Monetary Theory

Before the Federal Reserve, before the greenback, American writers were already designing a managed national paper currency, and arguing it could be more stable than gold.

Four western states answered the shortage of money by printing their own, and watched it depreciate in their hands.

Modern monetary theory is an idea and an inchoate theory that lacks serious defenders.

Mark Thornton uses Austrian theory to explain where money came from — Menger's bottom-up origin of money — and why gold makes for sound money and smaller government.

Ryan, Tho, and Dr. Jonathan Newman discuss recent economics headlines, including interventions to prop up the yen, a bad jobs report, and troubling signs in bond markets.

Bob returns to the fractional reserve banking debate to clarify a point the critics keep missing: in the Mises-Hayek-Rothbard framework, it's fractional reserve banking itself that sets the boom-bust cycle in motion, not merely central banks.

Mainstream economists tend to think of cash balances as the heart of new savings. Actually, real savings involves much more than that.

Scotland's celebrated free banks were neither free nor superior.

In this episode of Radio Rothbard, Ryan sits down with Mark Thornton to talk through the economic trends fueling today's unrest.

"Their red ink is your black ink." Jonathan Newman on what MMT leaves out; namely, how the government actually makes the payment.