(Today we celebrate the great Walter Grinder's 80th birthday by reposting our tribute to him on his 75th.) Walter E. Grinder turns 75 years old today [80 now!]. He is the former CEO of the Institute for Humane Studies and President Emeritus of the Institute for Civil…
From the beginning, there is one embarrassing and evident fact that Professor White has to cope with: that "free" Scottish banks suspended specie payment when England did, in 1797, and, like England, maintained that suspension until 1821. Free banks are not supposed to be able to, or…
In February 2018 Agustin Carstens, the General Manager of the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, gave a speech at Goethe University in Frankfurt entitled "Money in the digital age: what role for central banks?" The speech quickly became notorious in the cryptocurrency community for its brusque…
[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…
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…