All Posts Tagged With: "fiat money"
A Return to Gold?
“Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. . . . Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society. . . .The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the [...]
30Nov2011 | and John L. Chapman | 13 comments | ContinuedGold and Money
Nothing seems to arouse passions—pro and con—quite like suggestions that gold should once again play a role in our money. “Only gold is money,” says one side. “It’s a barbarous relic,” says the other. Let’s turn down the heat a bit and look into some propositions about gold. That should lead us to some reasonable [...]
24Feb2011 | Warren C. Gibson | 23 comments | ContinuedGovernment’s Diminishing Benefits from Inflation
For millennia governments have resorted to expanding the money stock, either through coinage debasement or fiat money, to finance their expenditures. This expedient, with its resulting price inflation, has occurred most noticeably during wars. And the Zimbabwe hyperinflation of 2007–08, the second worst in world history, peaking at a rate of 79.6 billion percent per [...]
22Oct2010 | Jeffrey Rogers Hummel | 6 comments | ContinuedLegends of the Fall: The Real and Imagined Sources of Our Bubble Economy
Preface The Foundation for Economic Education is pleased to announce that Richard W. Fulmer of Humble, Texas, is the winner of the second annual Eugene S. Thorpe writing competition. Mr. Fulmer holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from New Mexico State University and for over 20 years has worked as a systems analyst in [...]
24Mar2010 | Richard W. Fulmer | 13 comments | ContinuedRutherford B. Hayes and the Financing of American Prosperity
Rutherford B. Hayes, America’s nineteenth president (1877–1881), is generally dismissed as a minor, even below-average president. Matthew Josephson, the journalist-chronicler of the late 1800s, insisted that Hayes had “no capacity for . . . large-minded leadership.” Other historians have written him off as just another cipher among a string of forgettable chief executives of the [...]
23Oct2009 | Burton W. Folsom Jr. | 4 comments | ContinuedHow Much Money Does an Economy Need?
In How Much Money Does an Economy Need? Hunter Lewis addresses some of the most fundamental questions of monetary policy in a question-and-answer format. For a subject often clouded by technicalities, the language is refreshingly plain. Sometimes too plain, perhaps, to satisfy an academic economist. But academic economists aren’t the intended audience. The book can [...]
15Oct2009 | Lawrence H. White | 1 comment | ContinuedWas Money Really Easy Under Greenspan?
Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan has become everyone’s favorite scapegoat. His policies allegedly caused, or at least contributed to, the current financial crisis. He is attacked from the left for lax financial regulation, from the right for loose monetary policy, and from the middle for both. Yet two years ago, on leaving office, Greenspan [...]
2Mar2009 | and David R. Henderson | 7 comments | ContinuedHow Rapidly Should the Money Supply Grow?
I would like to make one correction to Howard Baetjer’s article “Inflation 101” (September). The author suggests that inflation results when the money supply expands faster than the rate at which goods and services are produced. The author correctly points out that this expansion of the money supply will lead to rising prices. But inflation [...]
22Jan2009 | Mike Van Winkle | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Great Chinese Inflation
Inflations have undermined the cultural and economic fabric of society, bringing social chaos and revolution. One example is the Great Chinese Inflation of the 1930s and 1940s. Indeed, the destruction of the Chinese monetary system during this period helped Mao Zedong’s communist movement triumph on the Chinese mainland in 1949. In the nineteenth and early [...]
1Dec2004 | Richard M. Ebeling | 4 comments | ContinuedA Competitor for the Fed?
About a year ago I received a phone call from an entrepreneur named Bernard von NotHaus. He was eager to tell me about a new private currency, backed by silver, that he had designed and that his nonprofit organization is issuing. I was naturally skeptical, but being a student of private money, I agreed to [...]
1Jul2000 | Lawrence H. White | 1 comment | ContinuedMoney: The Great Gold Robbery
The New Deal established much of the moral framework of contemporary political life. Though some of the programs and policies of that era have been terminated, the moral heritage of the New Deal continues to permeate American government and political thinking. In 1936 Franklin Roosevelt declared, “I should like to have it said of my [...]
1Jun1999 | James Bovard | 1 comment | ContinuedA New Monetary Universe
Electronic money (e-money) offers the possibility of privatizing the currency and making government fiat money disappear. Competition and falling processing costs will prompt e-money issuers to pay interest to users, and as people choose to hold that money rather than non-interest-bearing paper money issued by central banks, there will be a radical change in economic [...]
1Nov1998 | James A. Dorn | 2 comments | ContinuedWhy Are Austrians Unusually Bearish?
“Can capitalism survive? No. I do not think it can. . . .Can socialism work? Of course it can.” —Joseph A. Schumpeter[1] When the financial markets went into a tailspin in late October 1997, my doomsday colleagues appeared gleeful. “The bear [market] has begun,” predicted Gary North. “It isn’t going to end for about 10 [...]
1Jan1998 | Mark Skousen | 1 comment | ContinuedThe Lustre of Gold
Former Congressman Ron Paul was a co-founder and member of the U.S. Gold Commission, where he brought about the restored minting of American gold coins. Dr. Paul is also author of Gold, Peace, and Prosperity and co-author of The Case for Gold. The lustre of gold indeed! Unearth an ancient Roman coin, and it gleams [...]
1Jan1996 | Ron Paul | 0 comments | Continued-
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