In a special midweek episode of the Minor Issues podcast, Mark Thornton appears on Palisades Gold Radio with Stijn Schmitz. Mark argues that gold’s surge isn’t a fad: it’s a market verdict on runaway deficits, central-bank credibility, and fiat money itself. He also explains why manipulated rates breed booms, busts, and inequality, while sound money and decentralization restore real signals.

The original episode ("Dr. Mark Thornton: Early Innings for Gold, Silver Manipulation, Black Swans & Failing Markets") is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2FUnca1q3c

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Mark Thornton dissects “contagion” hype and argues it’s not a market pathology. He shows why, in a free market, failures reallocate customers, labor, and capital to better firms rather than spread panic. Contagion appears only when government links balance sheets and distorts prices. Mark traces how credit booms set up busts, and why even the Fed now sits upside-down, while homeowners are “rate-locked” and supply is frozen. The takeaway: politicians and central bankers invoke "contagion" to demand more power and money, while their interventions cause the very fragility they decry.

See also "Fight Inflation Now" (Minor Issues, episode 72): Mises.org/MI_72

Be sure to follow Minor Issues at https://Mises.org/MinorIssues

Mark Thornton traces seven headline “problems” back to one engine: monetary inflation. Drawing on Austrian insights, Mark explains how new money distorts prices and wages; why cheap credit spawns debt booms, asset bubbles, and zombie firms; how deficit finance and central banking turn war into a budget line; and why rising prices erode family formation, savings, and civic trust. He connects the dots to today’s policy mix and sketches a bottom-up remedy: hard budget constraints, sound money, and decentralization that restores real price signals. Mark makes the case that inflation isn’t just “too many dollars”: it’s the hidden subsidy powering them all.

Be sure to follow Minor Issues at https://Mises.org/MinorIssues