Monetary Theory

"The Rothbardians level an objection, saying the free bankers are ignoring an important real-world consideration; then Woolsey assumes away the problem and declares that he has met the Rothbardian objection."

Knowing that the Fed now holds the most toxic of the subprime assets the banking system could create during the roaring 2000s should leave us with some concern.

It doesn't make the country richer when politicians spend money they don't have.

"Contrary to Krugman and other commentators, we suggest that the best economic policy for the Fed and the government is to do nothing as soon as possible."

If banks and other credit institutions are multiplied, and if credit operations are facilitated by public security, good administration of law, etc., less money is needed.

What manner of man was this, then, this grand bureaucrat who scorned the interests of mere individuals and merchants as petty and narrow, who presu

A more realistic view is that a housing boom and bust happened to strike a fragile financial system whose fragility was worsened by ill-conceived government interventions.

A satisfactory explanation of business fluctuations must not be built upon the fact that individual firms make bad investments.

It is true that there is such a thing as the corn-hog cycle and analogous happenings in the production of other farm products. But the recurrence of such cycles is due to the fact that the penalties which the market applies against inefficient and clumsy entrepreneurs do not affect a great part of the farmers. These farmers are not answerable for their actions because they are the pet children of governments and politicians. If it were not so, they would long since have gone bankrupt and their former farms would be operated by more intelligent people.

Instead of addressing the Depression though the proven expedient of private-bank-issued scrip, the Roosevelt administration's plan involved suspension of the gold standard, followed by devaluation and the abrogation of the gold clause, cartelization of the banks of the country, the National Recovery Act, the Wagner Act, the alphabet-soup agencies, Social Security, and the beginning of an ever-expanding government.