The Fed

Does the Fed play politics? As Gregory Bresiger recalls, it's been a part of the game for a very long time.

Contrary to popular belief, interest rates have nothing to do with money. The attempt to manipulate interest via the money supply can only cause distortions. 

Martin Mayer is one of the few financial journalists to seriously question the claims of the Federal Reserve. Sadly, he does not go far enough. 

Greenspan has lowered rates again, but he can't know if he has done the right thing. Under the far-superior gold standard, such questions never came up. Lawrence Reed explains.

A combination of factors has elevated the Federal Reserve and its chairman to mythical status amongst the corporate and media elite.

Even before the recent rate cuts, Greenspan had opened the monetary spigots, in a duplication of the policy error that led to the artificial boom. William Anderson explains.

He has fallen from grace for failing to inflate. But Greenspan is still wrongly assumed, by everyone but the Austrians, to have god-like powers over the economy. Hans Sennholz explains.

Tax cuts are great, but there is a missing element in Bush's budget: any attempt to cut outlays. New spending must be paid for somehow, someday, writes Frank Shostak.

For a decade, calls for easy money and cheap credit were subdued. But now that hard times are upon us again, guess what? Martin Masse explains.

Pundits often blame tight money for economic downturns. But what about the loose money policies that created the unsustainable boom in the first place? John Cochran explains.