In an interview on Bloomberg TV Monday, David Stockman explained the Trump phenomenon as a “repudiation” of the failed economic policy that presently dominates Washington.
In the course of the interview, however, one of the Bloomberg commentators returned to well-worn bullet points and claimed “we’ve created, like, millions of jobs” since the last recession.
In this article, Claudio Grass, Managing Director at Global Gold Switzerland, talks to economist and Mises Institute Senior Fellow Thomas DiLorenzo. This exclusive interview covers central bank monetary policies, Keynesian economics, the economic“recovery,“ political correctness, and much more.
[Excerpt from The Origins of the Federal Reserve, reprinted in The Rothbard Reader]
The Federal Reserve Act of December 23, 1913, was part and parcel of the wave of Progressive legislation, on local, state, and federal levels of government, that began about 1900. Progressivism was a bipartisan movement which, in the course of the first two decades of the twentieth century, transformed the American economy and society from one of roughly laissez-faire to one of centralized statism.
This weekend, Americans move forward their clocks for daylight saving time, one of the more absurd (outdated) examples of insane government control. Notes James Alexander Webb, the government mandated spring forward is simply another example of “disrespect for the principle of simply leaving people alone.” Unfortunately the principle of lassiez-faire is one too often ignored in today’s world.
Concluding Remarks
The present unsatisfactory state of monetary affairs is an outcome of the social ideology to which our contemporaries are committed and of the economic policies which this ideology begets. People lament over inflation, but they enthusiastically support policies that could not go on without inflation. While they grumble about the inevitable consequences of inflation, they stubbornly oppose any attempt to stop or to restrict deficit spending.
1. Catallactic and Acatallactic Doctrine
The phenomenon of money occupies so prominent a position among the other phenomena of economic life, that it has been speculated upon even by persons who have devoted no further attention to the problems of economic theory, and even at a time when thorough investigation into the processes of exchange was still unknown. The results of such speculations were various.
2. The “State” Theory of Money
The common characteristic of all acatallactic monetary doctrines is a negative one; they cannot be fitted into any theory of catallactics. This does not mean that they involve a complete absence of views as to the value of money. Without any such views, they would not be monetary doctrines at all. But their theories of the value of money are constructed subconsciously; they are not made explicit; they are not completely thought out. For if they were consistently thought out to their logical conclusions, it would become obvious that they were self-contradictory.
3. Schumpeter’s Theory
To call money a claim is to suggest an analogy to which there is no real objection. Althmough this comparison, like all others, falls short at certain points, it may nevertheless make it easier for many to form a conception of the nature of money. Admittedly analogies are not explanations, and it would be a gross exaggeration to speak of a claim theory of money, for mere construction of an analogy does not take us even halfway to any sort of monetary theory that can be expressed in intelligible arguments.
4. “Metallism”
It is no longer necessary to continue to argue against the nominalistic theory of money. For theoretical economics it has long been finished with. Nevertheless, the nominalist controversy has propagated errors in the history of doctrine that need to be weeded out.
5. The Concept of “Metallism” in Wieser and Philippovich
Knapp’s mistakes in the history of theory have unfortunately already been accepted by other writers. This started with the attempt to expound Knapp’s theory in the most kindly manner possible, that is, to judge its weaknesses gently and if possible to credit it with some sort of usefulness. But this was not possible without reading into the state theory things that simply cannot be found in it, things in fact which definitely contradict both its spirit and its letter, or without taking over Knapp’s mistakes in the history of theory.
