What’s New - August 15, 2008
Articles:
Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy by Murray Rothbard
“American entry into World War I in April 1917 prevented negotiated peace between the warring powers, and drove the Allies forward into a peace of unconditional surrender and dismemberment, a peace which, as we have seen, set the stage for World War II. American entry thus cost countless lives on both sides, chaos and disruption throughout central and eastern Europe at war's end, and the consequent rise of Bolshevism, fascism, and Nazism to power in Europe.
“ . . . American entry into the war [could] not have been financed by the relatively hard-money, gold standard system that existed before 1914. Fortuitously, an institution was established at the end of 1913 that made the loans and war finance possible: the Federal Reserve System. By centralizing reserves, by providing a government-privileged lender of last resort to the banks, the Fed enabled the banking system to inflate money and credit, finance loans to the Allies, and float massive deficits once the U.S. entered the war.”
Going for the Heart by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
August 12,, 2008
“The central bank has failed in its overt mission for nearly 100 years. It has destroyed our money, funded unjust wars, given rise to a ghastly bureaucratic state, and pumped up more credit bubbles than we can count. And yet we are supposed to chalk up all of this to miscues and mistakes along the way, and then believe the head of the Fed when he promises to do better next time. What's more, the Fed has never actually accepted real responsibility for any of its misdeeds.”
The Downturn Is Good News by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
August 15,, 2008
“. . . consumers are starting to cut back. They could be going into less debt. They might be saving more. They are being more careful about long-term plans pending short-term trends.
“These are all preconditions for recovery. It’s only bad news if one adopts the crude theory that economies are sustained by consumer spending. The truth is nearly the opposite. Consumer spending is the final payoff for the less visible foundation of growth, which is real saving and investment – that is, making the choice for the future over the present. What declines in retail spending indicate is a coming to terms with reality.”
Jim Rogers' Ultimate Road Trip by George F. Smith
August 6, 2008
“Both Greenspan and Bernanke stated they will do everything they can to prevent prices from declining in the United States. There will be no deflation. They will buy any asset to drive prices higher. To Rogers, that means sell U.S. dollars. There may very well be a deflation sometime down the road, ‘but before that happens the government will print money until the world runs out of trees.’”
The Great Gold Robbery of 1933 by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
August 13, 2008
“ Every single monetary statute enacted from the ratification of the Constitution until the 1930s understood the congressional power to regulate the ‘value’ of money not in the sense of declaring money to possess some arbitrary value that suits the whims of politicians or central bankers, but in the sense of establishing the relative values of gold and silver coins in terms of the ever-shifting relative values of those metals on the free market. (Needless to say, the market is perfectly capable of doing this on its own.)”
The Real Meaning of Inflation by Ron Paul
Statement before the US House of Representatives Financial Services Committee, Full Committee Hearing on "Implications of a Weaker Dollar for Oil Prices and the U.S. Economy," July 24, 2008
“In Germany in the 1920s, South America in the 1980s, and Zimbabwe today, everyone recognizes that inflation was caused by the government running the printing presses non-stop, with the resulting exponential rise in prices being the necessary result of monetary growth. Yet somehow, both the empirical and theoretical reality of inflation as a rise in money supply is ignored in this country. Inflation is conflated with price inflation, the increase in the overall price level, and is viewed as something both endogenous to the market economy while at the same time influenced by exogenous price shocks.”
Economic Depressions: Their Cause and Cure by Murray Rothbard
First published in 1969
“Since [business cycles] appeared on the scene at about the same time as modern industry, Marx concluded that business cycles were an inherent feature of the capitalist market economy. All the various current schools of economic thought, regardless of their other differences and the different causes that they attribute to the cycle, agree on this vital point: That these business cycles originate somewhere deep within the free-market economy. The market economy is to blame.”
Good for the Blind and the Sighted by Ron Paul
Statement before the Financial Services Committee, Subcommittee on Domestic & International Monetary Policy, Hearing on Examining Issues Related to Tactilely Distinguishable Currency, July 30, 2008
“ If we had a truly free market in currency, private currency producers could produce coins or bills that are tactilely distinguishable, with bills incorporating different sizes, shapes, raised geometric patterns, etc. . . .
“What prevents such a scenario from occurring is the US government's attempts to maintain the monopoly of the dollar. Through a multifaceted legal barrier consisting of legal tender laws, anti-counterfeiting statutes worded to prevent the private issue of notes and coins, and punitive taxes on precious metals that would form the backing of a commodity-backed currency, the government has ensured that alternative currencies, such as the Liberty Dollar, have to face an often insurmountable legal hurdle.”
How Much Money Does an Economy Need? by Hunter Lewis
Reviewed by David Gordon, August 5, 2008
“As Lewis notes, [business] cycles cannot be blamed on the free market. The flaw that makes the cycle possible is fractional-reserve banking, in which a bank is permitted to create credit in excess of the deposits that have been made to it. The bank is required only to maintain a certain ratio between deposits on hand and its credit expansion. A free market need not incorporate fractional-reserve banking; it can, instead, institute the alternative 100% reserve system. Indeed, Murray Rothbard argued that a free market required this latter arrangement.”
Podcasts:
Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle
Jörg Guido Hülsmann
Jörg Guido Hülsmann
Mark Thornton
Burton S. Blumert
Joe Salerno
Lew Rockwell
