All Posts Tagged With: "monetarism"
And the Slump Goes On
Official economic statistics and the underlying economic reality sometimes differ starkly. Such discrepancies may be almost inevitable when a small group of macroeconomic experts sets the official dates for peaks and troughs of aggregate economic activity. The Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) recently “determined that a trough in [...]
24Feb2011 | Angel Martín Oro | 13 comments | ContinuedWhat’s Missing from this Picture?
Washington Post economics columnist Robert Samuelson wrote last week: [T]he [economic] crisis has also battered the logic of all major theories: Keynesianism, monetarism and “rational expectations.” Economics has become the shaky science; its intellectual chaos provides context for today’s policy disputes at home and abroad. Nowhere does he mention Austrian economics. Had he been familiar [...]
6Jul2010 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Depression You’ve Never Heard Of: 1920-1921
When it comes to diagnosing the causes of the Great Depression and prescribing cures for our present recession, the pundits and economists from the biggest schools typically argue about two different types of intervention. Big-government Keynesians, such as Paul Krugman, argue for massive fiscal stimulus—that is, huge budget deficits—to fill the gap in aggregate demand. [...]
18Nov2009 | Robert P. Murphy | 73 comments | ContinuedFinancial Crises and the Federal Reserve’s Punch Bowl
Why did the U.S. financial system nearly collapse last year? People blame Wall Street’s excessive greed and risk-taking. But without easy money, the massive risk-taking could not have happened. To be sure, financial firms leveraged up—that is, they did a lot of business with borrowed money. That juiced up revenues and bonuses in the boom—and [...]
18Nov2009 | Chidem Kurdas | 12 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 | ContinuedThe Greenspan Fed in Perspective
Some readers of the Wall Street Journal might have been led to believe that Alan Greenspan had somehow followed Milton Friedman’s monetary rule. We now see, though, that there was no well-grounded rule; there was no standard.
1Jun2006 | Roger W. Garrison | 1 comment | ContinuedGovernment, Fiscal Responsibility, and Free Banking
Richard Ebeling is the president of FEE. This paper was delivered at a conference on “One Hundred Years of Dollarization, or a Century without a Central Bank: The Case of Panama,” sponsored by Fundación Libertad in Panama City, Panama, on November 12, 2004. There has been no greater threat to life, liberty, and property throughout [...]
1Feb2005 | Richard M. Ebeling | 0 comments | ContinuedTime and Money: The Macroeconomics of Capital Structure by Roger W. Garrison
Routledge • 2001 • 272 pages • $99.00 Reviewed by Robert Batemarco Although it was Tolstoy who said that “the highest wisdom has but one science—the science of the whole,” these words express with uncanny accuracy the practice of the Austrian school of economics. One of the hallmarks of that school is that it sees [...]
1Jun2002 | Robert Batemarco | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Great Depression: An International Disaster of Perverse Economic Policies
Thomas Hall and J. David Ferguson state two purposes in writing this book. Their first is to apply macroeconomic theory to an actual event, “the greatest macroeconomic disaster in U.S. history.” Their second aim is historical. They seek to tell the story of how powerful officials in several countries “committed an incredible sequence of policy [...]
1Aug1999 | Michael Adamson | 0 comments | ContinuedA Golden Comeback, Part II
“Gold maintains its purchasing power over long periods of time, for example, half-century intervals.” —Roy Jastram, The Golden Constant[1] In last month’s column, I focused on gold’s inherent stability as a monetary numeraire. Historically, the monetary base under gold has neither declined nor increased too rapidly. In short, it has operated very closely to a [...]
1Oct1998 | Mark Skousen | 0 comments | ContinuedWhat Do You Make of This Graph?
In the 1960s, the heyday of Keynesian economics, economists spoke optimistically of an end to the dreaded business cycle. Then came the stagflationary jolt of the 1970s, the credit crunch and banking crisis of the 1980s, and Japan’s depression of the 1990s. In short, the business cycle seems alive and kicking.
Now, however, comes a graph recently published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) showing that the cycle has been tamed since World War II, resurrecting the “business cycle is dead” thesis. The graph is printed below.
1Mar1996 | Mark Skousen | 1 comment | Continued-
The Latest
Contraception: Insuring the Uninsurable
Update below. Controversy rages over the Obama administration’s mandate that all employers – including... Read More
The Snow Plowers’ Petition
The following might have happened in a small college town in upstate New York… In a cold and snowy... Read More
Super Bowl versus Education?
In the spirit of Super Bowl weekend I’d like to deconstruct a Facebook status update that a friend... Read More
Capitalism, Corporatism, and the Freed Market
When a front-running presidential contender tells the country that thanks to Barack Obama, “[w]e are... Read More
Creating Jobs versus Creating Value
Picking on New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is one of the largest participation sports on the Internet.... Read More
