An introduction to political economy focusing on money, banking and funding of government.
Money & Banking
Money and Liquidity
Perhaps the money of the future isn’t some sophisticated crypto token, but a private promise to consume a widely used service.
Paul Volcker’s Anti-Capitalist Legacy Against Free-Market Banking
By helping to cut the dollar’s tether to gold, Volcker helped Washington’s politicians engage in perpetual fiscal profligacy.
Liberate Money From The State
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.
A Financial History of Edinburgh: The Rise and Fall of Scotland’s City of Money
By removing the market’s solution to collapsing banks, this unraveling forced electorate-sensitive governments to take up the residual risk and backstop the financial system that Scottish banks themselves so effectively regulated in the past.
The Mirage of Increasing Profits Under Monetary Inflation
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.
Lessons From Free Banking in Scotland
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.
A Free-Market Gold Standard?
Any official effort to link the dollar to gold today would be just another act of monetary central planning.
Scottish Banks and the Bank Restriction, 1797-1821, Part 3
Blame the Bankers, Not Freedom in Banking
Scottish Banks and the Bank Restriction, 1797-1821, Part 2
That there was widespread support for the Scottish bank suspension did not, however, mean that the suspension left the Scottish public unscathed.
Scottish Banks and the Bank Restriction, 1797-1821, Part 1
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?
Laffer Gets Laughable
If we can’t kill it entirely, we should be thinking about ways to make the Fed less political, not more.
The Financial Crisis: Lessons Not Learned
The financial crisis of 2008-9 — accompanied by the Great Recession was caused by government intervention, mainly in mortgage finance and the housing sector.
What Makes Money Trustworthy?
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.
Federal Reserve System is Socialism
Central banking is a form of central planning. The Federal Reserve has a legal monopoly over the monetary system of the United States.
The Production of Money Isn’t (Necessarily) the Production of Wealth
The creation of money doesn’t create wealth, unless money itself is wealth — as it was when it was gold and silver.
John Allison on the Financial Crisis
John Allison, former CEO & Chairman of BB&T and current president of Cato, talks on the financial crisis and the philosophy of Ayn Rand at the Adam Smith Institute’s first Ayn Rand Lecture at Drapers’ Hall.
Macro Aggregates Hide the Real Market Processes at Work
Government planners fail to “manage” market economies as the indicators they use are themselves false signals hiding from view the reality of the complex market system.
Interest Rates Need to Tell the Truth
In the middle of July 2018, President Donald Trump said in an interview that he was “not happy” with the Federal Reserve nudging up interest rates and threatening economic growth in the United States. At the recent Jackson Hole, Wyoming, meeting of global central bank...
The Myth that Central Banks Assure Economic Stability
What is the fundamental issue is: monetary central planning – with its embarrassingly awful one hundred year track record with paper monies – or getting government’s direct or indirect hand off the handle of the monetary printing press.
European Bank HSBC Abandons Financing Fossil Fuels
Banks to stop financing fossil fuel development: Sound investment decisions vs. virtue signaling?
Books: The Moral Case for Finance
The essential moral case for finance that Brook and Watkins present is that finance is good by the standard of human flourishing.
Austrian Monetary Theory vs. Federal Reserve Inflation Targeting
The phantom of “inflation targeting.”
A Monetary Policy Primer, Part 11: Last-Resort Lending
Forget about monetary policy for a moment or two, and imagine, instead, that you’re back in 6th grade. You and your classmates are about to go on a camping trip, involving some strenuous hiking, and lasting several days.
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