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The British Austrian economist W.H. Hutt was a great critic of Keynes’s economic theories. However, his speculations on why the New Economics revolution happened are even more fascinating. Hutt shows it to be a fundamentally dishonest undertaking. Keynes held a long-standing belief in inflation and public spending. His General Theory was the culmination of his search for an intellectual foundation on which to support his belief.

They call it “easy money.”  We live in a world where the flick of a switch or click of a mouse can create billions to trillions of dollars which are then loaned out to certain members of our society. That said, paying back that money is not as easy…

In the case of the Fed’s $7.9 trillion balance sheet, when will this get repaid? Where will that money come from?

From the Late Middle Ages to the nineteenth century, Europe transitioned from being one of the most backward regions in the world and became the world’s economic powerhouse. How did this happen? One reason, as shown by Ralph Raico, is Europe’s unusual political decentralization.

It’s been said by democracy’s critics that the system is essentially two wolves and a sheep deciding what’s for dinner. But to its defenders, democracy has been described as an ethical ideal and a way of life—these conceptions nearly implying a metaphysical manifestation. While we have no way of knowing whether or not we’re living up to democracy as an ethical ideal, we do have evidence of its effectiveness as an electoral system, or lack thereof. If the goal is to secure good governance, then democracy generally fails.

While the recent clamp-down on power from public universities has mainly been in the realm of speech and expression, like almost every other government institution, they have used covid-19 as an opportunity to control students further. Much to my dismay, this week I learned that my alma mater, Indiana University, has instituted a “COVID-19 Vaccine Requirement,” their website stating:

[This article is part of the Understanding Money Mechanics series, by Robert P. Murphy. The series will be published as a book in 2021.]

In chapter 7 we summarized some of the major changes in how central banks have operated since the 2008 financial crisis. In the present chapter, we detail some of the even more recent changes in Federal Reserve operations since the onset of the coronavirus panic in March 2020.