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Consider this: some European countries have the "right to work" written in their constitutions. Want to guess which ones they are? If you answered "France and Italy, the sick twins of Europe" step up and collect your prize. If you take a look at how both these governments deformed the labor market by effectively deciding who should
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Yes, I own the Delbruck series. In my opinion his books are masterpieces because they revolutionized how military history is researched and written. His works on Ancient Greek and Rome were a pivotal point in modern historiography. His WWI work is a posteriori rationalization of the thesis he held before the war started, namely that no matter how well
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One book that's handy for starting researching and to always have available when studying the subject it's The World War I Resource Book by Philip Haythornwaite. It just covers the basis but it covers them all, from brief summaries of what went on the various fronts, to how each army was organized, to the various propganda machines etc. There
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The issue is extremely complicated. Abraham Lincoln (backed by the Moderate Republicans) proposed the so called Ten Percent Plan, according to which any CSA State could be readmitted in the Union when 10% of the voters (according to the 1860 census, hence excluding freed slaves) had taken an oath of allegiance to the USA. Voters would then elect delegates
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Price increases are not linear and they depend on a huge number of variables. In a traditional bust, prices of a given asset drop because of 1) decreased demand because of reduced economical activity (less loans, factories closing down etc) 2) the need to eliminate large excess stocks built in expectation of even higher future prices. Prices drop until
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Agricultural production in the US during WWI soared as Europe needed large imports of foodstuff. Wheat went from $0.70/bushel in 1914 to $2.20/bushel in 1919. The price however wasn't guaranteed by the US government (not yet, read on): it was driven by demand from Europe. Around 1920, however, European agricultural production rebounded and in 1921
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There's a parallel between the modern excess reserves boom and the Great Depression which would not have been lost to Rothbard. Between 1933 and 1939 excess reserves held by the Fed rose from 2.7 billion to 11.7 billion. Excess reserves usually build up because there's either of a somnolent economy (hence a lower demand for loans) or the banks
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The problem is this. Banks are not so "special" as to deserve a peculiar treatment. If they have authorized too many bad loans, piled too many junk bonds or just plain illiquid, they should pay their due, even if this means they should go belly up. The 2008 crisis was highly compartimentalized. It was confined to the big Wall Street firms
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Option #2 is obviously correct but there are a few caveat. 1)The methods through which inflation (actually the Consumer Price Index) is calculated changed since the '70s period of red hot inflation which occured under Chairman Burns. By first reducing and then eliminating the CPI component made up by the two most important chapters (foodstuff and
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Thanks Eliot, downloading now as I type.