war on cash
The Zero Lower Bound is No Reason to Punish Currency Users
John Maynard Keynes once marveled at "how, starting with a mistake, a remorseless logician can end up in Bedlam." (Bedlam was the nickname of a London madhouse.) Keynesian or New Keynesian macroeconomists who start with the mistaken premise that a central bank cannot fight recession except by lowering…
More Evidence of the High Collateral Damage of a War on Cash
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…
35 Years of Advancing Monetary Education
On November 16th, over 200 people gathered in the Hayek Auditorium here at the Cato Institute in Washington, DC, to explore the future of monetary policy at our 35th Annual Monetary Conference. The all-day affair featured four panels of distinguished speakers — including Stanford economist John B….
Anti-Paper Prophet: Comments on The Curse of Cash
Kenneth S. Rogoff stands out as the advocate of restricting hand-to-hand currency who has argued the case most comprehensively and probably the most cautiously. I critically reviewed his recent book, The Curse of Cash, in the May 2017 issue of Econ Journal Watch. Here I summarize highlights…