[I'm pleased to introduce with this entry a new Alt-M series, consisting of occasional classic essays or excerpts from longer works concerning alternative monetary arrangements. As a fitting introduction to the series I've chosen the passages on currency from chapter 29 of Herbert Spencer's earliest and most…
Historian Harold James of Princeton University, known for his scholarly writings on the gold exchange standard and on the euro, has turned his attention to Bitcoin in a recent Project Syndicate commentary on “The Bitcoin Threat.” His commentary labors under a surprising number of misconceptions about Bitcoin…
The leading arguments for banning large-denomination currency notes are those made in a much-cited working paper by Peter Sands and at book length by Kenneth Rogoff. They have been rebutted persuasively by Pierre Lemieux and Jeffrey Hummel in their respective reviews of Rogoff’s book. I have previously…
Many commentators have compared Bitcoin to gold as an investment asset. “Can Bitcoin Be Gold 2.0?,” asks a portfolio analyst. “Bitcoin is increasingly set to replace gold as a hedge against uncertainty,” suggests a Cointelegraph reporter. Economists, by contrast, are more interested in considering how a monetary…
Fed economists defending interest on reserves have recently called on an unexpected quarter by reviving interest in Milton Friedman’s 1969 essay, “The Optimum Quantity of Money.”[1] As Ben Bernanke and Don Kohn put it, “Before the Fed paid interest on reserves, banks engaged in wasteful and inefficient…