Money & Banking

Gold appears to be headed for an impressive price appreciation for the second half of 2012. Since the beginning of July, gold is up almost 10 over the same time frame. What is noteworthy here is that in recent months, fears of a worldwide recession have increased...

Journalists, politicians and economists all seem to agree that the biggest economic issue currently worrying voters is unemployment. It follows then that most believe that the deciding factor in the presidential race will be the ability of each candidate to convince...

A number of recent exchanges between Market Monetarists and their critics, and especially those of their critics associated with the Austrian school, have debated the contribution of excessively easy Fed policy toward the housing boom and bust. The issue boils down to...

In recent decades politicians have increasingly followed the Keynesian prescription of economic growth through continued government borrowing and the creation of undreamt of amounts of fiat money by central banks. To facilitate this process, the larger commercial...

Just a few weeks ago, Mario Draghi, President of the European Central Bank (ECB), announced that he would do anything required to bailout  the weakest members of the Eurozone and in so doing prevent the euro currency from dissolution. Investors who may have been...

In the 19th century America experienced one banking “panic” after another: 1819, 1837, 1857, 1873 and 1893. These recurring “panics” allegedly proved what happens in a completely unregulated banking system, a banking system free from the...

With yesterday’s Fed decision and press conference, Chairman Ben Bernanke finally and decisively laid his cards on the table. And confirming what I have been saying for many years, all he was holding was more of the same snake oil and bluster. Going further than...

I couldn’t help being glad to see The Economist refer to Carl Menger’s theory of the origins of money just as I was about to explain that theory to my undergraduate classes. Nor did I at all mind having Menger’s ideas contrasted with those of another...

In June, 2010 the Cobden Centre in London released a report on “Public Attitudes on Banking,” based on a questionnaire to which 2000 Britons responded. The findings of that report have since been offered, both by the Cobden Centre itself and by others, as...

Oh no: I’ve gone and punched the 100-percent wasp’s nest again, and the wasps are responding predictably. Among them Joe Salerno stands out like a hornet among gall wasps, for Joe is an outstanding historian of monetary thought, and no mean monetary...

In my latest book,  The Real Crash: America’s Coming Bankruptcy – How to Save Yourself and Your Country , I devote a full chapter to the merits of the historical gold standard and reasons to reinstate it. What I did not mention and few investors notice is...

I first came to national attention back in 2008 and 2009 when the housing and credit markets imploded. I became known as the guy that other market “experts” laughed at when I warned of trouble brewing in the seemingly indestructible American economy. After...

Excerpted from the new economic bestseller, The Real Crash Today, we’re accustomed to thinking of small greenish paper rectangles as the definition of money, and we think of the US government as the only source of money. To honestly discuss sound money, we need...

Persons familiar with my writings on monetary reform know that, far from being anyone’s idea of a gold bug, and despite my conviction that those monies work best that governments govern least, I’ve always shied away from arguing that we ought to...

Certain economists of the Austrian School, and followers of Murray Rothbard especially, oppose fractional reserve banking for at least three reasons. They claim that banks resorting to it defraud people, that they bring about business cycles, and that their activities...

When JP Morgan Chase & Co. announced a two billion dollar loss in its main investment office earlier this month, there were increased calls for the U.S. federal government to regulate trading by big banks and to ban speculative trading. Why should we reject such...

When Adam Smith first drew attention to the benefits of fractional-reserve banking, those benefits were but a glimmer of far more impressive gains to come. In 1776, the year of the appearance of Smith’s Wealth of Nations, Scotland had only 10 note-issuing banks, the...

The most tangible achievements of the free market—the vast improvements in technology and productivity, the industrial plant and infrastructure from which these derive, and the extensive retailing networks that deliver industry’s fruits to consumers—would be far more meager were it not for past and present lending financed by fractionally-backed bank liabilities.

To many, the “Golden Rule” is an idea that underscores the value of civility and fair dealing. But there is another, less magnanimous definition: “He who has the gold makes the rules.” In the current global economy, the surplus countries have the gold and sooner or later we will be living by their rules.

How’s this for a great idea: we build a small fleet of cars, and market them to people in the local community. How do we compete with Ford, G.M., Toyota, and all those other huge car companies? Easy. You see, our cars will have special octane requirements that will...

Anyone who peruses my work on free banking—or my other writings for that matter—will notice that I’m not especially inclined to express my ideas mathematically. To put the matter more positively: I prefer plain English. The preference has if anything grown more marked...

I promise to make this my last post for a while concerning the matter of 100-percent versus fractional-reserve banking. However, in addressing some comments on my recent posts it occurred to me that some very serious misunderstanding is at play concerning the...

In the aftermath of the U.S. banking crises of the 1930s, it became common for American economists to speak of the “inherent” instability of fractional-reserve banking and of the “perverse elasticity” of money supply in fractional-reserve banking systems. What the...

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.

Despite the bright light streaming into my office window, reminding me of the beautiful spring weather here in Athens, I managed to spend most of yesterday afternoon listening to the first installment of Ben Bernanke’s 4-part lecture series on “The Federal...

It seems that various pro-gold utterances in the course of the Republican primaries have provoked critics of the gold standard to circle their wagons and start shooting. But while the sheer volume of shots fired has been impressive, the shooters’ aim has been...

Warren Buffet is a crony capitalist who bends the truth to serve his long-held ideological commitment to big government.

This past week, gold and silver experienced one of their steeper drops in recent months. After gold had touched a four month high, and silver came close to a six month high, prices abruptly reversed course. By the end of the week gold had sold off more than 5 percent,...

Last week the Greek government, with the heavy handed support of its larger friends in the Eurozone, succeeded in coercing some 85.8 percent of private sector bondholders to “voluntarily” exchange €206 billion-worth of Greek sovereign bonds for newer bonds...