Money and Banks

Politicians, bureaucrats, regulators, modern financial commentators, Nobel Prize–winning economists and central bankers have proven they lack any knowledge of what money is and what causes business cycles.

Ah, the greens. They’re not just treehuggers anymore.

Washington should be lowering taxes and the costs of hiring employees, especially in industries that produce capital and wealth.

Although Aristotle, in the Greek tradition, scorned moneymaking and was scarcely a partisan of laissez-faire, he set forth a trenchant argument in

The task of the theory of money consists merely in dealing with that component in the valuation of money which is conditioned by its function as a

Money originates by free markets via barter and gold and silver, not by governments via fiat. A story of Halloween candy demonstrates this.  The double coincidence of wants is solved by money. Money that will last will be six things: generally marketable, divisible, high value per unit weight (portable), durable, recognizable, and homogeneous.

Recorded at the Mises Circle in Newport Beach, California, on November 14th, 2009. Sponsored by Louis E. Carabini.

The notion of a neutral money is no less contradictory than that of a money of stable purchasing power.

Most people would admit to hoarding money only with a tinge of guilt, because to be a hoarder carries with it the suggestion of being a miser—a Scrooge. And yet, every participant in an economy based on indirect exchange holds some amount of money and can be said to be hoarding it; that is, declining to spend it. Hoarding is a strategy for achieving personal goals or for dealing with economic uncertainty.