The Fed

Presented by Douglas E. French at “Recovery or Stagnation?,” the Mises Circle in San Francisco; sponsored by Mark L.

Bernanke has overseen the most expansionist monetary regime in American history.

In order to keep up the appearances of prosperity, government spending must be constantly increased, with an ever-increasing share of total production going to the nonproductive.

In the period from 1913 to 2007, the Fed — implementing its mission to "stabilize the price level" — destroyed over 97 percent of the purchasing power of the dollar. (For comparison's sake, note that the value of the dollar had increased slightly during the 100 years before the Fed was created.)

Central bank's and government's loose monetary and fiscal policies are instrumental in the weakening of the process of real savings formation through the diversion of real savings from wealth generators to non-wealth-generating activities.

"The key thing is that the price of producer goods has to fall faster and farther than consumer goods for the correction process to proceed."

Wall Street — especially since this financial crisis began — has been anything but a bastion of laissez-faire capitalism.

The Fed has essentially created the biggest shipment of currency ever, but the crippled banking system hasn't yet delivered it to our prison camp. When it arrives, it might be handy to have some spare smokes around to trade with.

At no point in his speech did Mr. Dudley raise the possibility that the main source of asset bubbles could be the US central bank itself.