Financial Markets

When pietists shift to the Republican party, they form the progressive movement of 1900-1920. Rockefeller- McKinley forms alliances with power brokers like Kuhn, Loeb & Co., and Harriman (versus the Morgans).

When interest rates drop, entrepreneurs have no reliable way to tell whether, and to what extent, the drop is caused by (A) true increases in the ongoing flow of investable resources or by (B) what amounts to a temporary series of one-time transfers of wealth into the loan market. With such Fed-imposed blindness to the true data of the market, businesses across the whole economy are bound to make malinvestments.

Thus, Mankiw's solution for dealing with unprecedented excess reserves is for the Fed to create even more reserves in order to pay bankers not to make new loans. Does that sound like a good long-term plan for the economy?

We suggest that the threat of future crises will disappear once the Fed stops tampering with interest rates and the money supply. Furthermore we suggest that the act of money creation out of thin air is going to disappear once the present paper standard is replaced with a gold standard. If we allow a market-chosen money to fulfill the role of the medium of exchange, the issue of inflation will also disappear.

There are no natural laws governing the behavior of complex systems.

Washington should be lowering taxes and the costs of hiring employees, especially in industries that produce capital and wealth.

When a merchant borrows 20,000 francs to purchase a house, it is not the 20,000 francs which he owes, but the house. Money only appears for the sake of facilitating the arrangements between the parties."

"So it is quite likely that in a free-market economy the threat of bankruptcy will bring to a minimum the practice of fractional-reserve banking."

Finally, the freedom of wage rates and prices to fall must be established through the repeal of pro-union and minimum-wage legislation, and more fundamentally, the education of the public concerning the errors of the Marxian exploitation theory and their replacement with actual knowledge of what determines wages and the general standard of living.

Recorded at the Mises Circle in Newport Beach, California, on November 14th, 2009. Sponsored by Louis E. Carabini.