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Good Intentions Paved the Road to the 2008 Financial Crisis
Sep 18, 2026 · original
This week marks the eighteenth anniversary of the failure of Lehman Brothers , a key event of the 2008 global financial crisis (GFC). Lehman’s failure and the GFC more broadly were dramatic economic events. Lehman Brothers was the largest bankruptcy in US history to date. The global financial crisis gave rise to the Great Recession. The stock market fell by more than 50 percent , the economy contracted by 4.3 percent , unemployment rose from 4.7 percent to 10 percent , and the subsequent decade of US economic growth was abnormally anemic . Many myths about Lehman’s failure and about the 2008 global financial crisis continue to dominate public discourse. Popular consensus still places the blame primarily on deregulation , Wall Street greed , and reckless financial engineering . And many anecdotes inform their perspective. Mortgage fraud was common and egregious , especially in the final f
Mao’s 'Great Leap': Mass Starvation on The Road to Serfdom
Sep 18, 2026 · original
“A calamity ordained by Heaven may be escaped; A calamity ordained by oneself is inescapable.” So warns Shujing, the ancient Chinese Book of Documents . If only Mao Zedong had heeded this call to humility. Despite a long history of civil strife, conflict brought by foreign powers, and countless natural disasters , the worst of China’s sufferings were self-inflicted wounds. Mao’s regime took power in October of 1949, and he unleashed too many horrors to capture in a brief essay. The policies of his poorly named Great Leap Forward led directly to the deaths of 36 million people. The long shadow of its horrors still haunts the Chinese economy and culture . Five years prior to Mao’s assumption of national power, Austrian economist Friedrich von Hayek published The Road to Serfdom . In it, he observed, “Whoever has sole control of the means must also determine which ends are to be served…in s
Do You Know These 24 Underrated Economists?
Sep 17, 2026 · original
AIER readers are familiar with many of the big names in free-market scholarship and advocacy, such as Ludwig von Mises , Friedrich Hayek , and Milton Friedman , but many other important contributors remain obscure. Unsung Heroes of the Market: The 24 Underrated Economists You Need to Know , published by the Independent Institute , introduces 24 of them. Each chapter is carefully crafted by a writer or writers deeply familiar with its subject. The book opens with a chapter about an individual we scarcely think of as an economist at all — Alexander Hamilton. In it, Richard Salsman challenges the view, held by some free-market stalwarts , that Alexander Hamilton advocated big government, central planning, and a burgeoning national debt. On the contrary, Salsman writes, “Hamilton adopted [Adam] Smith’s critiques of mercantilism and physiocracy, but also rejected a few of Smith’s errors: his
The Battle for the Future of Space
Sep 17, 2026 · original
New Space Capitalism: The Entrepreneurial Path to the Stars By Rainer Zitelmann Skyhorse Publishing, 2026. Pp. 304, $32.99 (hardcover). The 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey was eerily prescient. On a mission to Jupiter, astronauts Frank and Dave get their news on the equivalent of an iPad, something that would not be invented until 2010. And when their onboard computer, HAL, goes rogue, the narrative anticipates today’s anxieties about artificial intelligence with uncanny precision. The film also foresaw the expansion of business and commerce into space. One character travels to the moon on Pan Am. He stops at an orbiting Hilton, which includes a Howard Johnson’s “Earthlight Room” lounge. These things, unfortunately, have not come to pass. But that may change if Rainer Zitelmann has anything to say about it. His recent book, New Space Capitalism: The Entrepreneurial Path to the Stars , ar
An Aging, Shrinking Population: Must a Smaller World Be Poorer?
Sep 16, 2026 · original
In 2084 — the year my kids turn 63 and 65 — the United Nations forecasts that the world’s population will peak at 10.3 billion and then begin falling. Even before then, this process will be well along in some parts of the world. The population of Europe will have fallen by 17 percent from its present level and China’s by 42 percent. In the span of my children’s lives, the equivalent of one in every six Europeans will have disappeared — and four out of every ten Chinese. The population of the United States, by contrast, will be 18 percent larger than it is now, but that rate of growth is less than one-third of the 72 percent increase in the previous 59 years. This is the result of collapsing birthrates. Worldwide, the total fertility rate has fallen from 5.3 in 1963 to 2.2 now. In the United States, it has fallen from 3.8 in 1958 to 1.6 and in Europe from 2.7 in 1951 to 1.4. China’s decli
The Hidden $13K Tax: Did the Government Make You Buy a Car?
Sep 16, 2026 · original
Nearly four in ten Americans say car ownership is a luxury their families are struggling to afford. In much of the United States, owning a car has become more of a necessity than a choice. When fuel, insurance, maintenance, and depreciation are included, the cost of vehicle ownership now averages (per LendingTree) almost $13,000 per year. Indirect costs are legion, from highway widening to tax offsets for commuter parking to kids with exhaust-related asthma . Most buyers say they would pay more for a home in a walkable community, but only about four percent of US homes are in highly walkable neighborhoods. Areas where residents can walk to daily errands, large workplaces, and public transit command a rent and sales premium of up to 45 percent. “Substantial price and market share premiums is the definition of pent-up demand,” reads a Smart Growth America report titled “ Foot Traffic Ahead
Warsh’s First Test: Will the Fed Follow the Rules?
Sep 15, 2026 · original
Market expectations have swung sharply leading up to the Federal Reserve’s rate-setting meeting this week. With conflicting signals sent by Federal Open Market Committee members , traders moved back and forth between expecting the Fed to hold rates steady and anticipating a quarter-point increase. But following a positive jobs report and elevated inflation reading for August, CME FedWatch odds have moved firmly toward a rate hike. The monetary policy rules have been much less volatile. The Monetary Rules Report from AIER’s Sound Money Project puts the appropriate federal funds rate somewhere between 3.79 and 6.02 percent. A quarter-point increase would lift the Fed’s target range from 3.50–3.75 percent to 3.75–4.00 percent, bringing policy back into the lower end of the range prescribed by the leading rules. That would also provide an early test of the monetary policy philosophy Chair Ke
The ‘Better and Worse’ of Stephanie Coontz’s Marriage History
Sep 15, 2026 · original
Stephanie Coontz has spent several decades explaining that our ideal vision of marriage is a figment of our collective imagination. Her The Way We Never Were regarded the single-male-breadwinner household as a “dangerous” form of remembering, a “nostalgia trap.” Ten years previous, she released Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage , which examined the changing social, cultural, and economic environments in which marriage arrangements have evolved over time. It rhymes remarkably well with Ernest Burgess and Harvey Locke’s 1945 The Family: From Institution to Companionship . Her latest effort, For Better and Worse: The Complicated Past and Challenging Future of Marriage , is perhaps her most even-handed approach to the subject, as its title would suggest. That balance emerges in part because she acknowledges that what many view as a crisis in marriage and family life isn’t mere
Beefsteak Socialists? Left and Right Are Competing to Control the Economy
Sep 15, 2026 · original
French philosopher Jean-François Revel, sometime after Augusto Pinochet’s coup in Chile, reportedly remarked that when the dictator came to kill Chilean democracy, he found only a cadaver. That quip carries crucial lessons for the contemporary popularity of the Democratic Socialists of America , the postliberal right , and their rising equivalents in European countries like France and Germany . Revel’s point was not to absolve Pinochet. The government under Salvador Allende, overthrown by Pinochet, had its own antidemocratic momentum. Democracies at risk of succumbing to control rarely face only one threat. Only attacks from multiple sides can sufficiently weaken political legitimacy for would-be authoritarians to capture an existing state. Chilean democracy had not merely been wounded by political polarization. It had suffered for decades from another disease: the creeping politicizatio
AIER Everyday Price Index Rises Again, Showing Household Budgets Under Pressure
Sep 14, 2026 · original
The AIER Everyday Price Index (EPI) rose 0.33 percent in August 2026, reversing two consecutive monthly declines and registering its ninth-largest monthly advance of the past two years. The EPI is now up 5.49 percent year to date and 5.59 percent from August 2025, underscoring the continuing affordability pressure facing households despite the declines recorded in June and July . Beneath the headline increase, price movements were comparatively balanced: 13 EPI categories became more expensive in August, ten declined, and one was unchanged. The three largest increases among the EPI components were recreational reading materials, up 2.92 percent; motor fuel, up 2.74 percent; and purchase, subscription, and rental of video, up 0.97 percent. The largest declines occurred in nonprescription drugs, down 1.17 percent; internet services and electronic information providers, down 0.70 percent; a
The Fed's Mortgage Policy Made Homeownership Cost More
Sep 14, 2026 · original
The median household in Miami earns about $62,000 annually; homeowners with a mortgage have monthly housing costs pushing $2,900. Annualized, this equals more than half the median household income. In Los Angeles , the numbers come in at $82,000 and $3,500 for 51 percent. New Yorkers are paying 49 percent, and New Orleanians are paying 47 percent of their annual income on housing. Different coasts, different housing markets, different incomes, regulations, and supply constraints. And all of these cities illustrate a national reality that seems beyond dispute: housing has become extraordinarily expensive . Lest these cities appear cherry-picked, let us consider Harvard’s 2026 State of the Nation’s Housing report . Existing-home sales are at a three-decade low. Meanwhile, median new and existing home prices exceed $400,000. Prices for the latter are now 54 percent higher than in 2020, near
The Food Revolution Nobody Planned
Sep 14, 2026 · original
Long before policymakers conceived New York City Groceries , entrepreneurs fed people. They did it cheaply, and they made people better off in unimaginable ways. The approximately 63,000 grocery stores in the US (according to 2023 Census estimates ) indicate a great deal of competition, which encourages owners to lower prices and improve food quality. The figure below indicates that these stores must also compete with approximately 650,000 domestic food and beverage retailers. That’s a lot of competition, and it helps lower prices while producing a dizzying array of goods and innovation that makes the mythical land of Cockaigne look paltry. While higher prices understandably attract attention — recent CPI data for food indicates a 3 percent rise over the previous year — innovation takes place in myriad ways that are easy to overlook. Open-air marketplaces and food halls are just some of
Twenty-Five Years After 9/11, Fear Is Testing Freedom Again
Sep 11, 2026 · original
The anniversary of September 11 invites remembrance before argument or advice. But from the distance of a quarter-century, and with thousands of suitably reverential pieces appearing around the world today, it is appropriate to ask what we have learned — or failed to learn — from this generation-defining psychological scar. The mind still recoils from the horrors of that morning: 19 men boarded civilian airplanes intending to die, and to take as many innocent people with them as possible. It’s impossible for most of us to imagine dying gladly for the opportunity to murder scores of strangers. But we did not misconstrue the message of this death cult. The fear that gripped the nation was not irrational. Nor were the calls for a federal response inherently wrong. A free society has both the right and the obligation to defend itself against people prepared to exploit its openness, turn its
Will Trump Accounts Make Every Kid a Millionaire?
Sep 11, 2026 · original
No — or at least, not by the time they finish high school. Depending on how they’re funded, a Trump Account could turn a child into a decamillionaire by retirement, or it might just be worth about $4,300 on their eighteenth birthday. As with any account, three variables dictate the outcome: contributions, rate of return, and time. What might Trump Accounts actually be worth for children born this year? A thousand dollars takes a very long time to become a million dollars. That initial thousand dollars for children born during this administration could grow to be $4,342.45 (8.5 percent annual return), $5,122.17 (9.5 percent annual return), or $6,032.83 (10.5 percent annual return) by the time they turn 18. That’s nice, but not life-changing. Does this mean Trump Accounts won’t materially benefit a lot of kids? No. The magic of the numbers really comes from the basic principles of compound
Bono’s Hard-Won Lesson About Poverty
Sep 11, 2026 · original
Legendary rock star Bono may have learned this the hard way. Bono, born Paul David Hewson, was raised in a middle-class family and then skyrocketed to fame and wealth as the lead artist of U2. For four decades, he has dedicated both his music and the resulting wealth toward humanitarian crises, including global poverty and the AIDS epidemic. Bono has been at this for a long time and has created several foundations and organizations, including the ONE Campaign , whose stated goal is to create economic opportunities and healthier lives in Africa. He has received numerous awards for his work, partners with the World Economic Forum and George Soros , and was granted an honorary knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II. He is a big fish in a big pond and is animated by his Christian faith to pursue an end to poverty. Yet even his well-intentioned organizations are not immune to creating dependencies
Stay-at-Home Subsidies Won’t Produce a Baby Boom
Sep 10, 2026 · original
Over Labor Day weekend, amidst Americans’ attempts to enjoy the waning days of summer, The New York Times published an article titled “Trump Officials Draft Plan to Pay At-Home Parents, Using Funds for Working Ones.” Per the story, the administration’s proposal would use funds from the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF), which subsidizes daycare for working parents, to pay stay-at-home parents for their at-home childcare. My family could potentially qualify for the payment, but my wife and I understand that this program could jeopardize our children’s future. While families may find these cash transfers helpful in the short-term, the cost of these transfers could exacerbate the US’s already fiscally unstable situation. What This Proposal Could Look Like According to the Times article, the Trump administration is drafting a rule that would let some married households use CCDF funds to
Abdul El-Sayed Has a Socialist Platform and a Capitalist Life
Sep 10, 2026 · original
Dr. Abdul El-Sayed narrowly won Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary . The progressive candidate, endorsed by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is now the nominee in a pivotal battleground race. He sold voters Medicare for All without premiums, deductibles, or copays; a wealth tax ; the abolition of ICE ; and the curtailment of military aid to Israel. But the real story is the hypocrisy at the heart of his brand. El-Sayed brands himself as a physician but has never practiced medicine. He rails against oligarchs and private capital while building a high-income household on elite credentials , podcast revenue, and his wife’s cash-only psychiatry practice . This is a capitalist life with socialist theater. El-Sayed earned an MD from Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. He is a Rhodes Scholar with a doctorate from Oxford. He calls himself a physician on the ca
Why CPI Ignores Homes, Stocks, and the Cost of Getting Ahead
Sep 9, 2026 · original
The median-priced home in America now costs $440,600 , while the median household earns roughly $84,000 a year. That gap has left a growing share of Americans priced out of buying altogether, while those who already own homes and hold stocks have watched their wealth compound. The renter-owner wealth gap is now the widest on record. Meanwhile, equity markets keep setting new highs . None of this, officially, counts as inflation. In a previous piece , I explained that the Consumer Price Index leaves out a large and growing share of what households are really forced to pay for: government spending financed by taxes rather than purchased voluntarily on markets. That is one CPI blind spot. There is a second, and it is arguably more consequential for how Americans experience economic reality. The price of stocks, homes, and other assets essentially does not appear at all in conventional infla
What Makes Pharmaceutical Speaker Programs Illegal?
Sep 9, 2026 · original
Pharmaceutical companies have paid billions of dollars to the US government and whistleblowers to resolve allegations that they used speaker programs and other payments to induce doctors to prescribe their drugs. These cases raise an important economic question: Why can paying a doctor to promote a pharmaceutical product be an illegal kickback when paying a salesperson to promote a product is perfectly legal? Consider several recent settlements. In 2022, Biogen agreed to pay $900 million to resolve allegations that it caused false claims to be submitted to Medicare and Medicaid by paying health-care professionals through speaker honoraria, speaker-training fees, consulting fees, and meals to induce prescriptions of its drugs. The government alleged that these payments violated the federal Anti-Kickback Statute . In 2020, Novartis agreed to pay $678 million to resolve allegations involvin
The Right’s Long March Toward Illiberalism
Sep 8, 2026 · original
Several years ago, at a Philadelphia Society meeting, a friend approached me. He identified as a national conservative and believed that the Right needed to use the coercive power of the state to make the country more virtuous. He was mainly concerned about the supposed degradation of our culture and insisted that we needed a strong, authoritative leader to restore America to its former greatness. I adamantly disagreed, while conceding that we needed to work to restore the country’s institutions, including the balance of power through proper checks and balances. He laughed and asked me if I knew what time it was. I looked at my watch and told him the time. He laughed again. I didn’t know what time it was. For my friend, the time had long passed for reforming institutions, preserving our constitutional framework, and maintaining a minimal state. The time had come for conservatives to be r

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