Money and Banking

Recorded at Mises University 2005.

John P.

Recorded at Mises University 2003.

Recorded at Mises University 2001.

Profit is total revenue minus total costs. Ours is not just a profit system, it is a profit and loss system. Losses are a sign that you wasted land, labor, or capital, yet those who make profits are criticized.

Before there was the Federal Reserve there was the second Bank of the United States (1817–1836). Since the late nineteenth century, historians and economists have lauded this institution for its salutary control over the currency, its regulation of the state banks, its prudent stewardship of the government’s funds, and its example of a fruitful private/public partnership in the field of central banking.

There is a fly in the ointment of economic recovery: a dollar that just won’t seem to stop its fall. The impression that this trend portends something ominous is bolstered by the inverse relationship of the dollar’s value on international exchange and the price of gold. As the dollar has fallen in the last year, gold has risen.

Though politics may yet trump sound economics on this issue, writes Sean Corrigan, the Europeans know they are being blackmailed by the US into pursuing dangerously loose monetary policy (to add to the loose fiscal policies already being practiced by some of their governments). The biggest global spendthrift—usually the US—always expects his creditors to cut their own pockets so he can settle his bills with the coins falling out of them.

Hal Varian doesn't tell us why the dollar bill in our pocket has value, writes Frank Shostak. To say that the value of money is due to social convention is to say very little. What Varian has told us is that money has value because it is accepted, and why it is accepted? Because it is accepted! Obviously this is not a good explanation of why money has value.

The exchange rate is a measure of the relative value of these two currencies, not the value of the dollar or the euro per se. Perhaps the value of dollar and the euro have risen lately but the euro a bit more. Richard Johnsson believes that both have lost in value since mid-2001, only the euro has lost less than the dollar.