First lecture of Home Study course

I've listened to the first lecture in the Mises Home Study course. It's by Jorg Guido Hulsmann and it is titled "Mises and the Foundation of Austrian Economics". It is 42:29 in length. It's a general overview of Mises' life. It goes over his major works and brings up overviews of his major theoretical contributions. It is a good introduction to Mises' work.

I have been continuing my reading. I'm almost finished with Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson, and I have finished The Concise Guide to Economics, both of which I will review shortly.

First of many quotes I'm sure

First of many pertinent quotes that I will post, of course.

Another book I'm reading, (a real book, not a pdf) is Economics in One Lesson, by Henry Hazlitt. Copyright date is 1946. This is not the best book to start with for learning Austrian economics, but it is interesting. More problem solving than theory.

In any case, this quote applies exactly to the sub-prime mortgage mess we are in now and the housing bubble that caused it.

"Government-guaranteed home mortgages, especially when a negligible down payment or no down payment whatever is required, inevitably mean more bad loans than otherwise. They force the general taxpayer to subsidize the bad risks and to defray the losses. They encourage people to "buy" houses that they cannot really afford. They tend eventually to bring about an oversupply of houses as compared to other things. They temporarily over-stimulate building, raise the cost of building for everybody (including the buyers of the homes with the guaranteed mortgages) and may mislead the building industry into an eventually costly overexpansion."

That sounds like it was written yesterday, not 63 years ago.