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Ideas for an Alternative Monetary Future

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Ideas for an Alternative Monetary Future

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Month: March 2016

Adam Smith, barter, Carl Menger, David Graeber, history of money
Economic History, Economic Thought

The Myth of the Myth of Barter

George Selgin/March 15, 2016January 9, 2017 /62 Comments

So far as some people are concerned, when it comes to bashing economists, any old stick will do. That, at least, seems to be true of those anthropologists and fellow-travelers who imagine that, in demonstrating that certain forms of credit must be older than either monetary exchange…

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fiscal policy, homeownership, mortgage finance, U.S. Treasury
Financial Markets, Money & Politics, News

Stop Encouraging Homeownership

Ike Brannon/March 10, 2016March 9, 2016 /5 Comments

Last month, the Treasury Department announced new steps to boost the market for private mortgage bonds, not backed by the government or any federal entity, in order to increase homeownership and improve access to credit for working-class Americans who might be having trouble borrowing money to buy a house….

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antebellum banking economic modeling, optimum quantity of money, Private money
Economic History, Free Banking

Private Money, Theoretically

George Selgin/March 7, 2016March 10, 2016 /7 Comments

Henry James, T.S. Elliot famously remarked, "Had a mind so fine that no idea could violate it."  Similarly, more than a few economics papers involve formal models so fine that no facts can violate them. Two recent examples purport to demonstrate the instability and inefficiency of "private…

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Cato Events, financial crisis, Great Recession, Market Monetarism, Quantitative Easing
Events, Money & Politics, The Fed & Central Banks

Debating QE: Revising the History of the Crisis

Ari Blask/March 5, 2016March 4, 2016 /1 Comment

A large crowd gathered late afternoon Tuesday at Cato for Quantitative Easing: A Requiem.  Daniel Thornton, former Vice President of the St. Louis Federal Reserve, Scott Sumner, Chair of Monetary Policy at the Mercatus Center, and Joseph Gagnon, Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics gave…

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bankruptcy law, government debt, Puerto Rico, secured bondholders, U.S. Treasury
Financial Markets, News, Recommended Reading

The Administration’s Puerto Rico Jujitsu Threatens the States’ Ability to Borrow

Ike Brannon/March 3, 2016March 3, 2016 /4 Comments

The New York Times reported last week on some of the details of the Obama Administration’s recovery plan for Puerto Rico, and it does not bode well for investors — or for states and municipalities that borrow money. The island’s government is $72 billion in debt, with…

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Recent Posts

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About Us

Welcome to Alt-M, a community devoted to exploring and promoting ideas for an alternative monetary future. Our goal is to reveal the shortcomings of today’s centralized, bureaucratic, and discretionary monetary arrangements, and to bring serious consideration of real alternatives to the center stage of current monetary and financial reform debates.

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