Does a Liquidity Trap Pose a Threat?
Contrary to popular thinking, the threat posed to the major economies is not the liquidity trap, but the government and central bank stimulus policies aimed at countering it.
Contrary to popular thinking, the threat posed to the major economies is not the liquidity trap, but the government and central bank stimulus policies aimed at countering it.
The Fed's present monetary policy appears to be ineffective. Despite massive pumping by the US central bank, commercial bank lending displays sharp declines.
Printing green pieces of paper doesn't make an economy richer. If done without restraint, it leads to runaway price inflation. As an added downside, it also allows governments to slaughter millions of people. (The world wars could not have been waged if the belligerents had stuck to the gold standard.)
Don't be among those who believe that the government has discovered the secret of prosperity in the offices of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.
Rothbard and a handful of Misesian economists were virtually alone in maintaining that Hoover's interventionist policies were mainly responsible for what we now know as the "Great Depression."
Clearly, one of the top priorities of every libertarian should be ending the legal tender laws.
The possibility of an insolvent central bank, however, bypasses the question of whether the central bank should be abolished and concludes that it will, in certain instances, abolish itself as insolvency renders it helpless.
Nicholas Biddle was the president of the American central bank that preceded the Fed.