Monetary Theory

"The discount of future goods as against present goods is a necessary and eternal category of human action."

As long as the money- supply rate of growth remains a positive figure, there can be no deflation.

To put it differently, morally significant action has to be freely chosen, not mere proper behavior.

It's been spend, spend, spend ever since. And as credit lines increased, so did the size of the ships.

"Whenever the central bank inflated itself into financial trouble, the government stood ready to allow it to suspend specie payments."

If the dictator invests more and thus curtails the means available for current consumption, the people must eat less and hold their tongues.

"The Bank of England has been reduced to the position of a part of the machinery for the manufacturing of political money in any quantity that may be required."

Unless Hugo Chavez's government suddenly ends spending and returns to a free market, the most likely conclusion to current events in Venezuela is a crisis of interventionism, as the bolívar collapses and the government finds it more and more difficult to fund itself.

Recorded at The Mises Circle in Manhattan, on May 22nd, 2010.

it is not possible to create something by printing money and redistributing real wealth. All that such policies produce is a further economic impoverishment.