or Marxist?

          • MamMoTh says:

            Didn’t Hayek call Friedman and the others socialists and stormed out of the room when they argued about safety nets at some Mont Pelerin meeting?

            • Dan says:

              It was Mises who did that.

      • Major_Freedom says:

        There is no link between the Austrian School and fascism, other than this quote by Mises from his book “Liberalism” (which by the way was a critique of fascism and communism):

        “It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aimed at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has for the moment saved European civilization. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history.”

        However this quote is followed by:

        “But though its policy has brought salvation for the moment, it is not of the kind which could promise continued success. Fascism was an emergency makeshift. To view it as something more would be a fatal error.”

        It would be kind of like saying punching someone repeatedly in the chest and blowing air in their lungs in order to get their heart and lungs going again, after having a heart attack, may be a good makeshift solution for the moment, but it would be a horrible as a permanent policy for that person’s life.

        • Mike says:

          I’m sorry but that quote and what you said after it is a blatant apology for fascism. The fact that you think it was ever even a makeshift solution to anything is pretty sad, Should people die so financiers don’t lose value on their bonds?

          • Major_Freedom says:

            I’m sorry but that quote and what you said after it is a blatant apology for fascism.

            No, it isn’t. I was interpreting what Mises was arguing.

            “In a period when all politicians are either dull or unwilling to break away from routine – “tradition” ; when it seems that in every Western nation the spring of imagination is dried up, Mussolini gives the impression of an ever-welling source. One may object to any for of dictatorship, but one cannot help being stimulated by the phenomenal vitality of this man who, in his role of dictator, has commanded the barren soil of Italy to produce wheat within a given time; ordered his territory to be expanded (by reclaiming swamps) without extending his fronters; and, not content with summoning new cities into existence, is changing the face of the Eternal City by diggin up the buried glories of Imperial Rome….

            “In order to create a new Italy he is returning to the old sources of Roman strength and domination. He wishes to resuscitate the materlal vestiges of ancient Rome because they are beautiful and invaluable, but also, andd mainly, because in so doing he hopes to revive the old virtues of the rugged men who under Iron discipline once fashhioned Roman power…. Here I had the feeling that there is no limting condition imposed on any Fascist project; a strange impression that whatever Mussolini commands is executed without being hampered by problems, practical or financial.”

            Do you know who wrote that? The NYT Magazine (March 19, 1933).

            Lots of people were smitten by fascism. Mises was one of the few who knew better. He wrote scathing critiques of fascism. In Socialism, in Human Action, they contain some of the best arguments against it.

            The fact that you think it was ever even a makeshift solution to anything is pretty sad, Should people die so financiers don’t lose value on their bonds?

            I didn’t say I think it was a make-shift solution. I said Mises thought it was a makeshift solution. Remember, he was in Austria at the time, being threatened by the Nazis. In desperate times like that, it is understandable how he would consider his home country turning into a temporary police state to prevent Austrian from being destroyed would be a “makeshift solution”, AND it would be understandable that he would hold fascism to be a fatal error if it were made permanent. He knew it was destined to be totalitarian.

            The fact that you’re smearing perhaps the best critic of fascism who ever lived, only shows your true motivations, and they aren’t honest.

            Question: Is your last name “Sax”?

            • Martial Artist says:

              Is your reference to “Sax” aimed at someone named Lynn Gazis-Sax, who is a blog author at Aleksandreia.wordpress.com?

  15. John p says:

    Wow!So the arguments in favour of free trade were just a pretext for the British to dominate the world.So that’s what Richard Cobden was on about

  16. Jana says:

    Honestly, I was hoping to learn more about your argument that we should follow Austrian Economics and go to the Gold Standard, not how Webster Tarpley overlooked the finer points of history.

    • Bob Murphy says:

      Jana wrote:

      Honestly, I was hoping to learn more about your argument that we should follow Austrian Economics and go to the Gold Standard, not how Webster Tarpley overlooked the finer points of history.

      But Jana, I’ve written probably more than a dozen articles dealing with the gold standard at Mises.org, not to mention a book that has a chapter dealing with the gold standard and the Great Depression. You can’t expect me to wade into the specific allegations of a guy who says the Austrians favor the slavish gold standard, and that they were linked with the policies of Richard Nixon (who ended the gold standard?!), and that the term “Austrian” doesn’t even work because the Austrians and Milton Friedman all come from the LSE. You might as well expect me to drop everything to handle a 5th grader’s essay on why liberty is overrated.

  17. Tom Woods says:

    I would say “Mike” is a good spokesman for Webster Tarpley. They have spent about the same amount of time studying the thing they are criticizing. What Tom DiLorenzo’s work on Lincoln has to do with any of this is a good question. If the criticisms of Tom’s book were correct, would that make Hayek’s capital theory wrong?

    • Mike says:

      I’m sure you’re a critic of the American System. Have you ever read any books by Henry Carey, or Friedrich List, Mathew Carey, whose book The Olive Branch Jefferson admired very much, or even Hamilton’s writings in their entirety? I doubt it. I’ve at least read a few of your beloved texts and plan on reading more so I can refute them.

      Someone cited DiLorenzo as a legitimate source in refutation to Hamilton. And if you’re willing to believe the untruths he puts out what other fallacies are you willing to tolerate?

      • Major_Freedom says:

        What untruths?

        What fallacies?

      • integral says:

        The Tarpley/internet conspiracy method of scholarship:

        1. Make argument about Hamilton.
        2. Receive counter argument about Hamilton referencing a book by DiLorenzo.
        3. Go to amazon, find book by DiLorenzo.
        4. Click on 1-star review.
        5. Copy-paste

        • Bharat says:

          I mean, he doesn’t even copy paste. He simply says “go read it” and refuses to list examples.

          • Joel Poindexter says:

            I think you guys are giving Mike too much credit for his own research. How do any of you know whether he read anything on Amazon? He may just as well be repeating what he’s heard someone else mention.

    • Dan Hewitt says:

      Readers beware – I think that there may be some one-star reviews of Woods’ books on Amazon!!

      😉

      • MamMoTh says:

        You mean there are people who read his book?

        • integral says:

          People have to read a book to drop a 1-star review?

  18. Beefcake the Mighty says:

    Hey Mike, what’s so bad about fascism, anyway?

  19. Dan Hewitt says:

    From
    Ralph Raico
    , who never foresaw “Mike”:

    On Mises on Fascism in his book Liberalism:
    That Fascism “saved European civilization” from Bolshevism was a commonly held view among anti-Communists of the period. For instance, Winston Churchill visited Italy, met with Mussolini, and publicly lauded “Fascismo’s triumphant struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism,” claiming that “it proved the necessary antidote to the Communist poison” (New York Times January 21, 1927). All of the Italian classical liberals supported Mussolini’s seizure of power in 1922, fearing that the country was teetering on the brink of a Leninist takeover. When I discussed with Mises translating his Liberalismus, from which this quote comes, he suggested I include a note explaining the circumstances of the time. I told him I thought that was unnecessary–vastly underestimating the prevalence of the historically clueless. There is a section on this whole episode in my forthcoming Classical Liberalism and the Austrian School, from the Mises Institute.

  20. Republican1795. [ First Boer Republics of 1795. says:

    This misunderstanding that Tarpley promotes is just like the other misunderstanding that he promoted with Alex Jones earlier concerning the erroneous notion that the Boers are Afrikaners or that all of the Afrikaners are “from” the Boers when in reality the Afrikaners were a POLITICAL grouping of the larger Cape Dutch [ ie: those White Afrikaans speakers who coalesced at the south western Cape at a time when the Boers were coalescing on the Cape frontier circa 1700 ] which started calling the smaller Boers [ that the British lumped in with the Cape Dutch / Afrikaners ] “Afrikaners” as well from the 1930s when the Afrikaners [ who marginalized the smaller Boer people ] began to ascend to power.

    The Boers are not Afrikaners as this was simply British directed propaganda [ then picked up by the Afrikaner Broederbond secret society ] aimed at destroying the identity of the Boers by lumping them in with the larger & formerly pro British Cape Dutch population. The Boers tried to restore their conquered Boer Republics during the Maritz Rebellion of 1914 only to be shot down literally by the Afrikaner regime. The Afrikaner establishment organized once again AGAINST the Boers who were calling for the restoration of the Boer Republics during the 1940s thereby reducing the movement down to nothing.

    Robert van Tonder left the National Party in 1961 [ the same year that the dangerous Dutch born usurper Hendrik Verwoerd turned South Africa into a nominal & false republic ] in order to advocate for the restoration of the Boer Republics full time. Van Tonder started the Boerestaat Party in 1986 after he failed in getting any other political party to accept the notion of restoring the Boer Republics. The Boers have been under Afrikaner domination [ which Theuns Cloete of Boervolk Radio & the Transvaal Separatists expressly pointed out in an American shortwave radio interview in 2007 ] ever since the early 20th cent when the British forced them into the same macro State as the Cape Dutch. The Afrikaans money power spends lot of money AGAINST Boer self determination.

    Thus Tarpley is incorrect on other fronts as well.

    I would highly recommend reading my blog to learn more about this important topic.

  21. Dan says:

    “You can read a book called The Ugly Truth About Milton Friedman if you want to learn about the Austrian School’s links to fascism.”

    I couldn’t resist because I had nothing better to do and no work tomorrow so I found the pdf for that book.

    The book doesn’t start off well when it gets around to talking about the Austrian school. The first mention of Mises and Hayek comes on page 81 and this is said,

    “The dollar’s obituary was already the subject of memoranda among Marshall Plan economists in 1950, when Robert Triffin, the bright young man of the “Austrian School” of von Hayek and von Mises, became Special Advisor on Policy, Trade and Finance to the Economic Cooperation Administration, the government agency that administered the Marshall Plan…. He became the leading postwar proponent of Keynes’s original scheme to eliminate the dollar as an international currency altogether, in favor of a “one world” currency like the present Special Drawing Right controlled by the International Monetary Fund.”

    Now that sure seemed weird that a bright young Austrian economists would be pushing a Keynesian position, but I know Mike is very much against shoddy work so I decided to check up on Robert Triffin. I went to mises.org and was shocked to find that Triffin is actually a Keynesian economist. I guess that explains why he was in favor of a Keynesian position. Here’s what Rothbard had to say about him in Making Economic Sense,

    “As determined men with a goal, the Keynesians did not fail from not trying. They launched the Special Drawing Right (SDR) as an attempt to replace gold as an international reserve money, but SDRs proved to be a failure. Prominent Keynesians such as Edward M. Bernstein of the International Monetary Fund and Robert Triffin of Yale, launched well-known Plans bearing their names, but these too were not adopted.”

    I hoped the next mention of the Austrian school would turn up better results but, sadly, my hopes were dashed when I read on page 95,

    “The same characterizations apply to the Austrian School of monetarists who later joined forces with Chicago in the Mont Pelerin Society and among whom can be numbered such types as Friedrich von Hayek and Ludwig von Mises. These products of the Viennese salons at the turn of the century are the men who trained Milton Friedman’s teachers, including the founder of the National Bureau of Economic Research, Wesley Clair Mitchell.”

    So did Hayek and Mises train Wesley Clair Mitchell? Surprisingly, the answer to this is no, they did not. Here again is Murray Rothbard, this time in World War I as Fulfillment: Power and the Intellectuals,

    “As we shall see, in view of the importance of Wesley Clair Mitchell in the burgeoning of government statistics in World War I, Mitchell’s view on statistics are of particular importance. Mitchell, an institutionalist and student of Thorstein Veblen, was one of the prime founders of modern statistical inquiry in economics and clearly aspired to lay the basis for “scientific” government planning.”

    Even if it had been true that Hayek and Mises trained Mitchell then their training obviously failed. Rothbard spends 45 pages taking Mitchell to task over his love of government statistics and his desire to use them to centrally plan the economy. He finishes his journal article by saying,

    “In short, both Mitchell and Fisher were, subtly and perhaps half-consciously, advancing the case for a postwar world in which their own allegedly impartial and scientific professions could levitate above the narrow struggles of classes for the social product, and thus emerge as a commonly accepted, “objective” new ruling class, a twentieth-century version of the philosopher-kings.”

    On page 96 of the book Mike suggested we get this fantastic quote,

    “as were the Viennese economists, who claimed that economies do not produce wealth but only redistribute whatever nature chooses to provide.”

    I can let that quote speak for itself.

    We get another mention of Mises on page 161.

    “In the domain of method, the Austrians took the vantage point of Bentham and Mach to extremes that appear lunatic to the modern reader. Outdoing the most Chinese of the old physiocrats, Ludwig von Mises wrote in 1912:

    “There is a naive view of production that regards it as the bringing of matter that did not previously exist, as creation in the true sense of the word. From this it is easy to derive a contrast between the creative work of production and the mere transportation of goods. This way of regarding the matter is entirely inadequate. In fact, the role played by man in production always consists solely in combining his personal forces with the forces of nature in such a way that the cooperation leads to some particular desired arrangement of material. No human act of production amounts to more than altering the positions of things in space and leaving the rest to nature.”

    According to von Mises, not only is industrial production undesirable, as the Oxford kooks say; it is impossible. Von Mises was such an extreme know-nothing that he looked with contempt at the statistics gathering effors of the Vienna School’s own trainee, Wesley Mitchell, at the National Bureau of Economic Research”

    At this point I’m starting to feel like Mike is just messing with us. How do you read this book and not laugh at how stupid it is.

    The next great description of the Austrian school I found was on page 163.

    “But the Austrian School, which in the 1920’s became the Austrian Institute for the Study of Trade Cycles, portrayed these developments {business cycles ~Dan} as the unfortunate consequence of man’s misguided attempt to change the natural order, and the inevitability of nature’s revenge. Original sin, in the Austrian scheme of things, is the existence of credit itself – that requirement for the introduction of new technologies and hence economic survival.”

    No need to comment on that.

    I didn’t really read much other than the comments about Austrians economics. Everything I read was really bad though. This is one of those books you just chuck in the trash and try to forget you ever wasted time reading it. The only saving grace for me was I had my Seinfeld dvd’s playing in the background. But here are a few other quotes from the book that others might get a kick out of.

    “Normally, banks hold in reserve only a portion of their deposits… If banks were compelled to put up all their deposits as reserves, they could extend no loans; their business would consist, as Friedman has suggested, of charging depositors for the privilege of depositing money…. One hundred percent reserve banking as promulgated by von Mises and Friedman may seem absurd, but Friedman’s friends in the banking community have already begun preparations to make it happen.” pg. 164-165

    And,

    “The Viennese economists were filled with ghoulish glee over the collapse of the world’s financial system. Friedrich von Hayek lied: “There is no reason to assume that the crisis was started by a deliberate deflationary action on the part of the monetary authorities, or that the deflation itself is anything but a process induced by the maladjustments of the industry left over from the boom.”

    The funniest part of the book by far is when he says,

    “Von Hayek wrote the Mont Pelerin Society’s founding document, The Road to Serfdom, in London in 1943. The title contains an inside joke: On the surface, von Hayek oozed the same concern for “individual liberty” against the “tyranny of the state” that Friedman bores us with in Capitalism and Freedom…. A year later from Yale University, Mont Pelerin’s co-founder Ludwig von Mises wrote an identical tract, Omnipotent Government. What a belly-laugh the two of them must have had, watching American conservatives tout their One-Worldism as if it were an appendix to the New Testament!”

    Mike, you’ve been bamboozled. I hope you do end up reading the Austrian texts so you can remove the garbage this book filled your head with.

    • Bob Murphy says:

      Dan wrote (a quote from a book):

      A year later from Yale University, Mont Pelerin’s co-founder Ludwig von Mises wrote an identical tract, Omnipotent Government. What a belly-laugh the two of them must have had, watching American conservatives tout their One-Worldism as if it were an appendix to the New Testament!

      Dan, am I to understand that this guy thought Hayek was actually showing how to get to serfdom, and that Mises was a proponent of Omnipotent Government? And he means that they consciously strove for that, as opposed to picking ironic titles? That’s almost impressive, it’s so dumb.

      • Dan says:

        He was making the case that if you followed the words of Hayek and Mises in those books it would lead us to a one world government, which was their goal all along. That’s why he thought they were laughing it up because the title of their books was what they wanted but the “rubes” thought they were making the case for individual liberty.

        The whole book is fascinating in how bad it is. He switches from Austrians to Keynesians to Chicago School like they are all the same philosophy. I think that was all intentional. I mean he was quoting from some phenomenal books by Hayek and Mises. He would just totally confuse the reader by twisting the meaning of what they said. He is either a compete charlatan or the dumbest well read man alive.

        • skylien says:

          I don’t think he is just is a charlatan who is trying to deceive by intention. I am sure, as unbelievable as it may sound, that he is honest in how he interprets it. His understanding and the premises he has of how the world works, and his refusal or inability to question them force him to interpret things as he does. Else he would face obvious contradictions even he would recognize…

          So I think he is the later.

          • Dan says:

            I’m not sure. There is just so much in there that is just complete BS that it is hard for me to believe he was being honest in how he interprets it. Robert Triffin is an Austrian economist? Hayek and Mises trained Wesley Clair Mitchell? Mitchell was Friedman’s teacher? He never once explains where he came up with this stuff. He just states it like it is obviously true.

            • skylien says:

              I agree with you that he is deceiving, I just think that he startet with himself..

      • skylien says:

        Wow, that really takes The Cake!

        But how else could you honestly believe Hayek and Mises were for fascism ( “fascism” in the meaning of what most people understand as some sort of brutal, flag waving, troop marching, tree hating, socialistic but not really socialistic [since, come on, it is obviously the opposite of Marx’s Socialism, whatever the difference] authoritarian reign of terror).

        …omg…

        • Dan says:

          I could’ve put a lot more quotes from that book but it stopped being fun after a while. I started feeling sorry for all the people who have read that book with no understanding of economics going in.

    • Mike says:

      You didn’t refute any of the quotes, you just listed them. Hence you have failed to make any point whatsoever let alone prove that I have been bamboozled.

      • integral says:

        From Mike: You didn’t refute any of the quotes, you just listed them. Hence you have failed to make any point whatsoever let alone prove that I have been bamboozled.

        From Dan: “The same characterizations apply to the Austrian School of monetarists who later joined forces with Chicago in the Mont Pelerin Society and among whom can be numbered such types as Friedrich von Hayek and Ludwig von Mises. These products of the Viennese salons at the turn of the century are the men who trained Milton Friedman’s teachers, including the founder of the National Bureau of Economic Research, Wesley Clair Mitchell.”

        So did Hayek and Mises train Wesley Clair Mitchell? Surprisingly, the answer to this is no, they did not. Here again is Murray Rothbard, this time in World War I as Fulfillment: Power and the Intellectuals,

        “As we shall see, in view of the importance of Wesley Clair Mitchell in the burgeoning of government statistics in World War I, Mitchell’s view on statistics are of particular importance. Mitchell, an institutionalist and student of Thorstein Veblen, was one of the prime founders of modern statistical inquiry in economics and clearly aspired to lay the basis for “scientific” government planning.”

        From me:
        Either you don’t actually read the comment, you’re incapable of grasping what these words mean, or you’re trolling.

        Btw, does anyone know what Austrian School of monetarists means? Are austrians monetarists (which I thought was kinda anathema to mises and hayek), or does this refer to something else?

        • Mike says:

          I don’t see a refutation, I just see a quote from Rothbard who named one teacher that Mitchell had. I think he may have had more than one.

          • Dan says:

            Wesley Clair Mitchell went to study at the University of Chicago and was awarded a PhD in 1899. Mitchell’s teachers included economists Thorstein Veblen and J. L. Laughlin and philosopher John Dewey.

            Ludwig von Mises was 18 years old living in another country at the time. He didn’t even start attending University of Vienna until 1890.

            Hayek was born in 1899. I thinks it’s safe to say he didn’t pop out the womb teaching economics.

            Seriously man, this guy is a charlatan. I’m not saying it to be mean to you. I’m saying it so you realize that it might be beneficial to do further studying on these matters.

            • Dan says:

              Correction: Mises started at the University of Vienna in 1900. Not 1890.

            • Mike says:

              I don’t know if I can accept that from you unless you can admit that Thomas DiLorenzo is a charlatan. Plus if you read the quote carefully he doesn’t say specifically that Hayek and Mises were his teachers. He says “these products of the Viennese salons at the turn of the century” taught Mitchell. I think he means other Austrian economists from the same orbit of the other two.

              • Ken B says:

                Yes, I parse it the same way. The referrent of “these products” is “the Austrian school of monetarists who later joined forces with Chicago in the Mont Pelerin Society”

                Mises and Hayek are are logically subordinate to that and indeed are introduced into the discussion by “and among whom …” and “such types”. They are cited as examples of the breed, not the breed. And the breed is the referrent.

              • Major_Freedom says:

                How is DiLorenzo a “charlatan”?

              • Dan says:

                Are you two serious? If you want to claim that Mitchell was taught by Austrians then tell me by which Austrian economists. As it is, there is no evidence to support that claim. In fact, there is plenty of evidence that he wasn’t since he argued in favor of a completely different philosophy and Austrians economists attacked him specifically for his philosophy. You guys make these outrageous claims and think the burden of proof somehow is on us?

              • Dan says:

                Correction: replace philosophy with theory.

      • Dan says:

        Another qoute from the book I did take the time to refute was when the author said that Robert Triffin was an Austrian economist. That is false, he was a Keynesian economist. I didn’t refute a lot of those claims because people that come to this site don’t need me to point out why they were wrong. In fact, some of them were so wrong it was comical.

        Still, you claimed that Dilorenzo got dates wrong in his book The Real Lincoln and said that was pathetic. You never offered any evidence to support that claim, but lets just take it as if that is true and Dilorenzo is pathetic for screwing that up. The author you recommended claimed a Keynesian economist was an Austrian economist, and he claimed that Hayek and Mises taught a man who had his PhD when one was 18 years old and in a different country and the other had just been born. This isn’t just messing up a date, it’s flat out making things up.

        • Mike says:

          Did you not read my last post and then Ken B’s after mine? I said he doesn’t specifically say Hayek and Mises were his teachers, but that products of the same Viennese salons as Hayek and Mises were his teachers.

          I don’t think Dilorenzo ever mentions that Jefferson put Burr on trial for treason.

          • integral says:

            Can you name these products?

  22. Bob Roddis says:

    Mises’ quote on fascism was in reference to the Mussolini variety in 1927. Mises was clearly (and merely) pointing out that Mussolini (in his opinion in 1927) and the pre-Hitler form of fascism had halted the spread of Stalinist mass murdering Communism in Italy. That is all. But he also makes clear that fascism is a brutal and ignorant movement because fascists cannot even argue or engage in debate (just like socialists) and that fascism will lead to a civilization-ending war. Mises said:

    “Fascism can triumph today because universal indignation at the infamies committed by the socialists and communists has obtained for it the sympathies of wide circles. But when the fresh impression of the crimes of the Bolsheviks has paled, the socialist program will once again exercise its power of attraction on the masses. For Fascism does nothing to combat it except to suppress socialist ideas and to persecute the people who spread them. If it wanted really to combat socialism, it would have to oppose it with ideas. There is, however, only one idea that can be effectively opposed to socialism, viz., that of liberalism. ****

    So much for the domestic policy of Fascism. That its foreign policy, based as it is on the avowed principle of force in international relations, cannot fail to give rise to an endless series of wars that must destroy all of modern civilization requires no further discussion. To maintain and further raise our present level of economic development, peace among nations must be assured. But they cannot live together in peace if the basic tenet of the ideology by which they are governed is the belief that one’s own nation can secure its place in the community of nations by force alone.

    It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history. But though its policy has brought salvation for the moment, it is not of the kind which could promise continued success. Fascism was an emergency makeshift. To view it as something more would be a fatal error.” Pages 50-51

    http://mises.org/books/liberalism.pdf

    When anyone shows up suggesting that Mises and/or or the Austrians were supporters of fascism, it’s clear exactly where they are coming from. That type of “argument” is all that our opponents have. We’ve won, they’ve lost.

    • Mike says:

      Yes and the Austrian school has a clear record of success to prove you’ve won.

      • integral says:

        What specific successes are you referring to?

        • Mike says:

          That was sarcasm; seeing as how Ive been saying the Austrian School sucks.

          • Richie says:

            Well aren’t you special. Many people think the same way you do. Big deal. You’re just not very smart.

  23. Blackadder says:

    I read the first few chapters of Hamilton’s Curse. It was awful. It wasn’t even good as polemic, reading more like a series of disorganized rants stringed together end to end.

    What finally made me stop reading was the section on the war bonds controversy. You would think that whatever other problems Dilorenzo may have had with Hamilton, on this issue at least he would have to support Hamilton’s position (which was that the bond holders should be paid, rather than giving the money to people who had previously sold them). Nope. According to Dilorenzo, Hamilton was wrong about that too. I have better things to do with my time.

    • Major_Freedom says:

      Why is it wrong to say the war bond holders should not have been paid?

      • Blackadder says:

        Why is it wrong to say the war bond holders should not have been paid?

        Um, because they were the ones who owned the bonds?

        • Major_Freedom says:

          Um, because they were the ones who owned the bonds?

          That’s implied in the definition of bond holders. It’s not an argument as to WHY those who are war bond holders, which is defined as those who owned the war bonds, should have been paid.

          Why should those who owned the war bonds be paid?

          I once owned a bond that didn’t pay.

  24. Dan says:

    He didn’t take a position on that. He simply pointed out what happened. Hamilton proposed a plan for the government to issue new debt backed by a tariff that he helped put in place. The old debt would be bought up at full value. Then almost immediately this plan became public knowledge in New York City but not in the rest of the country. So Hamilton, his friends, New York City speculators, and congressmen went around the country buying up the war bonds at a discount before those people knew the government was going to pay full price. James Madison introduced a plan that would’ve paid the current holders of the bonds what they paid for them and then given the difference to the original holder of the war debt. The plan had no chance to succeed because 29 of the 64 congressmen voting on the plan were current bond holders.

    Dilorenzo made it pretty clear he didn’t like that Hamilton and his friends took advantage of the bond holders who weren’t aware that he had set it up for the government to pay full price, but he never said Madison’s subsequent plan was good. He just said it never had a chance.

    Personally, I think they should have repudiated the debt. Failing that, I think James Madison’s plan should’ve at least been applied to anybody in the government. It’s bad enough Hamilton was able to line the pockets of his friends by screwing over these original owners of the debt, but it’s worse that people in the government benefitted directly from screwing people.

    • Ken B says:

      “Personally, I think they should have repudiated the debt.” Because you think they way is was paid off was an illegitimate use of power. Whereas repudiating debt is a legitimate one?

      • Matthew Swaringen says:

        Was there a legitimate path there at all though?

      • Dan says:

        Yes. Why would I support the government stealing from one group of people to pay back another? If the congressmen wanted to pay off the bonds with their own money then I wouldn’t object to that.

  25. Robert Fellner says:

    This thread was quite comical. Interestingly enough, Mike actually did reveal something I was previously unaware of. His criticisms of DiLorenzo are irrelevant to the conversation here, but have some validity to them.

    I did read the 1-star reviews he referenced and there are cases where it appears DiLorenzo uses quotes in an extremely misleading way.

    Additionally, several prominent libertarians have echoed similar criticisms in The Freeman and The Independent Review.

    http://independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?a=79

    http://www.thefreemanonline.org/departments/book-reviews-2003-4/ It’s at the bottom of this page.

    • Blackadder says:

      Wow. Some of those errors are glaring.

  26. Mike says:

    “Ive just received a letter from Mr Burr who’s offered his services to the queen so that she may employ him in whatever manner it seems fit, especially if it means breaking off a portion of the Western part of the United States.” – close paraphrase of a letter from British ambassador to the US, Anthony Merry, talking about a letter he received from Aaron Burr. I don’t think DiLorenzo mentions this anywhere in his books while he is telling you what a great guy Burr was.

    • integral says:

      Guys, I have a letter here in which both Mike and Tarpley admit to being tools of the Rockefeller foundation, the NWO and the Bilderberger group!

      Granted, it’s in my own hand, because I had to copy it and I lost the original, but why would that make anyone, least of all a grand jury, sceptical of my claims?

  27. Mike says:

    Oh so you don’t believe the letter exists? Here you go: “I have just received a letter from Mr Burr the actual vice-president of the United States, to lend his assistance to his majesty’s government in any manner in which they may think fit to employ him, particularly in endeavoring to effect a separation of the Western Part of the United States from that which lies beneath the Atlantic and the mountains, in its whole extent. His proposition on this and other subjects will be fully detailed to your lordship by Colonel Williamson, who has been the bearer of them to me, and who will embark for England in a few days.”
    —British ambassador to the US Anthony Merry to British Foreign Secretary Lord Harrowby, August 6 1804 quoted in Henry Adams, History of the United States of America in the First Administration of Thomas Jefferson, 1921 Vol 2 p. 395.

    And a guy on Tom Woods message board by the name of Contrarian Rex, did a pretty good job of proving that Von Mises was in fact a tool of the Rockefeller Foundation, seeing as how he was absolutely dependent on Rockefeller foundation funding for most of his career, and how foundations even paid his salary when he was a professor at NYU.

    • Bharat says:

      I don’t care if Hitler paid Mises, it doesn’t make him a Nazi.

  28. Bobby Johnson says:

    Mike, you poor, poor Larouchian, falling for the lies of that controlled opposition FBI plant:
    1. FDR was an active globalist member of the NWO. His brain trust consisted of wall street one percenters. The new deal was authored by wall street corporate fascists, like owen young and gerald swope, both financial and technologcal supporters of the nazis. FDR himself was the product of the new england banking elite. FDR’s campaign was funded by wall street one percenters who were trying to bring corporate fascism to american via the new deal. The 1933 coup was arranged by wall street interests to make FDR dictator, not overthrow him. The 1933 coup was supposed to remove the supreme court and congress, who were blocking the new deal, and turn FDR into the main character out of “phillip dru: administrator,” written by another wall street corporate socialist statist, colonel house. Once the coup was uncovered, morgan and rockefeller controlled media interests made the coup seem like it was against, not for, FDR. The person in charge of investigating the coup in congress was a wall street funded new dealer. Tarpley peddles establishment lies in his analysis of FDR’s failed attempt to seize power. The liberty league was set up by the du ponts, who were related to FDR through marriage, to act as controlled opposition and take the blame. My source is Antony Sutton, the libertarian british historian who exposed how wall street funded hitler and the communist revolution in russia, as well as the exposer of the skull and bones cult in yale. Tarpley often sites sutton, without ever mentioning sutton’s hatred for FDR. Libertarians may recognize sutton because his work has been heaped with praise by Rothbard, gary north, and john hospers. Here are my sources: http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/bolshevik_revolution/
    http://www.reformation.org/wall-st-fdr.html
    http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/wall_street/
    http://archive.org/details/Sutton–Western-Technology-1930-1945
    http://archive.org/details/Sutton–Western-Technology-1945-1965 http://ia600304.us.archive.org/25/items/Sutton–Western-Technology-1917-1930/Sutton–WesternTechnologyAndSovietEconomicDevelopment1917To1930.pdf http://mises.org/journals/jls/6_2/6_2_3.pdf http://www.lulu.com/items/volume_24/387000/387984/1/print/Antony_Sutton_-_Americas_Secret_Establishment_An_Introduction_to_Skull_and_Bones.pdf

    • Mike says:

      Why would I ever trust a British libertarian. By the way, all libertarians are essentially British.

  29. Christopher says:

    Is there a serious critique of Austrian economics out there which does not rely on confusing the reader but is written by someone who actually knows one or two Austrian positions?

    • konst says:

      No. People have ask before but all that was offered was a Keynesian who calls himself “Lord Keynes” on some blog called Social something can’t remember. But he distorts the facts too.

      Best critique that’s available is from other Austrians economists who disagree with some points.

    • MamMoTh says:

      Yes. Austrian voodoo economics has been eviscerated time and time again.

      We won.

      • Anonymous says:

        Austrian voodoo economics has been eviscerated time and time again.

        Where? Children’s books don’t count.

        • MamMoTh says:

          Not writing under your real fake name doesn’t count either

  30. Sam Geoghegan says:

    Hi RPM

    Looks like you have some competition on your hands.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz3cnCGT2jw&feature=relmfu

  31. konst says:

    Haven’t seen the whole video yet. I guess this is the closest there is to a debate with Webster Tarpley though Kokesh isn’t an economist.

    “Adam Kokesh debates Webster Tarpley at Occupy Bilderberg 2012”
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9i7bzyKUBoU

  32. Mike says:

    Ok…these paranoid conspiracy theories are getting just plain old silly.

    It’s so funny how corporations send lobby groups to Washington DC to create evermore regulations yet laissez-faire is somehow to supposed to be the corporation’s best friend? These idiots who promote that kind of silliness can’t even see the cognitive dissonance in this? Man, how blind can you get?

  33. ryan vann says:

    It would be instruuctive to understand that Tarpley believes the terns Austrian and Economist aren’t subsets and sets respectivley, but are synonyms. Alexander Hamilton was not an economist, therefore not an Austrian, therefore super great.

  34. LibertyVini says:

    Saying that cutting the dollar loose from gold is “deregulation” is rather like armed goons keeping rescuers away from a person being beaten by a mob.

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