Money and Banks

We can understand the reaction today to people calling to "end the Fed."

Presented by Douglas E. French at “The Failure of the Keynesian State,” the Mises Circle in Houston, sponsored by Jeremy S. Davis.

The Federal Reserve was created in 1913 by Morgan men to cartelize the banking system and limit competition. This is fractional reserve banking rather than 100% reserves. Rothbard thinks it is fraud. It increases the money supply in an inflationary manner by creating money out of thin air.

The Sherman Act outlawed restraint of trade. The Clayton Act added to that. Anti-Trust hysteria came in the 1940-50s. Whatever you did would be considered monopolistic. The charges didn't come from consumers, they came from whining competitors.

Colonial governments tried to manipulate the Spanish peso when they couldn't control the commodity monies. They increased the supply of pesos (inflation) and encouraged exports. Prices increased until the process was banned.

The World Economic Conference of 1933 met to deal with America's Great Depression, but, without consulting anyone, FDR declared that the U.S. would not agree to the proposal because he wanted to take the U.S. off the gold standard in order to inflate the dollar.  The gold-supporting British and French were horrified; Nazi Germany was delighted.

The chief objective of present-day government interference is to intensify further credit expansion. This policy is doomed to failure. Sooner or later it must result in a catastrophe.

Those Americans who twice succeeded in doing away with a central bank were aware of the dangers; but they failed to see that the evils they fought

Carl Menger, from his classic treatise, on the origins of the means of payment.

This audio Mises Daily is narrated by Floy Lilley.

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?