The war on cash is a sign that central banks may see a dangerously deteriorating situation, one that has led to a feeling of desperation by governments and a wish to control the wealth of citizens.
Money & Banking
Money and Banking Under Laissez-Faire Capitalism
This talk examines the development, operation and performance of monetary systems in the absence of government intervention.
Monopoly Money: The Destabilizing Consequences of Central Banking
How currency monopolies promote booms and busts, and having a lender of last resort leads to moral hazard and financial instability.
A Monetary Policy Primer, Part 7: Monetary Control, Then
“Monetary control” refers to the various procedures and devices the Fed and other central banks employ in their attempts to regulate the overall availability of liquid assets, and through it the general course of spending, prices, and employment, in the economies they o…
Reforming Last-Resort Lending: The Flexible Open Market Alternative
I regard any need for last-resort lending as reflecting, not the inherent shortcomings of private financial markets, but the debilitating effects of misguided regulatory interference with the free development of those markets.
Inflation, Price Controls and Collectivism During the French Revolution: Economic Ideas
When governments find it impossible to continue raising taxes or borrowing funds, they have invariably turned to printing paper money to finance their growing expenditures. The political economy of the French Revolution is a tragic example of this.
The Election’s Bearing on Monetary Freedom
The sad reality is that the battle for monetary freedom has for some time now taken the form of a rearguard action, aimed at resisting as much as possible ever-increasing government incursions into an ever-shrinking realm of financial choice.
The Perils of Financial Over-Regulation
Financial systems, like economies generally, are organic entities. They must be allowed to flourish in a natural way.
The Investment Bankers Contribution: Directing Capital To Productive Uses
Productive companies and investment bankers who help them obtain capital are making an important contribution to human flourishing for which they should be proud.
Free Banking and the Federal Reserve
The record of past “free banking” systems, in which paper currency consisted of competitively supplied banknotes, contradicts the widespread belief that central banks play an essential part in promoting financial stability. Instead, both that record and...
A Monetary Policy Primer, Part 6: The Reserve-Deposit Multiplier
The multiplier’s significance to monetary policy is, or used to be, straightforward: it indicated the quantity of additional bank deposits that monetary authorities could expect to see banks produce in response to any increment of new bank reserves supplied them by mean…
The Myth of the Myth of Barter
There is, after all, at least one impulse among humans that’s more deep-seated than their “propensity to truck, barter, and exchange.” I mean, of course, their propensity to let themselves be thoroughly bamboozled.
Free Market Money: On The Separation of Banking and State
Government has been the cause of monetary disorder in our society. A free market in money and banking would be the solution to our “age of inflation.” Government central-planning of money has been tried and it has failed. It is now time for monetary freedom to be g…
On Free Banking, Monetary Rules, and Crusades
Free banking and monetary rules were rival ideas for guarding against abuses of discretionary monetary policy, today they are properly seen as complementary schemes, one for improving the performance of the banking system, the other for reforming the base-money regime. …
A Monetary Policy Primer, Part 5: The Supply of Money
On the Fed’s “instruments of monetary control,” which include devices for regulating the total quantity of bank reserves and circulating Federal Reserve notes, and also for regulating the quantity of bank deposits and other forms of privately-created money that will be …
A Monetary Policy Primer, Part 4: Stable Prices or Stable Spending?
A better alternative, if only it can somehow be achieved, or at least approximated, is a monetary system that adjusts the stock of money in response to changes in the demand for money balances, thereby reducing the need for changes in the general level of prices.
A Monetary Policy Primer, Part 3: The Price Level
What sort of monetary policy or regime best avoids the costs of having too much or too little money?
A Monetary Policy Primer, Part 2: The Demand for Money
How can a central bank manage a quantity without being certain just how to define, let alone measure, that quantity? How is it possible for the quantity of money supplied to differ from the quantity demanded? When those things do differ, how can one tell? Finally, ju…
A Monetary Policy Primer, Part 1: Money
What, exactly, is “monetary policy” about? Why is there such a thing at all? What should we want to accomplish by it — and what should we not try to accomplish?
Donald Trump the Corrupt Creation of America’s Bankrupt Politics
The Democrats and the Republicans, the progressives on the “left” and the go-along to get-along conservatives on the “right, are the ones who made Donald Trump.
How the FED Causes Booms and Busts
The result of the Federal Reserve’s increase in the money supply, which pushes interest rates below that market-balancing point, is an emerging price inflation and an initial investment boom, both of which are unsustainable in the long run.
Price Inflation and The Consumer Price Index
The CPI vs. the Diversity of Real People’s Choices
Ending Government’s Monopoly Control Over Money
A central tool for governments to maintain their authority in society and their control over people’s lives is the ability to make the citizenry accept and use their monopoly medium of exchange.
What Is Money Printing?
There is a populist idea of money printing. The idea is that banks can just print what they want, enriching themselves in a massive fraud. But, does it really work this way? Let’s start with a simple case, which is clearly not money printing. We will build a series of...
Falling Interest Causes Falling Profits
Most people assume that prices move as a result of changes in the money supply. Instead, let’s look at the effect of changes in interest.
A Gold Standard Can Limit Government Monetary Abuse
The real long-run goal of monetary reform should be the denationalization of money. That is, the separation of money from the state by ending of central banking, altogether. In its place would emerge private, competitive free banking – a truly market-based money and b…
The State and 100 Percent Reserve Banking
Free bankers have been fighting a war on two fronts. On one they face champions of central banking and managed money. On the other they struggle against advocates of 100-percent reserve banking. Although the second front is a lot smaller than the first, it’s far fr…
Will a GDP Futures Market Be Liquid?
Scott Sumner said he had a “modest” proposal: there should be a highly liquid futures market in Nominal Gross Domestic Product (NGDP). Let’s look at that.
How Do People Destroy Their Capital?
The flip side of falling interest rates is the rising price of bonds. Bonds are in an endless, ferocious bull market. Why do I call it ferocious? Perhaps voracious is a better word, as it is gobbling up capital like the Cookie Monster jamming tollhouses into his maw. Th…
What’s Different about Monetary Policy?
Many people agree that it’s important to move to a free market in money (i.e. the gold standard). They also say that it’s just as important to fight bad taxes and regulation. In their view, government interference in the economy is like friction in a car. The more f…
Money and Banking is Too Important to Leave to Central Banks
Governments and their central banks have usurped market-based money systems to serve the plundering purposes of kings, parliaments, and special interest groups.
A Response to a Critic of Money, Banking, and the Business Cycle
Money, Banking, and the Business Cycle provides a comprehensive defense of Austrian business cycle theory (ABCT). It shows that a free market in money and banking will create the most stable banking and monetary system that is possible.
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