Does cheap money and credit make us richer? Does more money and credit create more stuff, or better stuff? Do they make us happier and more productive? Or do these twin forces actually distort the economy, misallocate resources, and degrade us as people? These are the fundamental questions that Jeff addresses.
The Fed is insolvent, and that means that it will bail itself out by printing money. For ordinary people, that means inflation and a rising cost of living.
These days, the Fed and Chairman Jerome Powell are claiming the title of "inflation fighters." The more appropriate moniker should be "inflationists."
Now would be a great time to stop pretending that the financial sector is "free market" or that price inflation and cost-of-living surges are somehow all the fault of "capitalism."
The Federal Reserve is no more "private" than the Environmental Protection Agency, and through its special government status, the Fed inflicts many economic crimes on regular people.
Monetary authorities have come up with numerous clever ways of measuring money. However, they are unable even to define money, much less measure it.
When consumer prices shot up after the massive monetary injections undertaken to counteract the job-killing Covid lockdowns, the political classes called it "price gouging." Indeed, when government inflates, we need all the price gouging we can get.
Ryan and Tho talk to Mark Thornton about what to expect from the next recession and how we got ourselves into the current inflationary mess.
Government and monetary authorities claim that the worst of the postcovid lockdown disruptions are past and a "return to normal" is just around the corner. It will be a very long corner.
Central bankers follow inflation "target" in their pursuit of "price stability." Not surprisingly, they usually miss their targets -- quite badly -- and we now are living one of those moments.
