According to Keynesian “economics,” central bank interest rate cuts will make the economy stronger—unless the economy is in a “liquidity trap.” The truth is that these kinds of monetary tricks actually weaken the economy.
American history classes typically teach that the original transcontinental railroad was a major triumph. What they don‘t say is that it was a product of corporate welfare that created economic problems later on.
Belief in the fairy tale known as Modern Monetary Theory not only is endemic in US academic and government circles, but is also making headway in Great Britain. We are being forced to learn all over again the lessons of inflation.
It seems that the EU leaders have decided on a new military spending spree. To pay for this, the EU will issue new war debt on top of its current high debt loads.
More than a century ago, Congress created the Federal Reserve System to intervene in the American economy. Not even the biggest critics of the central bank‘s formation could have predicted the economic disasters it brought about.
Ryan is joined by Economist and Mises Institute Fellow Kristoffer Hansen to discuss what would have happened if Argentina President Javier Milei had immediately shut down the country's central bank. The same holds for every other central bank, as well.
Mainstream economics tells us that we need a growing money supply to keep an economy growing. But what if a growing money supply diminishes economic growth? The Austrians have something to tell us about money growth.
Ryan McMaken and economist Per Bylund discuss the nature of money in our paper-money world. Are Bitcoin and gold money? If not, how do they become money?
Hans Hoppe recently criticized Argentina‘s President Javier Milei for not closing the country‘s inflationary central bank. In response, Milei claimed that doing so would result in hyperinflation. Given the central bank prints lots of pesos, shutting it obviously would decrease inflation.
One of the fallacies pushed by monetary economists is that a growing economy needs a growing supply of money in order to prevent deflation, which they claim is as harmful as inflation. However, as Austrians point out, there is no “optimum” amount of money in the economy, since prices adjust.
