Money and Banks

Claims that private-money production is too expensive usually ignore the many costs of a government-controlled money system.

Decades ago, the Chinese state began to accumulate gold merely as part of a makeshift backup plan. But it may have ended up with enough gold to make a real move away from fiat currency, which would be a disaster for its Western competitors.

If the Chinese sell us stuff and then "hoard" the money we pay them, that increases the value of the dollars we continue to hold here in the US, while also leaving us with more stuff to sell elsewhere.

The future of Venezuela is grim. International reserves will be depleted, monetary expansion will not pay the deficit, and inflation will continue.

As the foundation of the economy weakens, bank lending weakens also. And then money begins to disappear from the banking system.

97% of consensus economists didn’t see the last recession the quarter before it started. Even worse, 77% didn’t see a recession when it was already happening!

In this 33-minute talk Joseph Salerno discusses the right way to define inflation, and how it impacts both economic prosperity and culture.

Now untethered from everything except the will of central bankers, international exchange rates  are especially prone to manipulation worldwide.

The key factor behind the rate-of-exchange determination is the relative purchasing power of various monies.

In this 18-minute talk, Malavika Nair presents the basics on what money is, its origins, and why it is so central to a modern economy.