Volume 17, No. 4 (Winter 2014)

KEYWORDS: monetary policy, Mariana, Jefferson, Cervantes, Don Quixote, Austrian School, School of Salamanca, Philip II, Philip III, libertarianism, liberty, slavery, regicide, billon coins, Constitutionalism, Aragon, Euclid, Ron Paul, Paul Krugman

JEL CLASSIFICATION: B1, B2, B3, N1, N4

What will I say about our own maravedí, which was first of gold, then silver, and now is entirely of copper?

People tend to think about big government in terms of taxes and government spending. Big governments are the ones that have high taxes and big expenditure programs. Government regulations are a major component of big government, and the regulatory state often leads to more oppressive and more corrupt government than big spending. Consider, for example, the Scandinavian countries that have a reputation for big government–that is, big spending–but that are less oppressive and less corrupt than governments that spend less, but regulate more.

The European Central Bank (ECB) finally pulled the QE trigger by committing to purchase 60 billion euros of government debt and other assets every month until September of 2016 or until inflation gets closer to 2 percent.

Volume 17, No. 4 (Winter 2014)

Steve Forbes and Elizabeth Ames

New York: McGraw Hill, 2014, xvii + 249 pages

Volume 17, No. 4 (Winter 2014)

KEYWORDS: John Maynard Keynes, marginal efficiency of capital, net present value, interest rates, central banking

Volume 17, No. 4 (Winter 2014)

Eswar S. Prasad
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014, 432 pages

On January 15, 2015 the Swiss National Bank (SNB) announced an end to its three-year-old cap of 1.20 franc per euro. (The SNB introduced the cap in September 2011.) The SNB has also reduced its policy interest rate to minus 0.75 percent from minus 0.25 percent. The Swiss franc appreciated as much as 41 percent to 0.8517 per euro following the announcement, the strongest level on record — it settled during the day at around 0.98 per euro.

ABSTRACT: Considerable research has been conducted on central bank monetary policies. Particular attention has been focused on policies that have the potential to ensure “sound money,” the symptoms of which are full employment and economic stability. Debate has centered on employing rule-based strategies to improve the monetary policies of the Federal Reserve Bank (“the Fed”).