Money and Banks

Central bankers are panicking, and their solutions range from "buy everything that moves" to pushing interest rates even further into negative territory. Yet this doesn't seem to be helping much.

Every crisis caused by the unbacked paper money system expands the power of the states over economic and social life, and unfortunately, once the state has expanded its power, it is unlikely the trend will be reversed.

Modern monetary theory (MMT) conveniently facilitates dangerous policies and ideas that seemed unrealistic, like universal basic income and “helicopter money,” and that have been particularly propagated by government-sponsored economists for the past few years. 

Lower interest rates won't make an economy grow. What matters is real savings.

Although consensus building surely is an important and noble pursuit, one would think that it wouldn't really fall within the purview of a central bank president. It’s been clear for a long time that allowing politics to influence monetary policy carries significant and numerous risks.

Professor Arkadiusz Sieroń has written an important new book on the Cantillon effect, indicating that the effect of new money on the economy depends on where it is injected.

It is not money that funds economic activity, but the saved pool of consumer goods. The existence of money only facilitates the flow of savings. Any attempt to replace savings with money ends in economic disaster.

In order to remove the threat of secular stagnation what is required is to shrink government outlays and to close all the loopholes for the creation of money out of thin air.

Judy Shelton may be a tolerable—at least to Republicans—candidate for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.

Monetary affairs have always been subject to government intervention of one kind or another, but there is no reason money could not be produced and regulated in a free marketplace.