All Posts Tagged With: "monetary policy"
Capital Letters
Thanks to Milton Friedman’s brilliance, charisma, and diplomacy he became an ardent spokesman for many free-market reforms in this country. And now Ivan Pongracic, Jr. (“The Great Depression According to Milton Friedman,” September 2007) gives him credit for accomplishing what seems miraculous—convincing Fed officials that the Fed itself was responsible for precipitating the crash and [...]
1Dec2007 | FEE Admin | 0 comments | ContinuedSubprime Monetary Policy
In recent years monetary policy has been conducted so as to create an expectation that the Federal Reserve will bail out investors when asset bubbles deflate. Investors have come to bank on the Fed’s backing of risky ventures. The recent crisis in the subprime mortgage market is at least partly the outcome of this new [...]
1Nov2007 | Gerald P. O'Driscoll, Jr. | 2 comments | ContinuedThe Great French Inflation
Governments have an insatiable appetite for the wealth of their subjects. When governments find it impossible to continue raising taxes or borrowing funds, they have invariably turned to printing paper money to finance their growing expenditures. The resulting inflations have often undermined the social fabric, ruined the economy, and sometimes brought revolution and tyranny in [...]
1Jul2007 | Richard M. Ebeling | 1 comment | ContinuedSomething Besides Money Growth Causes Inflation?
Howard Baetjer, Jr., is a lecturer in economics at Towson University. Some economic phenomena can result from a variety of causes. A temporary increase in unemployment, for example, might be caused by a sudden, disruptive change in production technology, or in trade patterns, or in labor or tax laws; or it could be caused by [...]
1Jul2007 | Howard Baetjer Jr. | 7 comments | ContinuedEnergy Policy: Wisdom or Waste?
Roger McKinney (rdmckinney@cox.net) is senior analyst for a quasigovernmental health-care agency in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We can’t help ourselves. Americans crave the black gold that pulses through the concrete arteries of our nation’s transportation system. In the opinion of many, we have hocked our future for a cheap fix with a drug that abandons our nation [...]
1May2007 | Roger McKinney | 6 comments | ContinuedThe Great Contraction, 1929–33
The recession that began in mid-1929 need not have become a disaster. Many downturns had occurred previously in U.S. economic history, and nearly all of them had been fairly shallow and soon followed by recovery and continued growth. In the nineteenth century most people had believed that the government neither knew how nor possessed the [...]
1Apr2007 | Robert Higgs | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Euro versus Currency Competition
It is now four years since the euro was introduced as a circulating currency in parts of the European Union. Both Europeans and others are becoming increasingly used to a single money in much of the continent. If the euro remains in use for another five or ten years people may well look back at [...]
1Jan2007 | Richard M. Ebeling | 0 comments | ContinuedMonetary-Policy Disasters of the Twentieth Century
Kirby R. Cundiff is an associate professor of finance at Northeastern State University in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and an adjunct associate professor of finance at the University of Maryland University College. The Federal Reserve System was created in 1913 and soon did what central banks almost always do: it started printing lots of money. During World [...]
1Jan2007 | Kirby R. Cundiff | 5 comments | ContinuedMilton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics
Milton Friedman, who passed away on November 16 at age 94, once commented that there is no such thing as different schools of economics; there is only good economics and bad economics. While he may have sincerely believed this, Friedman was nonetheless the twentieth century’s most outstanding contributor to what has become known as the [...]
1Dec2006 | Richard M. Ebeling | 8 comments | ContinuedInflation Is a “Phantom Menace”? It Just Ain’t So!
Gene Callahan is the author of Economics for Real People: An Introduction to the Austrian School and the just-published novel Puck. Princeton University economist Paul Krugman, in his New York Times column of June 16, argues that the current fears about an increase in the U.S. inflation rate actually pose a more serious threat to the [...]
1Oct2006 | Gene Callahan | 1 comment | ContinuedLudwig von Mises: The Political Economist of Liberty, Part II
Mises’s defense of classical liberalism against the various forms of collectivism was not limited “merely” to the economic benefits of private property.
1Jun2006 | Richard M. Ebeling | 0 comments | Continued“The Tariff is the Mother of Trusts”
Why should we expect business people to favor laissez faire and to abhor government intervention? Few people outside of business do so.
1Jun2006 | Sheldon Richman | 4 comments | ContinuedThe Neglected Factor in the Housing “Bubble”
Is there a housing “bubble”? Debate has swirled recently around this question. But one factor behind increased prices in the housing market seems to be frequently left out of the debate or only mentioned in passing—government. Then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan proclaimed last May 20 that the nation’s housing market was “frothy.” He also said [...]
1Mar2006 | Raymond J. Keating | 2 comments | ContinuedWhy Not Monetary Freedom?
In all of the commentaries that have appeared since President George W. Bush nominated Dr. Ben S. Bernanke as Alan Greenspan
1Dec2005 | Richard M. Ebeling | 0 comments | ContinuedInflation in One Page
1. Inflation is an increase in the quantity of money and credit. Its chief consequence is soaring prices. Therefore inflation — if we misuse the term to mean the rising prices themselves — is caused solely by printing more money. For this the government’s monetary policies are entirely responsible. 2. The most frequent reason for [...]
1Nov2004 | Henry Hazlitt | 5 comments | ContinuedInterest Rates and the Federal Reserve
Richard Ebeling is the president of FEE. His latest book is Austrian Economics and the Political Economy of Freedom (Elgar). On June 30, 2004, the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee announced it was raising the targeted federal funds interest rate from 1 to 1.25 percent, to begin to prevent a possible future price inflation. The [...]
1Sep2004 | Richard M. Ebeling | 1 comment | ContinuedThe Awesome Powers of Government
Government possesses far more mechanisms that influence actions in the private sector than most people realize. The typical business firm faces an impressive array of government powers. Government as Paymaster. The oldest policy tool available to government is to hire people and put them on its payroll. Government employees represent such diverse professions as teachers, [...]
1Mar2004 | Murray Weidenbaum | 83 comments | Continued-
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