Fractional reserve banking has existed throughout history, long before the creation of federal government currencies or central banks. When financial custodians recognized that not all depositors would require repayment simultaneously, the practice of providing out deposits in excess of reserves ended up being prevalent. This raises the concern of how a system of full reserves […]
The free banking debate seems to be a perennially reoccurring event with no resolution in sight. On Twitter, George Selgin recently had a series of tweets and threads again criticizing the “Rothbardian” position on free banking. Although partly due to the limitations of the medium, the description of the Rothbardians’ objections to free banking was […]
Understanding Cash Mechanicsby Robert P. MurphyMises Institute, 2021, 210 pp. Robert Murphy intends to provide the “smart layperson a succinct yet comprehensive summary of the theory, history, and practice of cash and banking, with a focus on the United States” (p. 9), and he is successful in doing so, but I do not propose here […]
“The idea of imposing universal peace on the world by force is a barbarian fantasy.” – Garet Garrett After the death of Taft and as the Eisenhower foreign policy began to take on the frozen Dullesian lineaments of permanent mass armament and the threat of “massive nuclear retaliation” throughout the globe, I began to notice […]
By: Gary D. Barnett “Up was down, black was white, good was bad, day was night.” George Costanza– Seinfeld “The Reverse” Comedy is a real reflection of life, and in numerous ways, humor can be utilized to discuss the unexplainable; to expose the ridiculous nature of constant seriousness, and the fallibility of man from the […]
I All of this is an intro to a video interview of Fr. Strickland by Austin Suggs. The whole interview is beneficial, but I will point to the concluding segment, in which Suggs asks Strickland: For somebody living in the West that feels this tension– that the West does have some sense of decline– this […]
When one studies the history of money, one cannot help wondering why people should have put up for so long with governments exercising an exclusive power over 2,000 years that was regularly used to exploit and defraud them. This can be explained only by the myth—that the government prerogative was necessary—becoming so firmly established that […]
In all times of state dominance, the instability of the system generates 2 kinds of reformers: the moderates who want to work within the system but end up defending it, and the radicals who have the clarity to see that the only real option is upheaval. If the latter dominate– and they typically have in […]
The Engineer The ideal of conscious control of social phenomena has made its greatest influence felt in the economic field. The present popularity of “economic planning” is directly traceable to the prevalence of the scientistic ideas we have been discussing. As in this field the scientistic ideals manifest themselves in the particular forms which they […]
By: Gary D. Barnett “In the last analysis, the necessary thing is the life of the person. This alone makes history, here alone do the great transformations happen, and the whole future, the whole history of the world, ultimately springs as a massive summation from this hidden source in people.” ~ Carl Gustav Jung Here […]
