Monetary Theory
Dealing with Recession
When used with discretion, debt can be a good thing. But many of us individually, and we as a society, can have too much of a good thing.
Tax Rebates: Old Wine in Old Skins
Making consumers and businesses appreciate the real value of assets is the way out. There are no shortcuts, only placebos.
Credit Expansion, Economic Inequality, and Stagnant Wages
Since it's so important, the main point just made needs to be repeated: credit expansion creates an artificial economic inequality by showing up in the stock market and driving up stock prices. Since the stocks are owned mainly by wealthy people, they are the main beneficiaries of the process. The more substantial and the more prolonged the credit expansion is, the larger are the gains enjoyed by wealthy people more than anyone else.
Credit Expansion and Submarginal Investments
The systematic problem arises from the fact that monetary policy sends incorrect signals into capital markets, reducing lenders' ability to distinguish between good and bad loans; it also sends incorrect signals to potential borrowers about what they can and cannot afford.
David Frum on the Gold Standard
Although Frum naturally doesn't say it explicitly, the only "cushion" that unbacked fiat money can provide is that it allows politicians to literally paper over crises, limping along from one to the next.
Ron Paul vs. the Fed et al.
For 94 years, Americans were supposed to be awed and bored by the central bank, and pay no real attention to the greatest counterfeiting machine in
Greenspan Absolves Himself
According to Greenspan, the Fed doesn't have much control over long-term interest rates.
Hoist That Load
Our town council, who loves taxes like my cat loves cream is talking about a sales tax increase: a frequent subject of their deliberations.