Let’s set the scene.

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The issue of fractional versus 100 percent bank reserves has been much debated. One of major disputes is whether fractional reserve banking (FRB) is inherently fraudulent, or whether the mix of cash and other assets to be held against liabilities is a business decision, to be made by banks and customers?

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Almost any economist who has taught at a Christian college or operates in Christian academic circles has been asked the question, “What about the poor?” Most of the time, people ask the question in the spirit of dismissing any view of economics that favors free markets.

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The deadliest virus is the institutionalized coercion which lies in the very DNA of the state and may even initially permit a government to deny the outbreak of a pandemic. Evidence has been suppressed, and heroic scientists and doctors have been harassed and silenced simply because they were the first to realize and expose the gravity of the problem.

The US personal savings rate jumped to 33 percent in April from 12.7 percent in March and 8 percent in April last year. An increase in savings is regarded by popular economics as less expenditure on consumption. Since consumption expenditure is considered as the main driving force of the economy, obviously a rebound in savings, which implies less consumption, cannot be good for economic activity, so it is held. Saving and wealth—what is the relation?

[Review of Stephanie Kelton, The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People’s Economy (New York: PublicAffairs, 2020).] 

In a sign that the Federal Reserve is growing increasingly desperate to jump-start the economy, the Fed’s Secondary Market Credit Facility has begun purchasing individual corporate bonds. The Secondary Market Credit Facility was created by Congress as part of a coronavirus stimulus bill to purchase as much as $750 billion of corporate credit. Until last week, the Secondary Market Credit Facility had limited its purchases to exchange-traded funds, which are bundled groups of stocks or bonds.

“Liberalism failed” is increasingly a mantra among some American conservatives. By “liberalism” they don’t mean the ideology of what most of the world calls “social democrats.” They mean classical liberalism, or the ideology of lassize-faire.