Money & Banking

If ever an administration had control over Fed policy, and monetary policy more generally, FDR’s was it. It follows that, if monetary policy did less than it should have to end the Great Depression, the Roosevelt administration must bear a good share of the blame.

Although almost everyone assumes that fiscal stimulus played a big part in bringing the Great Depression to an end, the truth is that its contribution was insignificant.

The New Deal wasn’t a grand scheme at all, but an assemblage of steps and programs, many of which were decided upon or concocted only after Roosevelt took office.

I hope to introduce my readers to evidence casting doubt on the view that New Deal programs ended, or mostly ended, the Great Depression.

When I say “the New Deal,” I mean the “series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1939.”

America’s disastrous history with central banking makes the case for why paper money and central banking are what should be challenged.

In the absence of government regulation and monopoly control, a free monetary and banking system would exist; it would not have to be created, designed, or supported. A market-based system would naturally emerge, take form, and develop out of the prior system of monetary central planning. 

A disturbing trend among true believers is to quip that “Bitcoin fixes this,” almost regardless of what the problem may be.

You can stretch a rubber band only so far, until it breaks. Our debt will wreck our children’s lives.

Judy Shelton is a high-class, high-quality economist, who should join the Fed not so much to burnish its image but to keep it at least a little bit honest and real. The Fed today doesn’t really deserve Shelton, but Shelton deserves a top place at the Fed.

Perhaps the money of the future isn’t some sophisticated crypto token, but a private promise to consume a widely used service. 

By helping to cut the dollar’s tether to gold, Volcker helped Washington’s politicians engage in perpetual fiscal profligacy.

I know that it’s good to have alternatives to government-created currencies. The dollar’s value is only backed by politicians’ promises. I sure won’t trust those.

Inflation—the government’s expansion of the money supply—creates the appearance of business prosperity along with the fact of general impoverishment, which results in blaming poverty on business and profits.

Rothbard does not refute White’s thesis that Scottish banking was less regulated and hence more stable and well-functioning than England’s banking system in the same 145-year period.

Any official effort to link the dollar to gold today would be just another act of monetary central planning.

Blame the Bankers, Not Freedom in Banking

That there was widespread support for the Scottish bank suspension did not, however, mean that the suspension left the Scottish public unscathed.

Does the Scottish suspension suggest that fractional reserve banking is, inconsistent with genuine freedom in banking, including the consistent honoring of bank customers’ property rights?

If we can’t kill it entirely, we should be thinking about ways to make the Fed less political, not more.

The financial crisis of 2008-9 — accompanied by the Great Recession was caused by government intervention, mainly in mortgage finance and the housing sector.

I don’t trust politicians, generally, but I especially don’t trust them with money. Since the U.S. went off the gold standard, the dollar has lost 80 percent of its value.