The New York Times opinion page recently ran a series of short pieces on Rethinking How We Teach Economics, making the point that we need to change our economics instruction to be able to account for the financial crisis. There are several articles in the “debate,” but I would like to consider Alan Blinder’s contribution.

If only Dickens had written about a Tiny Tim whose father remained unemployed due to labor-union barriers.

You’d think banks had all the political friends they need. After all, court cases have been going their way since 1811 when Master of the Rolls Sir William Grant ruled in Carr v. Carr that the term “debts” mentioned in a will included a cash balance in a bank deposit account. Grant ruled that since the money had been paid generally into the bank and was not earmarked in a sealed bag, it had become a loan rather than a bailment, thus codifying fractionalized banking.

Edgar the Exploiter is a wonderful animated short by Tomasz Kaye that defends voluntary employer-employee relations and demonstrates the harm that policies like minimum-wage laws inflict on the very people they are supposed to help.

Edgar is a capitalist who hires Simon as an unskilled laborer, until a minimum-wage law impels Edgar to lay Simon off.

Give it a view. It is beautifully done.

In his lecture at George Washington University on March 20, 2012, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke said that under a gold standard the authorities’ ability to address economic conditions is significantly curtailed. The Fed chairman holds that the gold standard prevents the central bank from engaging in policies aimed at stabilizing the economy after sudden shocks. This in turn, holds the Fed chairman, could lead to severe economic upheavals. According to Bernanke,

The highest cost of the Fed policy may be liberty in Europe.

I recently finished reading a book on the South Sea Bubble. I was surprised at how fascinating it was. I have heard of the South Sea Bubble before, but I couldn’t really tell you much about it. I knew that it happened in the early 1700s and there was also something called a Mississippi Bubble. However, I couldn’t make a distinction between the two, until now.

In chapter 1 of his groundbreaking treatise, The Theory of Money and Credit, Ludwig von Mises explains what money is: a universally, or at least commonly, used medium of exchange.1 In