John Carney, senior editor at CNBC.com, writes, “One stark difference between Austrian Economics and Modern Monetary Theory has to do with their ideas about the origins of money.”

Carney summarizes the two positions, citing The Theory of Money and Credit for the Austrian view. He then says,

J.R.R. Tolkien was born 120 years ago today, January 3, 1892.

Libertarians love his fiction, but was he one of us?

In his own words:

“My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs).” – J.R.R. Tolkein

And in others’:

I always enjoy reading articles that talk about something that is doomed. Not because I have a negative view of the world, but because I always love to see why – the reasons behind the doom.

On March 1, 1933, Friedrich A. von Hayek delivered an inaugural lecture at the London School of Economics. The lecture was published two months later in Economica under the title “The Trend of Economic Thinking.” In the paper, Hayek despairs over the direction of current “public opinion,” which favored increasing state intervention in the economy.

What’s Behind the Euro Crisis and How Will It End?

by Antony P. Mueller12/30/2011

The true nature of the current crisis is not that of a currency, be it the euro or the dollar, but a financial system based on fractional reserve banking, which, in combination with the modern warfare-welfare state drives towards an…

Philipp Bagus’s Tragedy of the Euro

hat tip: WB

With the turning of a new year, many make resolutions intended to improve their lives. Most of them involve rectifying perceived errors, mistakes and failings in people’s personal lives. But making resolutions to overcome mistakes in our understanding of society, and the policies they lead to, could also be very productive.