The US Banking System as an Arm of US Foreign Policy
The Russian government is readying a new issuance of foreign bonds and has invited non-Russian banks to participate in the bond auction.
Chapter 29: The Progressive Movement
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.
Chapter 30: Unhappiness with the National Banking System
The previous big push for statism in America had occurred during the Civil War, when the virtual one-party Congress after secession of the South emboldened the Republicans to enact their cherished statist program under cover of the war. The alliance of big business and big government with the Republican Party drove through an income tax, heavy excise taxes on such sinful products as tobacco and alcohol, high protective tariffs, and huge land grants and other subsidies to transcontinental railroads.
Section VII: Political Philosophy and the Libertarian Movement
Chapter 31: Property and Exchange
The Nonaggression Axiom
The libertarian creed rests upon one central axiom: that no man or group of men may aggress against the person or property of anyone else. This may be called the “nonaggression axiom.” “Aggression” is defined as the initiation of the use or threat of physical violence against the person or property of anyone else. Aggression is therefore synonymous with invasion.
Section VI: Economic History
Chapter 28: Economic Determinism, Ideology, and the American Revolution
It is part of the inescapable condition of the historian that he must make estimates and judgments about human motivation even though he cannot ground his judgments in absolute and apodictic certainty. If, for example, we find that Nelson Rockefeller made a secret gift of $650,000 to Dr. William J.
Negative Interest Rates (and Fear) Mean We’ll Save More, not Less
The last hurrah of central banks is the negative interest rate policy — NIRP. The basic idea of NIRP is to punish savers so severely that households and businesses will be compelled to go blow whatever money they have on something — what the money is squandered on is of no importance to central banks.
All that matters is that people and enterprises are forced to spend whatever cash they have rather than “hoard” it, i.e., preserve and conserve their capital.
Will Donald Trump Reform the Fed?
CNN asks today: “What would a president Trump mean for the Fed?”
The article notes Trump’s statement on February 22 that it’s “so important to audit the Federal Reserve.” This is not the first time Trump has suggested he favors such an audit.
