Austrian Economics for the Economically Challenged

Back in the fall of 1980, when I was a freshman in college, I was briefly a business major. Briefly, because while I liked (and was quite good at) the accounting course I was taking, I despised the introductory economics course I had. To be truthful, I probably just wasn't ready to think too deeply about economic theory—but my distaste for the class at the time probably came from my perception that the professor was mocking my favorite candidate in that year's presidential race, Ronald Reagan.

That being said, I ended up as a political science major, following my true passion into a discipline that had relatively little in the way of marketable applications (given my areas of interest), and over the years, I completed master's and doctoral programs in the same field. If I had it to do over, given the way my academic interests developed, I probably should have spent a little more time trying to understand economic theory a bit better (indeed, I'd probably have a more marketable doctorate had I moved in the "political economy" direction rather than the "political behavior and institutions" direction).

That was kind of a long set-up, I guess, to simply say that I've been trying to expand my understanding of some very basic economic concepts, and while not everyone would agree, I find that the Austrian school (and the Chicago school, which is not pure Austrian, but sort of intellectual offspring of the Austrians, if I read the theories right) are quite consistent with my understanding of the world and of human nature. So, I've been trying—instead of just reading stuff for political junkies, to occasionally read more economic explanations of the world, as well—at least on occasion.

Robert Murphy has a fascinating article up on the Mises Institute site today, which discusses the recent Fed rate cuts and a whole bunch of other things related to Federal Reserve policy and its impact on the economy. Stuff posted at Mises is not lightweight, easy reading, but this article can be easily understood by non-economists who give it a bit of attention, and while economics is not necessarily the stuff that great novels are made of, it seems that it may become ever more important for us to have a basic understanding of what the economic impact of Fed decisions could be.

LLE