There’s No #metoo When Economies Collapse — You Do What You Have to Do
The New York Times reminded us that two things which go together are a currency crisis and prostitution.
Does China Have Enough Gold to Move Toward Hard Currency?
Are the Chinese Keynesian?
We can be reasonably certain that Chinese government officials approaching middle age have been heavily westernised through their education. Nowhere is this likely to matter more than in the fields of finance and economics. In these disciplines there is perhaps a division between them and the old guard, exemplified and fronted by President Xi. The grey-beards who guide the National Peoples Congress are aging, and the brightest and best of their successors understand economic analysis differently, having been tutored in Western universities.
Not Worth a Continental
[Previously unpublished online; Faith and Freedom 1, no. 3 (February 1950).]
The Edict of Diocletian: A Case Study in Price Controls and Inflation
[Previously unpublished online; Faith and Freedom 1, no. 4 (March 1950).]
Citizens of the old Roman Empire distrusted paper currency and refused to accept anything but gold or silver coin as money. So the rulers found themselves barred from inflating the money supply by the unobtrusive method of printing additional currency.
A Trump-Pelosi Budget Deal is a Recipe for the Worst Kind of Tax Increase
The most disturbing outcome of the recent mid-term election isn’t that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will be a Member of Congress. I actually look forward to that because of the humor value.
The Root of Old Hickory
[Previously unpublished online; Faith and Freedom 2, no. 9 (May 1951).]
President Trump’s Iran Policy – Is It ‘Normal’?
It’s not often that US Government officials are honest when they talk about our foreign policy. The unprovoked 2003 attack on Iraq was called a “liberation.” The 2011 US-led destruction of Libya was a “humanitarian intervention.” And so on.
Jefferson’s Philosophy
[Previously unpublished online; Faith and Freedom 2, no. 7 (March 1951).]
Coffee Sellers Are Not Fundamentally Different from Banks
With the 2007-8 financial crisis came a splendid alphabetical soup of central bank interventions to stimulate financial markets, lower interest rates, provide astonishing amounts of liquidity to banks and, allegedly, prevent another Great Depression. Likening the failure of big banks to falling elephants crushing even the smallest grass, former Fed Chairman Bernanke argued that consequences from bank failures would have caused much more havoc to the economy than the liquidity provision and bailouts his Fed oversaw.
