GCC Students for Liberty

The Grove City Campus was privileged to have the distinguished Professor Guido Hülsmann visiting. On Thursday, February 24^th, he delivered an excellent talk on “How to Get Out of the Economic Crisis” The lecture was well attended and thought provoking.

Jörg Guido Hülsmann^W (born May 18, 1966) is a German economist of the Austrian School who was heavily influenced by Ludwig von Mises. He is a professor of economics at the Université d'Angers in France and is a senior faculty member of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

Dr. Hülsmann first defines a crisis en general and works through the economics of an inflationary boom and the inherent problems in an inflationary system of fractional reserve banking. He made an excellent point that a crisis is not a bad thing, it is simply evidence that bad things have happened. Dr. Hülsmann pointed out that the crisis provides entrepreneurs with information about their past activities. This information helps them allocate resources more effectively and move away from the destructive production processes they had undergone during the state created boom. The only way that entrepreneurs can use this information though, is if the state lets the markets work. Only if businesses are able to reorganize, liquidate the bad investments, and salvage the profitable processes, will the economy recover. Dr. Hülsmann argues that by subsidizing the failures of the boom, the government is essentially asking entrepreneurs to ignore the new information that is brought to light in the crisis. This means continued malinvestment and even more wealth destruction.

After his lecture, Dr. Hülsmann joined the Students for Liberty for a reception in the Student Union Building.  There were about thirty students and five other faculty members present. Participants enjoyed the catering of Bon Appetite and took advantage of the opportunity to meet and talk with Dr. Hülsmann. We even had the opportunity to award autographed copies of Hülsmann’s Deflation and Liberty and one copy of his Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism as door prizes. We all had a great time talking late into the night about money, banking, the free society, and even differences in German dialects, it was a blast!

Tags: Events, Guido Hulsmann