Commodity Money Archives - Page 3 of 15

fed independence, alternative currencies, fed, federal reserve, cato monetary conference

Banking Regulation, Commodity Money, Currency Boards, Digital Money, Economic History, Events, Free Banking, Inflation & Deflation, Money & Politics, News, The Fed & Central Banks

Inside Cato's 37th Annual Monetary Conference: A Shadow Review of Fed Policy

Amanda Griffiths/December 19, 2019January 2, 2020 /1 Comment

From President Trump lobbing invectives against Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell on Twitter to progressives clamoring for the Federal Reserve to use monetary policy to finance social projects, our central bank's independence looks increasingly tenuous. Recently, Chairman Powell called for an internal "strategic review" of how…

Commodity Money, Fiat Money, Inflation & Deflation, News

The Resource Costs of Fiat Money Are Now Higher Than Those of a Gold Standard

Larry White/December 17, 2019January 2, 2020 /9 Comments

Milton Friedman (1951, 1960) provided influential back-of-the-envelope estimates of the costs devoted to extracting gold under what he called a "strict" gold standard. I have criticized those estimates elsewhere (White 1999, pp. 42-48) for exaggerating the volume of gold reserves used by actual gold-standard economies, and thus…

gold standard, commodity prices, inflation, volatility, Stephen Moore, Herman Cain, Jerome Powell, Judy Shelton

Commodity Money, Fiat Money, News, The Fed & Central Banks

On Targeting the Price of Gold

George Selgin/August 29, 2019January 2, 2020 /5 Comments

Thanks to President's Trump's picks for prospective Fed Board nominees, the subject of gold price targeting (or a gold "price rule") is getting attention once again. The idea, which got a lot of attention back in the 1980s, after Arthur Laffer and other supply-siders, including Alan Reynolds,…

Federal Reserve, gold standard, free market, Libra

Commodity Money, Economic History, Economic Thought

Is There Such a Thing as a Free-Market Gold Standard?

George Selgin/July 9, 2019January 2, 2020 /24 Comments

Twice recently I've come across arguments to the effect that, despite what some libertarians, goldbugs, cryptocurrency fans, and Fed Board candidates imagine, the idea that the historical gold standard kept governments from managing money, leaving the job to market forces, is a myth. In his June 24th…

Alan Greenspan, Judy Shelton, Federal Reserve, Gold Standard

Commodity Money, News, The Fed & Central Banks

Fear of a Gold Planet

Larry White/June 4, 2019January 2, 2020 /16 Comments

Proposed nominees Stephen Moore and Herman Cain having dropped out of contention, discussion continues over the Trump administration's possible next nomination to the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors. The views of the latest candidate under consideration by the administration, Judy Shelton, have revived a question that commentators…