All Posts Tagged With: "monetary system"
The Euro: The Folly of Political Currency
The financial markets continue to surge and collapse based on the latest news from Europe. As of this writing, the big events are Slovakia’s unwillingness to contribute to a bailout fund and the failure of Dexia, a French-Belgian bank with assets of almost $700 billion. As the sovereign debt crisis has intensified in the last [...]
4Jan2012 | Robert P. Murphy | 3 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 [...]
5Jul2010 | Richard M. Ebeling | 3 comments | ContinuedEnd the Fed
Of all the blunders in American history, perhaps the greatest was the decision to put control of money and banking in the hands of a cabal of big bankers operating under the highfalutin title “Federal Reserve System.” Unfortunately, few among us know anything about the Fed, much less have any inkling of how badly it [...]
24Mar2010 | George C. Leef | 3 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 | ContinuedFree-Market Money: A Key to Peace
When I teach money and banking, I begin the section on the history of the American monetary system by asking my students what the following dates in U.S. history have in common: 1812–1816, 1863, 1913, and 1971. The obvious answer is, “times of war or close to it.” (If you count the Great Depression as [...]
1Jan2008 | Steven Horwitz | 4 comments | ContinuedBook Reviews – November 2003
Adam Smith’s Marketplace of Life by James R. Otteson Cambridge University Press • 2002 • 338 pages • $70.00 hardcover; $26.00 paperback Reviewed by Robert Batemarco One of the puzzles confronting students of the history of economic thought is the apparent inconsistency of the two masterworks of Adam Smith: The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and [...]
1Nov2003 | FEE Admin | 0 comments | ContinuedWhy Classical Liberals Should Love Harry Potter
As anyone with children can tell you, the Harry Potter books by British author J. K. Rowling have taken the world by storm. Now in its fourth installment, this series of stories about the education of a young British wizard at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is wildly popular with children and adults alike. [...]
1Dec2000 | Andrew P. Morriss | 0 comments | ContinuedCapital Letters
Who Controls the Money? To the Editor: “It Just Ain’t So!” by Richard Timberlake (December 1999) contains material errors that mislead readers. The Federal Reserve does not, as Professor Timberlake writes, have “monopoly power to increase or decrease the economy’s stock of money.” It is the banking system (of which the Fed is a component) [...]
1Apr2000 | FEE Admin | 0 comments | ContinuedMoney and the Nation State: The Financial Revolution, Government and the World Monetary System
Bert Ely is a financial institutions and monetary policy consultant in Alexandria, Virginia. This is a book on a vital—and much misunderstood—topic. It is sometimes excellent, but largely disappointing. The book consists of 13 chapters divided into three sections: The History of the Modern International Monetary System, Modern Money and Central Banking, and Foundations for [...]
1Jun1999 | Bert Ely | 1 comment | ContinuedGold Policy in the 1930s
Richard Timberlake is a professor of economics retired from the University of Georgia and author of Monetary Policy in the United States: An Intellectual and Institutional History (University of Chicago Press, 1993). This is the second in a series. Between 1929 and 1933, the Federal Reserve System, which is the central bank of the United [...]
1May1999 | Richard H. Timberlake | 1 comment | ContinuedMoney in the 1920s and 1930s
Richard Timberlake is a professor of economics retired from the University of Georgia, and author of Monetary Policy in the United States, An Intellectual and Institutional History (University of Chicago Press, 1993). This article is the first in a series. One of the most enduring and troublesome mysteries in economics is money: how it is [...]
1Apr1999 | Richard H. Timberlake | 3 comments | 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 | ContinuedA Golden Comeback, Part I
“A more timeless measure is needed; gold fits the bill perfectly.” —Mark Mobius When speaking of the Midas metal, I’m reminded of Mark Twain’s refrain, “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” After years of central-bank selling and a bear market in precious metals, the Financial Times recently declared the “Death of Gold.” But [...]
1Sep1998 | Mark Skousen | 0 comments | ContinuedTaxation by Other Means
Max Schulz is an adjunct scholar at the Frontiers of Freedom Institute. Congress’s latest abominable action in the name of tax relief—the tax and budget agreement—was born midst a debate over money. That is, the arguments about taxes, pro and con, focused solely on the money due to the federal government each April 15. This [...]
1Feb1998 | Max Schulz | 0 comments | ContinuedBank Deregulation and Monetary Order by George Selgin
Routledge • 1996 • 288 pages • $69.95 Parth Shah is an economics professor and president of the Center for Civil Society, New Delhi, India. The classical gold standard is generally considered to be the only monetary system consistent with the principles of laissez faire. In that system, the currency issued by the government is [...]
1Dec1997 | Parth J. Shah | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Mont Pelerin Society’s 50th Anniversary
Greg Kaza serves in the Michigan House of Representatives (42nd District) and is also an adjunct professor at Northwood University. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Mont Pelerin Society, one of this century’s most important groups of free-market intellectuals. The world was a quite different place when 36 free-market thinkers [...]
1Jun1997 | Greg Kaza | 0 comments | Continued-
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