Avoid Ivy League Indoctrination!

The Ivy League’s Blackballing of Austrian School Economists

Written by Gary North on October 9, 2012

There has never been an Austrian School economist on the faculty of an Ivy League university. There have been two ex-Austrians.

Three decades ago, Fritz Machlup taught at Princeton, but he had long since abandoned his Austrian views. He had been a follower of Mises until the 1940s. Mises saved his life by persuading him to get out of Europe before the Nazis took over.

Gottfried Habeerler taught at Harvard. He was famous for his book on depressions. It abandoned Mises’ theory of the business cycle. He left Harvard in 1971.

There is a pattern here. The Ivy League does not consider Austrian School economics to be economics. This is fine with me. Mises did not consider Keynesianism to be economics.

There are no witch hunts in Ivy League schools. Witches never get hired, so they need not be hunted.

But the mythology of academic freedom survives in Ivy League schools.

Faculty screening is analogous to editorial screening in the New York City-dominated book world, 1935-2000. There was no book burning in America. That was because conservative books rarely got into print. Throughout my youth, there were only three publishers of conservative books and non-interventionist books on American foreign policy that showed that FDR had maneuvered the Japanese to attack: Regnery (small), Devin-Adair (smaller), and Caxton (smallest). None was in New York City. Caxton was in Caldwell, Idaho. (Where?)

Recently, the younger brother of a Columbia University undergraduate in film studies asked an economics department advisor if the school had courses on Austrian economics. The professor gave him a surprised look and, trying to be helpful, responded: “We offer international economics.” She then turned to her colleague who responded tersely: “Not at Columbia.”

The first professor is simply uneducated. He is on the faculty, but he is like most economics professors: shielded from intellectual history. The other one was representative of the brighter ones who wield power: systematic in his hostility.

I have this theory of economics. If you want an education, don’t spend $250,000 of your parents’ money to attend an Ivy League school. Get your accredited degree in two or three years for anywhere from $8,000 to $15,000 at an online school. The degree will not be worth as much as a degree from an Ivy League school, but since a B.A. degree these days from anywhere is worth practically nothing anyway, you save money (or your parents d0) by doing it my way.

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From Tea Party Economist, here.

In America the Central Bank Still Feigns Independence, Hah…

Bill Dudley’s Noble Lie

By 

Ron Paul Institute

September 10, 2019

Former Federal Reserve official Bill Dudley’s recent op-ed calling for the Federal Reserve to implement policies that will damage President Trump’s reelection campaign states that such action would be unprecedented. Dudley claims the Federal Reserve bases its policies solely on an objective evaluation of economic conditions. This is an example of a so-called noble lie — a fiction told by elites to the masses supposedly for the people’s own good, but really designed to maintain popular support for policies that benefit the elites. Dudley’s noble lie is designed to bolster a rapidly (and deservedly) eroding trust in the Federal Reserve. The truth is the Federal Reserve has always been influenced by, and has always tried to influence, politics.

President George H.W. Bush and other members of his administration blamed his 1992 defeat on then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan’s refusal to reduce interest rates. Greenspan was more cooperative with Bush’s successor, Bill Clinton. Lloyd Bentsen, Clinton’s first Treasury secretary, wrote in his autobiography that the Clinton administration and the Federal Reserve had a “gentleman’s agreement” regarding support for each other’s policies. Greenspan also boosted President George W. Bush’s “ownership society” agenda by lowering interest rates after 9-11 and the collapse of the tech bubble, thus creating a housing bubble.

Ben Bernanke, Greenspan’s successor, facilitated both Bush W. Bush and Barack Obama’s bailouts, “stimulus” spending, and massive welfare-warfare spending with record-low interest rates and quantitative easing. Speculation that the Fed was keeping interest rates low during the 2016 presidential campaign in order to help Hillary Clinton was fueled by the revelation that a Federal Reserve governor donated to Clinton’s campaign.

Presidents have always tried to influence the Fed — usually pushing for lower rates to (temporally) boost the economy. President Richard Nixon was recorded joking with then-Fed Chair Arthur Burns about Fed independence. President Lyndon Johnson shoved Fed Chair William Martin against a wall after an interest rate increase. Johnson’s frustration may have been because he realized that the success or failure of his guns and butter policies was largely out of Johnson’s control. The success or failure of presidents’ agendas is often determined by a secretive central bank’s manipulations of the money supply. No wonder presidents spend so much time trying to influence the Fed.

The Fed’s history of influencing, and being influenced by, presidents is one more reason why Congress should pass the Audit the Fed bill. Auditing the Fed is supported by almost 75 percent of Americans across the political spectrum, including such leading progressives as Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard.

My Campaign for Liberty is leading a major push to get a majority of Congress members to cosponsor Audit the Fed in order to pressure House and Senate leadership to hold a vote on the bill. The American people have had enough of noble lies about the Federal Reserve. It is time for truth; it is time to audit the Fed.

From LRC, here.