This morning over breakfast at the neighborhood bakery, I read a very nice article in the New York Times concerning the "unconventional" views of Kansas City Fed President Thomas Hoenig–views that have made Hoenig my own favorite Fed insider for some years now. Hoenig's beliefs, as summarized…
Central banking and the debate over central planning passed each other like two ships in the night in the early 1900s. Central banking was becoming the standard monetary system that economists recommended. Financial conferences held by the League of Nations in Brussels in 1920 and Genoa in…
Last week's debate has naturally generated some response from defenders of Keynes who have found fault with my and Jamie Whyte's characterization of Keynes's views, or who have simply found fault with our…personalities! Over at Tax Research UK, for instance, Richard Murphy and some of his friends…
The goal of monetary policy is monetary equilibrium. This is true for any monetary arrangement that claims to serve a general interest among the population rather than to simply divert wealth to the ruler and his cronies. Monetary equilibrium is a situation where the supply of money…
What follows is the slightly revised first part of remarks I gave at the Estoril Political Forum, in Estoril, Portugal, on 28 June 2011. Of course the euro is flawed. It is not, after all, a monetary standard evolved by the invisible hand of the marketplace from…