Many Americans have received more telemarketing and scam calls than usual over the past few months, and they are wondering what their number is doing on the National Do Not Call Registry, maintained by the FTC.

Some of the calls are clearly only meant for the most gullible, like those from some generic “card services” who somehow represent Visa, Mastercard, and all of the major banks and want to increase credit limits.

Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 19, no. 2 (Summer 2016)

In Finance Behind the Veil of Money, Eduard Braun (2014, pp.

Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 19, no. 2 (Summer 2016)

“The problem with economic historians,” Murray Rothbard once quipped, “is that half of them are historians who don’t know any economics and the other half are economists who don’t know any history” (Rothbard, 1986, 0:01:05). After reading America’s Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve by Roger Lowenstein, I was reminded of Rothbard’s remark, which is as prescient as ever.

On January 20, 2016, People’s Bank of China (PBoC) released an announcement on its website about its digital currency conference.