Monetary Theory

And what has Washington done? Rob us, badger us, and take us to war.

When used with discretion, debt can be a good thing. But many of us individually, and we as a society, can have too much of a good thing.

Making consumers and businesses appreciate the real value of assets is the way out. There are no shortcuts, only placebos.

Recorded at Mises University 2007.

Since it's so important, the main point just made needs to be repeated: credit expansion creates an artificial economic inequality by showing up in the stock market and driving up stock prices. Since the stocks are owned mainly by wealthy people, they are the main beneficiaries of the process. The more substantial and the more prolonged the credit expansion is, the larger are the gains enjoyed by wealthy people more than anyone else.

The systematic problem arises from the fact that monetary policy sends incorrect signals into capital markets, reducing lenders' ability to distinguish between good and bad loans; it also sends incorrect signals to potential borrowers about what they can and cannot afford.

Although Frum naturally doesn't say it explicitly, the only "cushion" that unbacked fiat money can provide is that it allows politicians to literally paper over crises, limping along from one to the next.

For 94 years, Americans were supposed to be awed and bored by the central bank, and pay no real attention to the greatest counterfeiting machine in

According to Greenspan, the Fed doesn't have much control over long-term interest rates.

Our town council, who loves taxes like my cat loves cream is talking about a sales tax increase: a frequent subject of their deliberations.