The Federal Reserve Bank, also known as “The Fed,” was created in 1913 to regulate the banks and to ensure a stable dollar.
The Fed has strayed from its initial charter and is now the primary enabler of federal deficit spending and debt, which is now almost $20 trillion. The Fed’s primary tool is low interest rates, which distort financial decisions and expand the money supply, which leads to risky economic choices.
Below is the outline for this week’s events and speeches of importance relating to the Fed and its members.
Monday, April 17
Tuesday, April 18
A new program just passed by New York’s state government promises “free tuition” for middle-class students to attend a public college or university in the state. While there are similar programs elsewhere in the US, this is the first to include four-year schools.
Spring is in the air signaling the start of homebuying season. But here in Las Vegas, buyers “are aplenty,” 1st Realty Group owner Thomas Blanchard tells the Las Vegas Review Journal, but “we just don’t have the properties to sell them.”
Audit the Fed recently took a step closer to becoming law, when it was favorably reported by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. This means the House could vote on the bill at any time. The bill passed by voice vote without any objections, although Fed defenders did launch hysterical attacks on the bill during the debate as well as at a hearing on the bill the previous week.
In 1966, Milton Friedman wrote an op-ed for Newsweek entitled “Minimum Wage Rates.” In it, he argued “that the minimum-wage law is the most anti-Negro law on our statute books.” He was, of course, referring to the then-present era, after the far more explicitly racist laws from the slavery and segregation eras of United States history had already been done away with.
Tatsuya Iwakura — translator of many works by Mises and Rothbard into Japanese — has completed two new translations now available on Amazon:
Other translations by Mr. Iwakura include:
