Paul Marks, a frequent poster of comments, claims that the concept of a gold standard is misleading because “either gold is the money or it is not.” Sorry, the epigones of Murray Rothbard need to learn a lot more monetary history here. There are many kinds of…
Today the United States switched from daylight savings time to standard time. Europe has already done so, as Lars Christensen noted in a recent post. Lars used the occasion, as I will, to bring up Milton Friedman's analogy between daylight savings time and floating exchange rates in…
Lars Christensen’s blog The Market Monetarist, which I make sure to read regularly, used the recent centenary of Milton Friedman’s birth to discuss Friedman’s views on exchange rates. The standard view of Friedman was that he was an advocate of flexible exchange rates, pure and simple. I…
Here is my review of a book that was written half a century ago but is little known to English speakers: A Monetary History of China. China had periods of free banking at various times and places from 995 A.D. to 1941. Free banking in China has…
Alan Blinder in the Wall St. Journal today urges his readers to "remember the two fundamental determinants of exchange rates: (1) productivity in different countries—so, other things equal, faster productivity growth should lead to a rising exchange rate; and (2) prices and wages in different countries—so lower…