Central Banking
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The Guns of August: A Look Back at the Financial Shock of the Great War
“Many of the extraordinary policies we see governments wielding right now are not as unprecedented as some commentators may think.” ~ Joakim Book
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The Fed Wants to Become a Financial Central Planner
To everyone as outraged by this process as I am: it’s time we shouted far and wide what the Fed is up to. If we let them get away with it, politicians and macroeconomic policy experts will be able to control financial markets, and hence our lives, to a degree never before obtained in a…
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Small Business Lending Is Not the Fed’s Job
During times of economic crisis, should emergency loans to small businesses be made by the Department of Defense, Department of Education, or Department of State? I suspect most Americans would say “No” to all three. If needed, emergency loans to small businesses can be made by the Treasury or Small Business Administration. It’s not the…
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Why Relief Payments Are So Slow to Arrive
The Federal government has started sending relief funds to Americans. But, according to the New York Times editorial board, it is not doing so quickly enough. “The government has made matters worse by dawdling,” it writes. The editorial board is right. Americans have been promised $1,200 in relief funds. But it took almost a week…
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The Technocrats Will Not Save Us
Besides the certainty, as they say, of death and taxes, one other highly likely event will be an end to the general “good times” of relatively low price inflation and low unemployment in America. In other words, the United States will eventually experience worsening inflation at some point, as well as another general economic downturn.…
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Fedophilia: The Intellectual Disease and Cure
When most monetary economists talk about the virtues of this or that central bank, they’re mostly talking through their hats, because they haven’t a clue concerning what other institutions might be present, and what they might be up to if the central bank wasn’t there.
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The Fed’s Confusing New Tools (Video)
Preparing for my appearance on Boom Bust this week, I found essays from the Sound Money Project to be invaluable. These economists understand the mechanics of Fed policy extremely well, and write about it in real time at AIER.org. Reading these essays carefully, especially those by James Caton, allowed me to speak intelligently on the…
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Paul Volcker: Foe of the Gold Standard, Fan of Fiscal Profligacy
The recent death of Paul Volcker, Federal Reserve Chairman from 1979 to 1987, has generated the usual but undeserved encomiums from media outlets. Sebastian Mallaby at The Washington Post declares that Mr. Volcker was “the savior our economy needed.” Brian Cheung at Yahoo Finance contends that Volcker “tackled the Great Inflation by inspiring a rethink of monetary policy” that…
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Richard Nixon & the Myth of Independent Fed Policy (Video)
Amity R. Shlaes presents “On the Legacy of American economist and former Chair of the US Federal Reserve, Arthur Burns, during the Keynesian Revolution” at the American Institute for Economic Research Annual Meeting of Voting Members 2019. Current Chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, famously claimed Marriner S. Eccles “had created a central bank…
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The Impossibility of Negative Rates
The economics discussion would be greatly enhanced if it were better understood that underlying all spending, selling, saving, lending, borrowing, and investing is an exchange of products, services or labor. Real things are always and everywhere being moved around when “money” changes hands. It cannot be stressed enough that “money” is just an agreement about…
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•
The Guns of August: A Look Back at the Financial Shock of the Great War
“Many of the extraordinary policies we see governments wielding right now are not as unprecedented as some commentators may think.” ~ Joakim Book
-
•
The Fed Wants to Become a Financial Central Planner
To everyone as outraged by this process as I am: it’s time we shouted far and wide what the Fed is up to. If we let them get away with it, politicians and macroeconomic policy experts will be able to control financial markets, and hence our lives, to a degree never before obtained in a…
-
•
Small Business Lending Is Not the Fed’s Job
During times of economic crisis, should emergency loans to small businesses be made by the Department of Defense, Department of Education, or Department of State? I suspect most Americans would say “No” to all three. If needed, emergency loans to small businesses can be made by the Treasury or Small Business Administration. It’s not the…
-
•
Why Relief Payments Are So Slow to Arrive
The Federal government has started sending relief funds to Americans. But, according to the New York Times editorial board, it is not doing so quickly enough. “The government has made matters worse by dawdling,” it writes. The editorial board is right. Americans have been promised $1,200 in relief funds. But it took almost a week…
-
•
The Technocrats Will Not Save Us
Besides the certainty, as they say, of death and taxes, one other highly likely event will be an end to the general “good times” of relatively low price inflation and low unemployment in America. In other words, the United States will eventually experience worsening inflation at some point, as well as another general economic downturn.…
-
•
Fedophilia: The Intellectual Disease and Cure
When most monetary economists talk about the virtues of this or that central bank, they’re mostly talking through their hats, because they haven’t a clue concerning what other institutions might be present, and what they might be up to if the central bank wasn’t there.
-
•
The Fed’s Confusing New Tools (Video)
Preparing for my appearance on Boom Bust this week, I found essays from the Sound Money Project to be invaluable. These economists understand the mechanics of Fed policy extremely well, and write about it in real time at AIER.org. Reading these essays carefully, especially those by James Caton, allowed me to speak intelligently on the…
-
•
Paul Volcker: Foe of the Gold Standard, Fan of Fiscal Profligacy
The recent death of Paul Volcker, Federal Reserve Chairman from 1979 to 1987, has generated the usual but undeserved encomiums from media outlets. Sebastian Mallaby at The Washington Post declares that Mr. Volcker was “the savior our economy needed.” Brian Cheung at Yahoo Finance contends that Volcker “tackled the Great Inflation by inspiring a rethink of monetary policy” that…
-
•
Richard Nixon & the Myth of Independent Fed Policy (Video)
Amity R. Shlaes presents “On the Legacy of American economist and former Chair of the US Federal Reserve, Arthur Burns, during the Keynesian Revolution” at the American Institute for Economic Research Annual Meeting of Voting Members 2019. Current Chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, famously claimed Marriner S. Eccles “had created a central bank…
-
•
The Impossibility of Negative Rates
The economics discussion would be greatly enhanced if it were better understood that underlying all spending, selling, saving, lending, borrowing, and investing is an exchange of products, services or labor. Real things are always and everywhere being moved around when “money” changes hands. It cannot be stressed enough that “money” is just an agreement about…