The New York Times has a front-page article about a Republican congressman from Texas, Ron Paul. The article is flawed by a tendentious summary of Austrian economics: "he embraces Austrian economic thought, which holds that the government has no role in regulating the economy....If there is vindication here, Mr. Paul says, it is for Austrian economic theory — an anti-Keynesian model that many mainstream economists consider radical and dismiss as magical thinking. The theory argues that markets operate properly only when they are unfettered by government regulation and intervention. It holds that the government should not have a central bank or dictate economic or monetary policy. Once the government begins any economic planning, such thinking goes, it ends up making all the economic decisions for its citizens, essentially enslaving them."
For more accurate descriptions of what Austrian economics is and what it is not, readers would be better off consulting Peter Boettke's entry on Austrian Economics in the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, or Steven Horwitz's recent post at Coordination Problem on the same topic.
This is another "Read It Here First" — FutureOfCapitalism.com had a report on Dinner With Ron Paul back in December of 2009, and this site reviewed his book, End the Fed, back in September of 2009.
