Economy News

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Established 1999

New England, USA

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    “Your Money Back”

    “Is Ron Paul’s suggestion that the Federal Reserve be eliminated a “fringe position,” as Josh Barro suggested in the June 21 issue of National Review (“Mend the Fed”)? It depends on what “fringe” means. If it means simply that a large majority disagrees, then Representative Paul’s position deserves that characterization. But if “fringe” is meant…

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    The Perils of Monetary Management

    Recently the Chinese authorities announced an end to the dollar peg and a move towards a more flexible exchange rate, as commented upon in a previous post. However, there are fears among Chinese officials that this could lead to a wide range of problems, including speculation and hot money inflows, as well as undermining the…

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    “Honest Money through bearer shares, a proposal”

    “Nobody understands money, least of all economists. Too sweeping a statement? Perhaps. But every analysis of the workings of monetary systems that I have ever read has been seriously in error at one or more crucial points. This is true not only of the supposedly impartial opuses of academic economics, but also of the writings…

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    “An Old Battlefront Returns in War on Euro”

    “In 1998, four renegade German professors tried to stop the introduction of the euro with a legal challenge in Germany’s highest court. Now, 12 years later, they are fighting against a German bailout for Greece — and this time around, people are listening to them. Wilhelm Hankel is sitting on the stage at a meeting…

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    Sound Money and a Secure Free Society

    Re-reading the text book that we used at Grove City College to learn about the principles of sound money, I see that another project at Atlas, our Secure Free Society Project, complements with our Sound Money Project. In Theory of Money and Credit, which Lionel Robbins regarded as the best book ever written on money,…

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    Hayek on the need to win the ideas war to bring sound money back

    In the preface to one of his books, Hayek wrote that “Indeed I must admit that–although I am a convinced believer in the international gold standard–I regard the prospects of its restoration in the near future not without some concern. Nothing would be more fatal from a long run point of view than if the…

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    Debt to GDP: Who Really Carries the Burden?

    Over recent months, much has been made of the rapid increase in public debt levels. Protests against excess government spending in the U.S. and severe economic problems in debt-laden European countries have forced the federal debt to the forefront of national issues. There are, of course, those who attempt to justify the massive debt—if we…

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    “Haste Makes Waste in Financial Regulatory Bill”

    “The Congressional Conference Committee worked all night on Friday, June 25, finally quitting at 5:37 in the morning, so that President Obama could go to the G-20 Summit in Canada saying that Congress had finished a bill. Throughout the night comments were penciled in on the 2,315-page bill, so many in fact that the committee…

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    Highlighting Hayek

    Is the world finally looking to the ideas of Friedrich Hayek? It appears that the intellectual debate may be heading in a new direction. Stimulus spending has done practically nothing to reduce unemployment or spur growth; instead it has merely inflated the deficit and enraged taxpayers. Instead of falling into a vicious cycle of government…

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    “Britain’s Inflation Pain Poses Risk for Recovery”

    “Committee members at the Bank of England and some economists have been puzzled by persistently high inflation in Britain, causing some concerns that the country’s recovery might stagnate. Unlike in the United States and in countries that share the euro, inflation in Britain never came close to zero in 2009. And while core inflation, which…