Money and Banks

Barron's is writing about skyscrapers and the Skyscraper Curse. They also quote me on the subject.

Following the discovery of the Americas, Spain began a 300-year period of booms, busts, war, and mercantilism. Only in the eighteenth century did the country begin to find prosperity through liberalization of trade and private property.

More credit expansion to keep the current easy-money induced boom going is only delaying the inevitable.

Jeff Deist and Joe Salerno discuss monetary policy and gold on the heels of yet another GOP presidential primary debate.

You may have heard about the Swiss referendum to end fractional reserve lending by Swiss commercial banks. It's a fascinating development, and another example of how average Swiss people can use the federal referendum process to force both the central legislature and the 26 cantons to consider citizen proposals—merely by gathering 100,000 signatures within 18 months.

Populism was in the air this week as ranchers in the Western US opposed the spread of federally-owned lands, and reformers in Switzerland look to a referendum on fractional reserve banking.

Jeff Deist and Claudio Grass a fascinating development for Austrians and libertarians.

Many people know that the Venezuelan economy is subject to byzantine price controls and other regulations. But on top of it all is a highly complex, bureaucratic, and damaging system of government-controlled monetary exchange rates.

Like the Greenspan Fed before it, the Yellen Fed has doubled down on easy money, but will trigger a crisis once it tries to inch toward more normal interest rates.