Quando i giornali mainstream lasciano intendere il falso

GIOVANNI BIRINDELLI, 4.4.2014

In un recente articolo Il Sole 24 Ore lascia intendere che la BCE non acquista titoli del debito pubblico:

“Per questo l’Eurotower pare maggiormente orientata a un programma di acquisti di asset privati. Una strategia diversa che avrebbe l’indubbio vantaggio di evitare alla banca centrale di uscire dal proprio mandato con operazioni di finanziamento diretto degli Stati. Questo infatti è ciò che succederebbe se la banca centrale decidesse di seguire la strada della Fed, della Bank of England o della Bank of Japan acquistando titoli di Stato sul mercato.” (Il Sole 24 Ore).

Per capire come stanno realmente le cose:

Huerta de Soto: how to clear the public debt

GIOVANNI BIRINDELLI, 3.12.2013

(Original publication: Mises Italia, Mises Canada)

A recent editorial by Alberto Alesina and Francesco Giavazzi in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera has spurred me to illustrate a proposal to reduce the public debt put forward by Professor Huerta de Soto. Since Alesina and Giavazzi’s article is the same old statist story, discussing it would be a waste of time and space were it not for the fact that it so perfectly represents the non-thought of those statists who consider themselves and inexplicably are considered to be ‘liberals’ because they are in favour of ‘privatization’. Huerta de Soto’s proposal is not immune from criticism, but it offers an opportunity to see what it means to think in economic terms outside the intellectual boundaries imposed by political power (in other words, what it means not to be a megaphone for the regime); what it means to reason about problems in terms of their structural causes rather than their effects; and finally what it means, in this intellectual desert of the so-called “élites”, to have ideas. For these reasons, and because overall I consider it to be a good proposal (though improvable), I think it worthwhile to call attention to it and discuss it.