Stagflation in the Disco Era

Founded in 1933, The American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) educates people on the value of personal freedom, free enterprise, property rights, limited government, and sound money. AIER’s ongoing scientific research demonstrates the importance of these principles in advancing peace, prosperity, and human progress.

AIER Senior Fellow Richard M. Salsman is president of InterMarket Forecasting, Inc. and a visiting assistant professor of political economy at Duke University. Previously he was an economist at Wainwright Economics, Inc. and a banker at the Bank of New York and Citibank. Dr. Salsman has authored the books Gold and Liberty (1995), The Collapse of Deposit Insurance and the Case for Abolition (1993) and Breaking the Banks: Central Banking Problems and Free Banking Solutions (1990), all published by AIER, and The Political Economy of Public Debt: Three Centuries of Theory and Evidence (2017).  His fifth book – Where Have all the Capitalists Gone? Essays in Moral Political Economy – was published by AIER in 2021.

Dr. Salsman earned a B.A. in economics from Bowdoin College (1981), an M.A. in economics from New York University (1988), and a Ph.D. in political economy from Duke University (2012). His personal website is https://richardsalsman.com/

Lawrence H. White is a Professor of Economics at George Mason University, a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, and a member of the Mercatus Center’s Financial Markets Working Group. He was a Visiting Scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta from 1998 to 2001 and again in 2003. An expert on monetary theory and banking history, he has published in leading academic journals, including the American Economic Review and the Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking.

White earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from UCLA and his A.B. in economics from Harvard University.

Peter C. Earle is an economist who joined AIER in 2018. Prior to that he spent over 20 years as a trader and analyst at a number of securities firms and hedge funds in the New York metropolitan area. His research focuses on financial markets, monetary policy, and problems in economic measurement. He has been quoted by the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Reuters, CNBC, Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, NPR, and in numerous other media outlets and publications. Pete holds an MA in Applied Economics from American University, an MBA (Finance), and a BS in Engineering from the United States Military Academy at West Point.

James Bovard is the author of ten books, including Public Policy Hooligan, Attention Deficit Democracy, The Bush Betrayal, and Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty. He has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Playboy, Washington Post, New Republic, Reader’s Digest, and many other publications. He is a member of the USA Today Board of Contributors, a frequent contributor to The Hill, and a contributing editor for American Conservative

Economist Alan Reynolds is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, and former vice president of the First National Bank of Chicago. He served as research director with Jack Kemp’s 1995-96 Tax Reform Commission, and with Larry Kudlow and Alan Greenspan as a member of President Reagan’s 1981 transition team. He is a former columnist with Forbes, Reason, and Creators Syndicate. He is also a past member of the Blue Chip and Wall Street Journal forecasters.

Author of the 2006 book Income and Wealth, Alan Reynolds has written for countless publications since 1971, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Harvard Business Review, The Public Interest, National Review, Regulation and The Cato Journal.