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Gold Standard Stability vs. Land Standard Chaos
If modern economists had paid attention to the disagreement between Adam Smith the father of modern free-market economics on the one hand and John Law, the father of modern financial bubbles on the other, we might have avoided a painful … Read More
Defense Cuts are Worrisome
The United States historically has played a very needed role in the world. We have not seen the type of aggression and global conflict that we did in the early twentieth century since America emerged from WWII as a global power. … Read More
“But What Can We Do?”
Last Saturday I was invited to speak at an event in Asheville, NC and discuss the book. I spoke for about fifteen minutes on my background and why I wrote “Currency and then opened it up for questions.” My girlfriend … Read More
Billions and Billions!
So the venerable J.P. Morgan with the fortress balance sheet and exemplary risk control posts a $2B+ loss. Quite a shocking number but not surprising.
The banks are scrounging for ways to make money. With the Fed printing money and … Read More
Emporer Has No Clothes
I recently shot a video segment for a national online news outlet in which we discussed the debt burden of the United States and possible solutions. The host of the segment was rather young and kept firmly stating that the … Read More
The Country with the Golden Gun (James Where Are You?)
Oh man, wouldn’t this make a great Bond flick? Let’s lay out the screenplay.
Western nations are awash in debt as the consequences of the welfare state play themselves out. The European Union establishes a common currency with no political … Read More
How to Make the Euro Project Work
The euro seems to be on its last legs, and the vision which inspired its genesis seems to have vanished from the politicians sponsoring it. The recent spat with England and Prime Minister Cameron has only served to highlight the … Read More
Jimmy Stewart Banking versus James Steuart Banking
In his excellent book The New Lombard Street, Perry Mehrling writes of “a world that never was … Jimmy Stewart banking of blessed memory” (p. 117). This is an obvious reference to one of Jimmy Stewart’s most famous roles: George Bailey in … Read More
Why We Do NOT Have a Fractional-Reserve System
This blog entry is for anyone who believes, as John Tamny here puts it, that “Fractional reserve banking quite simple IS.”
Among the many good points Tamny makes in his article, there is the underlying assumption that our system is, in some important … Read More
Private Issue of Money — the Root of Our Monetary Problem?
In a comment posted under an article by my friend Jerry Bowyer (Where’s the Hyperinflation?), “ps61penn62prin64” writes that “private currency monetary systems… are doomed to fail the interest of American citizens.”
Bowyer’s article discusses the sizeable increase in the money … Read More
Fact and Fiction on Reserve Requirements
In the system we have now, we do use both a reserve restriction and an asset restriction. But, the modern reserve restriction has changed fundamentally, and has nothing to do with the monetarist understanding of reserve restrictions, except in a … Read More
Obama’s Ransom Note: Tax “Rich” Or I’ll Drop US Over Cliff
Obama says he will veto any legislation that doesn’t include a tax increase on “the rich.” The media will do all they can to pretend that this means the Republicans are the one’s risking the American people. This deserves a few … Read More
Will the US Be Economically Destroyed by It Own PIIGS?
The election has left a lot of people in shock. Conservatives need to end this time of grief and mourning as soon as possible. The fact is that there was a lot more going on in this last election than … Read More
GOP Brand Should Be Pro-Market, Anti-Wall-Street
Mitt Romney lost hard. There is no love lost between him and me, but I get tired of seeing people kick a man when he’s down, especially when many of them were such flatterers to him before November 6. But … Read More
Disguising the Non-Recovery: Why Obama Might Want the Fiscal Cliff
From what I have followed in the news, Obama isn’t acting like someone who wants to avoid “sequestration”—the automatic cuts and tax hikes that many have dubbed “the fiscal cliff.” Instead he acts like someone who thinks he has a … Read More
The So-Called “Recovery” Looks Fake
The media has continued to pretend that we have passed out of the recession into a “slow recovery.”
But despite the convenient fluke of a better-than-expected jobs report before the election, there never was any real recovery. As it stands … Read More
Are US Prisons A Foretaste Of The New US Economy?
I saw this story yesterday and was horrified. I try to be skeptical of Russia Today, but unless that footage they showed of private prisons corporations advertising their “services” is fake, then this is really bad news for America.
According … Read More
Tax Hikes On Wealthy: GOP Folds On Obama’s Bluff
While the nation is mourning the murdered children the news comes out that John Boehner as speaker of the House has caved to Obama’s demands for a tax hike for the rich. What does this mean?
First, it means the deficit will … Read More
Milk Prices Double? Another Scare Tactic To Induce Panic Spending
The New York Time’s webpage title is, “Milk Prices Could Double As Farm Bill Stalls.” The article itself warns of a gallon of milk costing six to eight dollars.
First, of all, that is not going to happen in any long-term way. … Read More
State/Wall Street Slavery In One Lesson
Follow the steps with me:
One: Push low-interest-rate madness that makes putting money in a bank’s saving account more or less the equivalent of stuffing cash in your mattress and encourages people to turn to higher risk stock market speculation, or, … Read More
Tim Geithner Admits Social Security Is Bankrupt
There was a time when, in order to make one’s money increase, one had to find a private venture to invest in. This was risky, but when the venture succeeded it also created a great deal of wealth for not … Read More
JPMorgan CEO: Banks Too Complex For You To Understand
Since 2007 the United States and the world has been entangled in a deep financial crisis. This crisis was spurred by insanely low interest rates that encouraged misallocated investments. People could make virtually nothing in a savings account, but could … Read More
Ryan: Dems Calling For Spending Increases (And So Is He)
We had a “tea party” in 2010. We are facing a historic worldwide economic depression that is under the pressure of monstrous sovereign debt and much worse unfunded liabilities. And yet we still can’t get Republicans in the White House … Read More
