Money and Banks

By creating money out of thin air, central banks repeatedly create bubble industries that must inevitably be liquidated.

The Fed is prepared to squeeze out what little is left of the free market forces in the debt market. The Fed wants full control so it can do "whatever it takes" to keep interest rates from rising above its very-low targets.

The printing press doesn’t create real resources, it only obscures the method by which the government siphons them away from the private sector.

The Chinese debt is overwhelming not simply because of the volume, but because the figure has quadrupled in seven years.

While government spending re-allocates and distorts resources, it is not necessarily inflationary. Inflation really just stems from money creation and fractional-reserve lending carryied out by central banks and private banks — thus creating money "out of thin air."

Since we don't know the future, all investment is a type of speculation, and this doesn't mean banks are behaving nefariously when investing other people's money.

Keynesian economics is the economics of debt-addicted, lower-class spendthrifts: modern governments.

As flaws in the system of fractional-reserve free banking began to appear, private central bank-like institutions known as clearinghouses sprang up, and they helped pave the way for the Fed.

Like taxation, government spending diverts resources from real wealth-generating ventures. Borrowed funds for continued spending must also be repaid, so current spending translates to future taxation.

Among the fallacies Mises debunked in his first book were those of the chartalists - the predecessors of Modern Monetary Theory.