Austrian predictions: Difference between revisions
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==The Great Depression== | ==The Great Depression== | ||
The [[Great Depression]] was predicted by several Austrian economists | The [[Great Depression]] was predicted by several Austrian economists: | ||
* In Austria, economist [[Ludwig von Mises]] saw the problem developing in its early stages and predicted to his colleagues in 1924 that the large Austrian bank, [[Credit Anstalt]], would eventually crash. He wrote a full analysis of [[Irving Fisher|Irving Fisher’s]] monetary views, published in 1928, where he targeted Fisher’s reliance on price indexes as a key vulnerability that would bring about the Great Depression, concluding: "because of the imperfection of the index number, these calculations would necessarily lead in time to errors of very considerable proportions."<!-- could the actual source! (Mises, Ludwig von. [1928] 1978. Geldwertstabilisierung and Konjunkturpolitik [Monetary Stabilization and Cyclical Policy]. Jena: Gustav Fischer. English translation by Bettina Bien Greaves: in On the Manipulation of Money and Credit. Dobbs Ferry, NY: Free Market Books. ) --> | * In Austria, economist [[Ludwig von Mises]] saw the problem developing in its early stages and predicted to his colleagues in 1924 that the large Austrian bank, [[Credit Anstalt]], would eventually crash. He wrote a full analysis of [[Irving Fisher|Irving Fisher’s]] monetary views, published in 1928, where he targeted Fisher’s reliance on price indexes as a key vulnerability that would bring about the Great Depression, concluding: "because of the imperfection of the index number, these calculations would necessarily lead in time to errors of very considerable proportions."<!-- could the actual source! (Mises, Ludwig von. [1928] 1978. Geldwertstabilisierung and Konjunkturpolitik [Monetary Stabilization and Cyclical Policy]. Jena: Gustav Fischer. English translation by Bettina Bien Greaves: in On the Manipulation of Money and Credit. Dobbs Ferry, NY: Free Market Books. ) --> | ||
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==Dot-com bubble== | ==Dot-com bubble== | ||
The [[Dot-com bubble]] and its bust was widely foreseen despite the hype:<ref name="Thornton_Bubble">Mark Thornton. [http://www.independent.org/pdf/tir/tir_09_1_1_thornton.pdf "Who Predicted the Bubble? Who Predicted the Crash?"] (pdf), ''The Independent Review'', v. IX, n. 1, Summer 2004, ISSN 1086-1653, Copyright © 2004, pp. 5–30. Referenced 2011-12-13.</ref> | |||
* | |||
* Thornton, Mark. 2000. "[http://www.independent.org/pdf/tir/tir_09_1_1_thornton.pdf Who Predicted the Bubble? Who Predicted the Crash?]" (pdf), ''The Independent Review'', v. IX, n. 1, Summer 2004, ISSN 1086-1653, Copyright © 2004, pp. 5–30. <!-- ...addressed an audience in a public lecture in Houston on July 15, 1999, about Alan Greenspan’s "luck" in increasing the money stock without price inflation, and warned that the Fed’s actions inevitably would have negative economic consequences, especially for stocks and the dollar. He appeared on the Financial Sense News Hour on April 3, 2000, and April 4, 2001, and on a radio show called "Credit Bubble." On the Barstool Economist list on January 5, 2001, and January 7, 2001, he issued warnings that the dollar (then near its peak) would probably weaken over time. Can anything of this be confirmed from another source? Can't seem to find any of this. --> | |||
* Mayer, Christopher. 2000. "[http://mises.org/daily/405 The Meaning of 'Over-Valued']", March 30. <!-- Mayer noted that all the ingredients of a bubble - fundamental (i.e., a technological revolution), financial (i.e., a surge in money and credit) and psychological (i.e., a suspension of belief in traditional valuation measures) - appear to exist in the current bull market and predicted it will end with a bust.<ref name="Mayer_Over-Valued">Christopher Mayer. [http://mises.org/daily/405 "The Meaning of 'Over-Valued'"], ''Mises Daily'', March 30, 2000. Referenced 2011-12-13.</ref> --> | |||
* Grant, James. 1996A. The Trouble with Prosperity, May <!-- Grant, in his book The Trouble with Prosperity, written in May 1996, says: "Predictably, the risks to saving are the greatest just when they appear to be the smallest. By suppressing crises, the modern financial welfare state has inadvertently promoted speculation. Never before has a boom ended except in crisis." Grant continued to warn investors about the stock-market bubble in his investment newsletter, to provide detailed explanations of the cause of the bubble, and to chronicle the relevant statistics.<ref name="Thornton_Bubble" /> - anything more about that? Can't check the book; should check out the newsletter - Grant’s Interest Rate Observer. --> | |||
* Grant, James. 1996B [http://mises.org/journals/aen/aen16_4_1.asp The Trouble with Prosperity], Winter 1996, Interview <!-- needs to go through --> | |||
* Deden, Anthony. 1999. "[http://www.safehaven.com/article/778/reflections-on-prosperity Reflections On Prosperity]" December 29 <!-- In December, 1999, Anthony Deden called the incredible rise in securities prices history’s greatest financial bubble and identified its cause in the excessive amount of money and credit created by central banks. | |||
Anthony Deden | |||
[http://www.safehaven.com/article/778/reflections-on-prosperity Reflections On Prosperity | |||
Dec 29, 1999 --> | |||
* Hülsmann, Jörg G. 2000. Schöne neue Zeichengeldwelt <!-- can't verify <ref name="Thornton_Bubble" /> --> | |||
* Shostak, Frank. 1999. "[http://mises.org/daily/309 Inflation, Deflation, and the Future]". October 7 <!-- "Obviously the sheer dimension of the monetary pumping and the accompanied artificial lowering of interest rates has caused a massive misallocation of resources which ultimately will culminate in a severe economic slump." | |||
Inflation, Deflation, and the Future | |||
Mises Daily: Thursday, October 07, 1999 by Frank Shostak | |||
--> | |||
* Reisman, George. 1999. "[http://mises.org/daily/284 When Will the Bubble Burst?]", August 18 <!-- "It simply cannot be that we can have a society in which everybody lives by day trading in the stock market. While the stock market does make an important contribution to capital accumulation and the production of wealth, it is far from an unlimited one, and its contribution is not enlarged by hordes of essentially ignorant people dabbling in it on the basis of tips and hunches. Yet such an absurd outcome of practically everyone being able to live by means of buying stocks cheap and selling them dear is what is implied by an indefinite continuation of the bull market. As a result, it is inescapable that the bull market must end." ... "The bubble must break. It would almost certainly have ended in the Fall of 1998 with the failure of Long- Term Capital Management, had the Federal Reserve not arranged for its rescue and quickly re-accelerated its own policy of money creation." --> | |||
* Corrigan, Sean. 1999. "[http://mises.org/daily/317 Will the Bubble Pop?]", October 18 <!-- compared conditions | |||
during the fall of 1999 to those during the late summer of 1987, the Japanese bubble of the late 1980s, and the “roaring Twenties” in the United States. | |||
"Monetary pumping on this order, as the Austrians will tell you, leads to serious distortions in the price structure of an economy which cannot be captured in crude, aggregate, index numbers. These distortions between the value of goods, present and future, lead to mal-investments and a clustering of false decisions. Factories built and productive processes put in train based on a market rate of interest artificially lowered by the effulgence of fiduciary media are not backed up by real savings and thus become misaligned with a propensity for consumption which has, if anything, intensified. A raft of ‘entrepreneurial errors' lies ahead. | |||
This means not only the prospect of half-finished malls, hotels and offices (factories are deliberately omitted since we have also witnessed a secular shift in the amount of construction dollars spent on premises devoted to redistributing wealth, rather than generating it in the first instance), but also completed, but now distinctly sub-par undertakings: businesses and plant which cannot possibly earn the returns projected at inception. Less visible, though more widespread, such an overhang will depress returns on capital where they do not wipe it out completely. The credit expansion, once it draws to its inevitable end, will impoverish everyone, everywhere." --> | |||
* Sennholz, Hans. 2000. "[http://mises.org/daily/477 Can the Boom Last?]", July 31 <!-- "The economic maladjustments due to many years of monetary manipulations by the Federal Reserve System are the prime source and mover of the inevitable readjustment. Once the market structure no longer reflects the unhampered choices of all participants, the readjustment is unavoidable. In the end, the laws of the market always prevail over the edicts of political controllers and regulators." --> | |||
* Anderson, William. 2000. "[http://mises.org/freemarket_detail.aspx?control=316 New Economy, Old Delusion.]" The Free Market 18, no. 8: 5–6. August <!-- "As things stand currently, the once-vaunted bull market is in flux. This is partly due to the government’s arrogance in believing it could attack Microsoft without harming other high-technology firms that have been the most visible in the current economic expansion. | |||
But even without the DOJ’s Microsoft follies, the high-technology sector of the economy faces real problems. First, the bubble that pushed so many of the “dot.com” initial offerings into the stratosphere had burst even before Reno’s pyrrhic victory. Second, the malinvestments as described by Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard that occur as the result of wildly expansive monetary policies by the Fed have been centered in the high-technology sector. The growth of new money that is the signature of inflation can come only through the fractional-reserve banking system in the form of loans, which, as noted earlier, have found their way into high technologies, real estate, and the stock market." --> | |||
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Wenzel, Robert. 2008. "[http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2008/07/government-isnt-god-fdic-sticks-banks.html Government Isn't God: FDIC Sticks Banks With Bad Loans and Sticks Borrowers With Subprime Junk.]" July 21 <!-- (refers to an [http://web.archive.org/web/20040816043836/www.economicbriefing.com/sabat/fedbubble.html archived] 2004 article) predicts people walking away from their houses; "when this growth in money supply begins to slow in earnest to under 5%, as the Fed slowly begins to raise rates, that you will see the real estate bubble begin to burst and then cascade downward." --> | Wenzel, Robert. 2008. "[http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2008/07/government-isnt-god-fdic-sticks-banks.html Government Isn't God: FDIC Sticks Banks With Bad Loans and Sticks Borrowers With Subprime Junk.]" July 21 <!-- (refers to an [http://web.archive.org/web/20040816043836/www.economicbriefing.com/sabat/fedbubble.html archived] 2004 article) predicts people walking away from their houses; "when this growth in money supply begins to slow in earnest to under 5%, as the Fed slowly begins to raise rates, that you will see the real estate bubble begin to burst and then cascade downward." --> | ||
Woods, Thomas E. Jr. 2009. Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse. Washington D.C.: Regnery Publishing <!-- reported to contain some examples of predictions --> | Woods, Thomas E. Jr. 2009. Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse. Washington D.C.: Regnery Publishing <!-- reported to contain some examples of predictions --><ref name="Block_Thymologists" /> | ||
<ref name=" | ==Other predictions== | ||
* The [[Skyscraper index]] shows a correlation between the construction of the world's tallest buildings and impending financial crises. While not developed by Austrian economists, it is compatible with their views about the [[business cycle]].<ref name="Thornton_Skyscrapers">Mark Thornton. [http://mises.org/daily/3038 "Skyscrapers and Business Cycles"], ''Mises Daily'', August 23, 2008. Originally appeared in the ''Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics'' vol. 8, no. 1 (Spring 2005) - [http://mises.org/journals/qjae/pdf/qjae8_1_4.pdf PDF]. There is also an [http://media.mises.org/mp3/audioarticles/3038_Thornton.mp3 MP3] audio file read by the author. Referenced 2011-12-13.</ref> | |||
==References== | ==References== | ||
Revision as of 14:08, 13 December 2011
This page attempts to list various predictions made by Austrian economists about important economic and other developments. UNDER CONSTRUCTION.
Important note: Austrian economists, as Austrian economists, or praxeologists, do not predict. They can predict not as formal economists, or praxeologists, but, rather, in their role as thymologists, or economic historians. In praxeology, A causes B, other things remaining the same. But, in the real world, other things cannot be relied upon to always remain constant. Therefore, predictions of the "A will necessarily lead to B" type are strictly prohibited. Instead, praxeologists, but not thymologists, must limit themselves to statements of the if-A then-B variety.[1]
The Great Depression
The Great Depression was predicted by several Austrian economists:
- In Austria, economist Ludwig von Mises saw the problem developing in its early stages and predicted to his colleagues in 1924 that the large Austrian bank, Credit Anstalt, would eventually crash. He wrote a full analysis of Irving Fisher’s monetary views, published in 1928, where he targeted Fisher’s reliance on price indexes as a key vulnerability that would bring about the Great Depression, concluding: "because of the imperfection of the index number, these calculations would necessarily lead in time to errors of very considerable proportions."
- F. A. Hayek published several articles in early 1929 in which he predicted the collapse of the American boom. Felix Somary, who like Mises was a student at the University of Vienna, issued several dire warnings in the late 1920s, and in America economists Benjamin Anderson and E.C. Harwood also warned that the Federal Reserve policies would cause a crisis, and like Somary, they were largely ignored.[2]
Dot-com bubble
The Dot-com bubble and its bust was widely foreseen despite the hype:[3]
- Thornton, Mark. 2000. "Who Predicted the Bubble? Who Predicted the Crash?" (pdf), The Independent Review, v. IX, n. 1, Summer 2004, ISSN 1086-1653, Copyright © 2004, pp. 5–30.
- Mayer, Christopher. 2000. "The Meaning of 'Over-Valued'", March 30.
- Grant, James. 1996A. The Trouble with Prosperity, May
- Grant, James. 1996B The Trouble with Prosperity, Winter 1996, Interview
- Deden, Anthony. 1999. "Reflections On Prosperity" December 29
- Hülsmann, Jörg G. 2000. Schöne neue Zeichengeldwelt
- Shostak, Frank. 1999. "Inflation, Deflation, and the Future". October 7
- Reisman, George. 1999. "When Will the Bubble Burst?", August 18
- Corrigan, Sean. 1999. "Will the Bubble Pop?", October 18
- Sennholz, Hans. 2000. "Can the Boom Last?", July 31
- Anderson, William. 2000. "New Economy, Old Delusion." The Free Market 18, no. 8: 5–6. August
Housing bubble
During and after the burst of the Dot-com bubble, these economists predicted the 2000s housing bubble that culminated in the Great Recession from 2008 onward.
Anderson, 2001, 2003, 2007; Beale, various dates; Blumen, 2002, 2005; Corrigan, tba; Crovelli, 2006; DeCoster, 2003; DiLorenzo, 1999; Duffy, 2005A, 2005B, 2005C, 2005D, 2006, 2007A, 2007B, 2007C, 2007D; Economics of contempt, 2008; Englund, 2004, 2005A, 2005B, 2005C, 2005D, 2006, 2007, 2008; French, 2005; Grant, 2001; Karlsson, 2004; Mayer, 2003; Murphy, 2007, 2008; North, 2002, 2005; Paul, various dates, 2000, 2002; Polleit, 2006; Ptak, 2003; Rockwell, 2008, 462; Rogers, 2005; Rothbard, tba; Schiff, Undated A, Undated B, Undated C, Undated D, 2003A, 2003B, 2003C, 2004A, 2004B, 2005A, 2005B, 2005C, 2005D, 2006A, 2006B, 2006C, 2006D, 2007A, 2007B; Sennholz, 2002; Shostak, 2003, 2005; Thornton, 2004, 2009, Undated; Trask, 2003; Wenzel, 2004; See also Woods (2009, p. 188 for further bibliography).
Anderson, William L. 2001. "The Party is Over," February 20
Anderson, William L. 2003. "Recovery or Boomlet?" July 07
Anderson, William L. 2007. "The Party is Over – Again," August 30
Armentano, Dominick. 2004. "Memo to Federal Reserve: Increase Interest Rates Now!"
Beale, Theodore. 2009. ""The Return of the Great Depression"
Blumen, Robert. 2002. "Fannie Mae Distorts Markets." Mises Daily, June 17
Blumen, Robert. 2005. "Housing Bubble: Are We There Yet?" May 8
Blumen, Robert. 2004. "All Real Estate, All the Time". March 8
Crovelli, Mark R. 2006. "Gold, Inflation, And... Austria?" May 31
De Coster, Karen. 2003. "The House that Greenspan Built: Irrationally Exuberant Wall Street Welfare Parasites and Their Fed-God." September 12
DiLorenzo, Thomas J. 1999. "Regulatory Sneak Attack." September 16
Duffy, Kevin. 2005A "The Super Bowl Indicator," February 5
Duffy, Kevin. 2005B. "Honey, I Shrunk the Net Worth," March 3
Duffy, Kevin. 2005C. "Alan, We Have a Problem," August 2
Duffy, Kevin. 2005D. "Panic Now and Beat the Rush," September 24
Duffy, Kevin. 2006. "Are Mortgage Borrowers Rational?" June 24
Duffy, Kevin. 2007A. "It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World," May 22
Duffy, Kevin. 2007B. "For Whom Do the Bells Toll?" Barron’s, June 18
Duffy, Kevin. 2007C. "Financial Markets on Crack," August 22
Duffy, Kevin. 2007D. "Mr. Mozilo Goes to Washington," September 15
Economics of contempt. 2008. "The Unofficial List of Pundits/Experts Who Were Wrong on the Housing Bubble." July 16
Englund, Eric. 2004. "Monetizing Envy and America’s Housing Bubble". July 19
Englund, Eric. 2005A. "Houses Are Consumer Durables, Not Investments," June 8
Englund, Eric. 2005B. "Diminishing Property Rights Will Lead to a Higher Rate of Mortgage Defaults." June 28
Englund, Eric. 2005C. "When the Housing Bubble Bursts, Will President Bush Practice Mugabenomics?" July, 19
Englund, Eric. 2005D. "When Will America's Housing Bubble Burst?" November 4
Englund, Eric. 2006. "The Federal Reserve and Housing: A Cluster of Errors?" April 22
Englund, Eric. 2007. "From Prime to Subprime, America's Home-Mortgage Meltdown Has Just Begun." September 24
Englund, Eric. 2008. "Countrywide Financial Corporation and the Failure of Mortgage Socialism." January 28
French, Doug. 2005. "Condo-mania." July 11
Grant, James. 2001. "Sometimes the Economy Needs a Setback." New York Times. September 9
Karlsson, Stefan. 2004. "America's Unsustainable Boom." November 8
Mayer, Chris. 2003. "The Housing Bubble." The Free Market. Volume 23, Number 8 August
Murphy, Robert P. 2007 "The Fed’s Role in the Housing Bubble." December 28
Murphy, Robert P. 2008. "Did the Fed, or Asian Saving, Cause the Housing Bubble?" November 19
North, Gary. 2002. "How the FED Inflated the Real Estate Bubble by Pushing Down Mortgage Rates: Report As of 2002," Reality Check, March 4
North, Gary. 2005. "Surreal Estate on the San Andreas Fault." November 25, 2005
Paul, Ron, 2002. "Testimony to U.S. House of Representatives", July 16; text of speech in Woods (2009, 16–17):
- "Ironically, by transferring the risk of a widespread mortgage default, the government increases the likelihood of a painful crash in the housing market. This is because the special privileges granted to Fannie and Freddie have distorted the housing market by allowing them to attract capital they could not attract under pure market conditions. As a result, capital is diverted from its most productive use into housing. This reduces the efficacy of the entire market and thus reduces the standard of living of all Americans.
- "However, despite the long-term damage to the economy inflicted by the government's interference in the housing market, the government's policy of diverting capital to other uses creates a short-term boom in housing. Like all artificially created bubbles, the boom in housing prices cannot last forever. When housing prices fall, homeowners will experience difficulty as their equity is wiped out. Furthermore, the holders of the mortgage debt will also have a loss. These losses will be greater than they would have otherwise been had government policy not actively encouraged overinvestment in housing."
Paul, Ron. 2000. "A Republic, If You Can Keep It" January 31
Polleit, Thorsten. 2006. "Sowing the Seeds of the Next Crisis." April 25
Ptak, Justin. 2003. "Government Employees, Go Home!" November 12
Rockwell, Llewellyn H, Jr. 2008. The Left, the Right, and the State. Auburn, AL: The Mises Institute, 2008
Rogers, Jim. 2005. "Interview with Jim Rogers on the housing bubble." April 22
Rothbard, Murray N. tba
Schiff, Peter. "Peter Schiff predictions" (video) Undated A.
Schiff, Peter. "Peter Schiff Was Right" (video). Undated B.
Schiff, Peter. "Peter Schiff was right 2006-2007 - CNBC edition" (video). Undated C.
Schiff, Peter. "Peter Schiff Was Right Again " (video). Undated D.
Schiff, Peter. 2003A. Commentary, March
Schiff, Peter. 2003B. Commentary, April
Schiff, Peter. 2003C. Commentary, June
Schiff, Peter. 2004A. Commentary, May
Schiff, Peter. 2004B. Commentary, June
Schiff, Peter. 2005A. Commentary, April
Schiff, Peter. 2005B. Commentary, July
Schiff, Peter. 2005C. Commentary, August
Schiff, Peter. 2005D. Commentary, October
Schiff, Peter. 2006A. Appearance on CNBC, January (video)
Schiff, Peter. 2006B. Speech to the Money Show Conference, February (video)
Schiff, Peter. 2006C. Speech to the Western Regional Mortgage Bankers Conference in Las Vegas November (video, transcript)
Schiff, Peter. 2007A. Crash Proof: How to Profit From the Coming Economic Collapse (1st edition) New York, N.Y.: Wiley, February 2007
Schiff, Peter. 2007B. Appearance on Fox News – January 12 (video)
Sennholz, Hans F. 2002. "The Fed is Culpable." November 11
Shostak, Frank. 2003. "Housing Bubble: Myth or Reality?" March 4
Shostak, Frank. 2005 "Is There a Glut of Saving?" August 4
Thornton, Mark. 2004A. "'Bull' Market?" February 9.
Thornton, Mark. 2004B. "Housing: too good to be true." June 4
Thornton, Mark. 2005. "Is the Housing Bubble Popping?" , August
Thornton, Mark. 2006. June "The Economics of Housing Bubbles." America’s Housing Crisis: A Case of Government Failure, Benjamin Powell and Randall Holcombe, eds., Transaction Publishers
Trask, H.A. Scott. 2003. "Reflation in American History." October 31
Wenzel, Robert. 2008. "Government Isn't God: FDIC Sticks Banks With Bad Loans and Sticks Borrowers With Subprime Junk." July 21
Woods, Thomas E. Jr. 2009. Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse. Washington D.C.: Regnery Publishing [1]
Other predictions
- The Skyscraper index shows a correlation between the construction of the world's tallest buildings and impending financial crises. While not developed by Austrian economists, it is compatible with their views about the business cycle.[4]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Walter Block. Austrian Thymologists Who Predicted the Housing Bubble, LRC.com, December 22, 2010. Referenced 2011-11-29.
- ↑ Mark Thornton. "Mises vs. Fisher on Money, Method, and Prediction: The Case of the Great Depression" (pdf), p.13-15; December 2006. Referenced 2011-12-13.
- ↑ Mark Thornton. "Who Predicted the Bubble? Who Predicted the Crash?" (pdf), The Independent Review, v. IX, n. 1, Summer 2004, ISSN 1086-1653, Copyright © 2004, pp. 5–30. Referenced 2011-12-13.
- ↑ Mark Thornton. "Skyscrapers and Business Cycles", Mises Daily, August 23, 2008. Originally appeared in the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics vol. 8, no. 1 (Spring 2005) - PDF. There is also an MP3 audio file read by the author. Referenced 2011-12-13.
Links
- The Unofficial List of Pundits/Experts Who Were Wrong on the Housing Bubble by Posted by Economics of Contempt, July 2008