“How much better is it to get wisdom than gold! and to get understanding rather to be chosen than silver!” Proverbs 16: 16
The current COVID-19-inspired crisis has yielded a golden opportunity to take a scientific look at underlying social forces. (By scientific, I refer here not to natural science, but to analysis, the objective appraisal from the proverbial 30,000 feet, which is of course scarcely possible for mortal flesh, but at least is an aspiration.) What it…Continue Reading “Hayek versus Hegel in the Age of COVID”
It is Wednesday, April 22nd. I remember another one, in 1970: a bright, warm, sunny day, not unusual for that time of year in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and a special day at Lynnhaven Elementary School. It was different – for one thing, we did not arrive in the usual school bus, but at our own…Continue Reading “Earth Day 1970”
In the system we have now, we do use both a reserve restriction and an asset restriction. But, the modern reserve restriction has changed fundamentally, and has nothing to do with the monetarist understanding of reserve restrictions, except in a purely formal sense. In the day of specie convertibility, reserve restriction had a definite functionality….Continue Reading “Fact and Fiction on Reserve Requirements”
In a comment posted under an article by my friend Jerry Bowyer (Where’s the Hyperinflation?), “ps61penn62prin64” writes that “private currency monetary systems… are doomed to fail the interest of American citizens.” Bowyer’s article discusses the sizeable increase in the money supply generated by the Fed, and how this has — or has not — affected…Continue Reading “Private Issue of Money — the Root of Our Monetary Problem?”
In his excellent book The New Lombard Street, Perry Mehrling writes of “a world that never was … Jimmy Stewart banking of blessed memory” (p. 117). This is an obvious reference to one of Jimmy Stewart’s most famous roles: George Bailey in the holiday classic movie It’s a Wonderful Life. In the movie, Bailey is…Continue Reading “Jimmy Stewart Banking versus James Steuart Banking”