Latest
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“Free Banking for Zimbabwe”
“Zimbabwe’s hyperinflation is destroying the economy, pushing more of its inhabitants into poverty and forcing millions of Zimbabweans to emigrate. Since 1997, inflation has surged by 1,030,217%, while living standards (as measured by real GDP per capita) have fallen by 35%. In addition, hyperinflation has robbed people of their savings and financial institutions of their…
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Free Banking in Britain
“Free banking, generically speaking, denotes a monetary system without a central bank, under which the issuing of currency is left to private banks. This book explores how this could work in practice by examining how this has worked historically, specifically in the United Kingdom in the early 19th century. After building a theory of free…
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“EU Proposes Tax to Support Bank Crisis Funds”
“The European Commission Wednesday proposed that each European Union government levy a tax on its banks and use the proceeds to create a fund dedicated to ensuring the “orderly failure” of troubled banks. The proposal would create a European network of such funds that would follow the same rules, although the commission, the EU’s executive…
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Budgetary Impact of Fed’s Actions During the Crisis
“Over the past several years, the nation has experienced its most severe financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. To stabilize financial markets and institutions, the Federal Reserve System used its traditional policy tools to reduce short-term interest rates and increase the availability of funds to banks, and created a variety of nontraditional…
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“US exposed to Europe debt woes”
“A top Federal Reserve official said on Tuesday that European debt woes pose a risk to the US economic recovery, but expressed confidence the danger of contagion was small. ‘It’s hard to see a banking crisis,’ St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank President James Bullard told Reuters Insider in an interview. ‘It might be expensive, there…
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Good Money
“This is the true and remarkable story of private coinage and banking in Britain in the early years of the Industrial Revolution (1775-1850). Making money was a business in demand. The needs of business for small denominations were changing. Merchants needed small denomination coins in copper and silver. The Royal Mint couldn’t be bothered. It…
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“Financial Reform Bill is a ‘Disaster’: Sen. Gregg”
“The financial regulatory bill is a “disaster,” and its proposed consumer protection agency would create a Fannie and Freddie “on steroids,” Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H. told CNBC on Monday. “The bill is a disaster because it doesn’t address the fundamental underlining causes of the economic issue, which were real estate and underwriting,” he said. “This…
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Hayek on Sound Money
Great quote by Hayek: “With the exception only of the period of the gold standard, practically all governments of history have used their exclusive power to issue money to defraud and plunder the people.”
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The Return of Financial Repression?
Financial repression was used extensively by governments in the post-war period and is still common today in emerging markets such as China. As Cato scholar James Dorn writes in a recently posted commentary, “Financial repression is a hallmark of China’s market socialism.” Given developments in the wake of the financial crisis, the big question is…
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“Monetary-Policy Disasters of the Twentieth Century”
“The Federal Reserve System was created in 1913 and soon did what central banks almost always do: it started printing lots of money. During World War I the Bank of England inflated its money supply, and as a result a significant amount of gold flowed out of Great Britain to the United States in the…
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