Perhaps nothing is so vilified as “capitalism” in the modern world. According to a study by North Dakota State University, only a quarter of college students have a positive view of capitalism.

Since the response to Covid-19, the preeminent economic concern of the American public has been, simply put, price inflation. In an attempt to curry favor with the electorate, Vice President Kamala Harris recently declared support for price controls to combat high prices, which she attributes to supply chain issues and corporate greed.

The Federal Reserve’s FOMC slashed the target federal funds rate at its meeting this month, reducing the target rate by 50 basis points from 5.5 percent to 5.0 percent. This was the largest cut to the target rate since March of 2020 in the midst of the Covid Panic. 

In the last few months, the Federal Reserve has signaled that it is prepared to cut interest rates. Today’s 50bps rate cut, however, exceeded most expectations.

As ZeroHedge has noted, “only 9 of 113 economists surveyed” expected this sort of move, and the Fed’s own dot plot shows a growing appetite for more aggressive action in the near future.

The monetary and banking system plays an incredibly important role in contemporary economies. Knowledge of how this system functions should therefore be spread as widely as possible, yet the education system barely instructs its students about this subject, if indeed it instructs them about it at all. This article aims to contribute to bridging this gap by giving a basic overview of how the system of money creation and banking works today.

Can you understand how it can be that the Federal Reserve, the world’s greatest and by far most important central bank, has now lost the astounding sum of $193 billion?1 If not, you are surely not alone. Since September 2022, the Fed has lost money every month.

On Sunday, for the second time this election cycle, a man was able to get close to Donald Trump with a rifle. The former president was golfing when Secret Service agents spotted a rifle barrel poking out of some bushes just off the course, near a hole Trump would soon play. Agents fired on the suspect, causing him to flee as Trump was rushed off the course. Shortly after, the man was apprehended by police.

The Economics Policy Institute (EPI) has promoted a myth that recent price inflation is a “global phenomenon,” is not caused by domestic economic policies. An EPI study claims “that high [price] inflation in the U.S. has not been driven by any unique American policy—not the American Rescue Plan and other generous fiscal relief during the pandemic recession and recovery nor anything else U.S.-centric”.