Monetary Policy
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Are All Cryptocurrencies Pyramid Schemes?
All moneys and valuable items are pyramid schemes, and all holders of money and valuable items hope that the next person in line will pay more for them. That’s how monetary balances work. No big deal.
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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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The Hobbit Teaches that We Can’t Eat Money
There are a lot of good economic lessons to be learned from popular culture. Perhaps that’s not surprising, as the subject matter of economics is ingrained in our very humanity and movies and the arts reflect aspects of human life. By chance alone, some of that creative work ought to carry with it some profound…
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What Is Money? It’s All About Liquidity
When I give my sister a nonfiction book for Christmas, neither of us presumes that she’ll use it in payments for food, rent, clothes, travel, or something else that she desires. Indeed, you’d be hard pressed to find anybody who’d accept a 300-odd-page chunk of paper adorned with the Penguin Press stamp in exchange for anything, so…
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How Everyone Messes Up at Once: Austrian Business Cycle Theory, Summarized
If markets are so great, why do we have business cycles?
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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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•
Are All Cryptocurrencies Pyramid Schemes?
All moneys and valuable items are pyramid schemes, and all holders of money and valuable items hope that the next person in line will pay more for them. That’s how monetary balances work. No big deal.
-
•
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…
-
•
The Hobbit Teaches that We Can’t Eat Money
There are a lot of good economic lessons to be learned from popular culture. Perhaps that’s not surprising, as the subject matter of economics is ingrained in our very humanity and movies and the arts reflect aspects of human life. By chance alone, some of that creative work ought to carry with it some profound…
-
•
What Is Money? It’s All About Liquidity
When I give my sister a nonfiction book for Christmas, neither of us presumes that she’ll use it in payments for food, rent, clothes, travel, or something else that she desires. Indeed, you’d be hard pressed to find anybody who’d accept a 300-odd-page chunk of paper adorned with the Penguin Press stamp in exchange for anything, so…
-
•
How Everyone Messes Up at Once: Austrian Business Cycle Theory, Summarized
If markets are so great, why do we have business cycles?
-
•
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…