As all dedicated Alt-M readers know, I am a big fan of the Canadian banking and monetary system that flourished between Canada's Confederation in 1867 and the outbreak of the First World War. Besides thinking it was a darn good system, I also regard it as the…
(Originally appeared December 7, 2014) (*And we always have been.) *** Yesterday, while giving Cato's interns an impromptu talk about my work, I found myself saying something that seems worth putting in writing. This was that the difference between me and Larry White and Kevin Dowd, among…
Among last week's news items that had colleagues asking me, "What's your answer to this?," was a piece by Quartz's John Detrixhe, telling its readers that, according to "300 years of financial history," rolling back bank regulations is a good way to trigger a financial meltdown. Though…
Some years ago I published a paper on the banking theory and policy views of the important twentieth-century economist Friedrich A. Hayek, entitled “Why Didn't Hayek Favor Laissez Faire in Banking?”[1] Very recently, working on a new paper on Hayek’s changing views of the gold standard, I…
This primer is supposed to introduce readers to the workings of the present U.S. monetary system. So it's only natural that it should take established monetary arrangements for granted, including an official, "fiat" dollar currency managed by the Federal Reserve System. And while I haven't hesitated to…