One day in 1953, an employee of the United States Bureau of Engraving and Printing with a distinguished ten-year employment record and a wife and two young sons, decided to become a thief. And working at the Bureau for the government showed him how he could do it.
When we talk about demand for money, what we really mean is the demand for money's purchasing power. After all, people don't want a greater amount of money in their pockets; they want greater purchasing power in their possession.
It would be the supreme irony if, in Greenspan's eager rush to bail out his constituents at the first whiff of every trouble from Y2k to WTC, all he and his myrmidons on the lower slopes of Olympus have accomplished is to topple the very banks they are there to protect.
Had the United States pursued a policy of economic freedom with respect to energy production over the last thirty years, the conditions for OPEC’s success as a cartel would never have been present in the first place.
One of many pastimes of government bureaucrats is forcing foreign banks to cough up tax information on US citizens. This is a disaster for the cause of privacy, the right of contract, and freedom itself. If the campaign, which has been going on for years, finally succeeds, it will mean the end of bank privacy for Americans. It will also devastate foreign economies that see a comparative advantage in offering secure banking to people from around the world.
Are today's CEOs greedy executives who thrive on corporate profits when times are good and when times are bad?
Does the Fed play politics? As Gregory Bresiger recalls, it's been a part of the game for a very long time.
One thing that has achieved Holy Writ with economists and politicians is the Consumer Price Index, or the CPI. Each month, people from Alan Greenspan to traders at the New York Stock Exchange to the economist in the Economics 101 prison await the latest announcement from the US Department of Labor that tells us the change in "consumer prices" from the previous month.
The Hirohito gold coin was fixed at a very high legal-tender value in terms of yen. Then the price of gold fell.
