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Antal Fekete, Gold, and Central Banks
Antal Fekete, Gold, and Central Banks On the fourteenth of October 2020, Antal E. Fekete, the Hungarian-Canadian economist who saw himself as a monetary theorist following the tradition of Carl Menger, died in Budapest. Behind him was an eventful and fruitful life which was quite typical of the crazy last century. His experiences eventually filled Fekete with dark forebodings for […]
How the State Spreads Mass Hysteria
How the State Spreads Mass Hysteria The history of mass hysteria, or mass sociogenic illness is fascinating. Cases of mass hysteria have been documented since the Middle Ages. Let me just mention a few of the more recent cases. When a radio play by Orson Welles, War of the Worlds, was broadcasted in 1938 shortly after the suspension of the Munich agreement, the play allegedly caused […]
Too Much Centralization Is Turning Everything into a Political Crisis
Too Much Centralization Is Turning Everything into a Political Crisis Is American politics reaching a breaking point? A recent study by researchers from Brown and Stanford Universities certainly paints a grim picture of the state of the national discourse. The study attempts to measure “affective polarization,” defined as the extent to which citizens feel more negatively toward […]
The New COVID-19 Authoritarians Will Only Give Up Power If They Fear Blowback
The New COVID-19 Authoritarians Will Only Give Up Power If They Fear Blowback It was autumn 1989. Momentous things were taking place in the world. The Berlin Wall had fallen. The people of the Eastern Bloc had succeeded at getting to the West through Hungary. The firm line between east and west was wavering. The […]
The Era of Boom and Bust Isn’t Over
The Era of Boom and Bust Isn’t Over At the 2020 World Economic Forum in Davos, Bob Prince, co-chief investment officer at Bridgewater Associates, attracted attention when he suggested in a news interview that the boom and bust cycle as we have come to know it in the last decades may have ended. This viewpoint […]
The Bank of England’s Governor Fears a Liquidity Trap
The Bank of England’s Governor Fears a Liquidity Trap The global economy is heading towards a “liquidity trap” that could undermine central banks’ efforts to avoid a future recession according to Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England. In a wide-ranging interview with the Financial Times (January 8, 2020), the outgoing governor warned that central banks […]
How the US Wages War to Prop up the Dollar
How the US Wages War to Prop up the Dollar At Counterpunch, Michael Hudson has penned an important article that outlines the important connections between US foreign policy, oil, and the US dollar. In short, US foreign policy is geared very much toward controlling oil resources as part of a larger strategy to prop up the US dollar. […]
What Will It Take to Get the Public to Embrace Sound Money?
What Will It Take to Get the Public to Embrace Sound Money? In the last decade, the combination of virulent asset price inflation and low reported consumer price inflation crippled sound money as a political force in the US and globally. In the new decade, a different balance between monetary inflation’s “terrible twins” — asset […]
Hyperinflation, Money Demand, and the Crack-up Boom
Hyperinflation, Money Demand, and the Crack-up Boom In the early 1920s, Ludwig von Mises became a witness to hyperinflation in Austria and Germany — monetary developments that caused irreparable and (in the German case) cataclysmic damage to civilization. Mises’s policy advice was instrumental in helping to stop hyperinflation in Austria in 1922. In his Memoirs, however, […]
A History of Inflationary Money: From 1844 to Nixon
A History of Inflationary Money: From 1844 to Nixon So that we can understand the financial and banking challenges ahead of us, this article provides an historical and technical background. But we must first get an important definition right, and that is the cause of the periodic cycle of boom and bust. The cycle of […]
How Central Banks Fund Our Age of Endless War
How Central Banks Fund Our Age of Endless War [This talk was delivered at the Mises Circle in New York City on September 14, 2012.] The 20th century was the century of total war. Limitations on the scope of war, built up over many centuries, had already begun to break down in the 19th century, but they […]
Central Bank “Stimulus” is Really a Huge Redistribution Scheme
Central Bank “Stimulus” is Really a Huge Redistribution Scheme When an economy turns from expansion to contraction there is an order of events. The first signs are an unexpected increase in inventories of unsold goods, both accompanied with and followed by business surveys indicating a general softening in demand. For monetarists, this is often confirmed […]
Markets Rely on Accurate and Honest Information — But Governments Want the Opposite
Markets Rely on Accurate and Honest Information — But Governments Want the Opposite Have you ever worked with people you couldn’t trust to tell you the truth? It isn’t pretty. Without the ability to rely on what you’ve been told (or that you’ve been told everything relevant), effective cooperation at almost every margin of choice […]
Negative Interest Rates are the Price We Pay for De-Civilization
Negative Interest Rates are the Price We Pay for De-Civilization Do central bankers really think negative interest rates are rational? “Calculation Error,” which Bloomberg terminals sometimes display1, is an apt metaphor for the current state of central bank policy. Both Europe and Asia are now awash in $13 trillion worth of negative-yielding sovereign and corporate […]
Why the Dollar Rules the World — And Why Its Reign Could End
Why the Dollar Rules the World — And Why Its Reign Could End President Donald Trump wants a lower US dollar. He complains about the over-valuation of the American currency. Yet, is he right to accuse other countries of a “currency manipulation”? Is the position of the US dollar in the international monetary arena not […]
