December 23, 2013 – 8:16 am
I was going to hold off blogging until the New Year, but irritation drove me to posting … In a recent article, Alan Kohler had this to say: The real war is between monetary policy and the Digital Revolution – between the world of finance trying to reduce the value of money and therefore debt, […]
By Lorenzo
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Posted in Blogging, Economics, History
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Also tagged Alan Kohler, Bank of France, Compromise of 1877, Etienne Gilson, Euro, Eurozone, F. A. Hayek, gold standard, inflation targeting, John Maynard Keynes, Keynesian school, productivity, productivity price norm, Second Reich
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November 27, 2013 – 12:15 pm
Understanding the equation of exchange can help see what a massive evasion of institutional responsibility lies behind the Great Recession and the Eurozone crisis. Economist Irving Fisher developed the original algebraic formulation of the equation of exchange, in his The Purchasing Power of Money (1911): MV = PT Money x Velocity = Prices x Transactions. Fisher’s use of […]
By Lorenzo
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Posted in Economics, History
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Also tagged aggregate demand, aggregate supply, Balance sheet recession, BoJ, bubble economy, Cambridge equation, central banks, Debt-deflation, ECB, equation of exchange, Euro, Eurozone, Eurozone crisis, export price norm, FDR, fiscal multiplier, fiscal policy, gold standard, Great Recession, Greece, Howard Government, inflation targeting, Irving Fisher, japan, Lars Svensson, liquidity trap, M.S.Eccles, milton friedman, national accounts, PIIGS, quantity theory of money, RBA, Richard Koo, Sumner critique, supply shock, US Federal Reserve
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Ben Bernanke is not a Tea Party sort of person. An academic appointed as Chair of the US Federal Reserve (“the Fed”) by a Republican President (Bush II) and re-appointed by a Democrat President (Obama) who helped organise the bailout of Wall St in response to the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), he is the epitome of […]
By Lorenzo
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Posted in Academia, Economics, History, Politics, Popular culture, Public Policy, The Right
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Also tagged Bank of England, Bank of France, barack obama, Ben Bernanke, Benjamin Strong, central banking, Condoleezza Rice, credit channel, Euro, European Central Bank, gold standard, Great Moderation, Great Recession, Gunther Grass, John Kerry, milton friedman, money, Nazi Party, Obamacare, plucking model, President George W. Bush, Reichstag, Romneycare, TARP, Tom Wolfe, US Federal Reserve, US tea party, Zero Lower Bound
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The notion that “easy money” created asset booms is levelled (famously by Austrian school economists such as von Mises and Hayek) against the 1920s boom and by a range of commentators about the Great Moderation boom. In both cases, the Fed (dominated by Benjamin Strong as New York Fed Governor up to 1928 and by Alan Greenspan as Fed Chair 1987-2006) is held to be to […]
By Lorenzo
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Posted in Economics, History, Law, Public Policy, Technology
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Also tagged Alan Greenspan, asset markets, Austrian business cycle, Austrian school, Bank of France, Benjamin Strong, bimetallism, bubble economy, china, ECB, expectations, FDR, Frederich Hayek, George L Harrison, GFC, gold standard, Great Moderation, Great Recession, housing booms, India, lost decades, milton friedman, monetary policy, natural interest rate, NIRA, permanent income effect, railway manias, Roger W. Garrison, silver standard, theory of the unsustainable boom, Time and Money, US Federal Reserve, von Mises, world war one
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April 29, 2013 – 10:00 am
Adam Smith called the crossing of the Atlantic by Columbus and rounding of the Cape of Good Hope by Vasco da Gama the greatest events in human history. They led to, for the first time, a truly global trading economy, where the Eurasian trade economy was extended to, and profoundly changed by contact with, the Americas. […]
By Lorenzo
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Posted in Economics, History
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Also tagged Adam Smith, Atlantic passage, Bank of France, bills of exchange, bimetallism, Black Death, Brazil, British East India Company, British Empire, Castile, cavalry, chariots, china, Christopher Columbus, clipper ships, coin debasement, Constantinople, Crisis of the 3rd Century, Deng Xiaoping, Eastern Roman Empire, eunuchs, Eurasian disease pool, Eurozone, FDR, Ferdinand II of Aragon, foraging, forced labour, foreign humiliations, globalisation, gold standard, Granada, Han dynasty, history of trade, horses, Indian Ocean, industrial revolution, Isabella of Castile, knight service, labour camps, Leninism, Mamluk Egypt, medium of account, medium of exchange, mercantilism, Music, Nazism, nomads, opium, Opium Wars, Ottoman Empire, Peasants' Revolt, Portugal, price level, Price Revolution, Prince Henry the Navigator, Qin dynasty, Qing dynasty, railways, Reconquista, Roman Empire, russia, Saharan passage, selenium, serfdom, Sharia, silk, Silk Road, silver, silver standard, slave trade, slavery, Spain, spices, Stalinism, steamships, Sudan, Suez Canal, Thirteenth Amendment, Trebizond, US Constitution, US Federal Reserve, Vasco da Gama, West Africa, Western Roman Empire, WWI
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March 29, 2013 – 10:40 am
I recently read Adam Fergusson’s history of the early 1920s hyperinflation in Weimar Germany–which also covers contemporary hyperinflations of Austria and Hungary. (Well-spotted if you noticed that they were the losing Powers of the Dynasts’ War–aka WWI; this was not a coincidence.) One of the striking things about the period is how misguided conventional wisdom […]
October 2, 2012 – 9:30 am
I recently had the unexpected experience of reading a book that appalled me; this is not a reaction I can remember having to a book before. The book has a title I agree with: Ideas Have Consequences. Regarded as a classic text of postwar American conservatism, the book is a long jeremiad at the corruption […]
By Lorenzo
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Posted in Books, History, Philosophy, Politics, Society, Technology, The Right
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Also tagged Beethoven, Dostoyevsky, Etienne Gilson, Impressionism, Jazz, Leninism, Modernism, nominalism, Plato, Richard Weaver, Scientific Revolution, steven pinker, Walter Bagehot, William of Ockham
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What do the goldzone Great Depression (1929-3?) and the Eurozone Great Recession (2008-?) have in common? They were both created by European central banks with the US Federal Reserve (the Fed) as accessory during and after the fact. (Yes, the monetary shock which set off the Great Recession started in Europe though the responsibility of the […]
By Lorenzo
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Posted in Economics, History, Politics, Public Policy
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Also tagged Barry Eichengreen, business cycle, central banking, Charles Goodhart, deflation, disinflation, European Central Bank, European Union, Eurozone, exchange rates, expectations, fixed exchange rates, Frederich Hayek, free banking, gold standard, Great Inflation, Great Recession, Henry Thornton, hyperinflation, Inflation, land rationing, milton friedman, optimum currency area, Peter Temin, seigniorage, Thomas Sargent, time horizons, UK coalition government, uncertainty, US Federal Reserve, World Bank
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Who would want the global monetary system to be at the mercy of the Bank of China? Not conservative, free market types in the United States and elsewhere, one guesses. Actually, it turns out lots of them do; all the people who support some sort of return to the gold standard, who think that the […]
By Lorenzo
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Posted in Economics, History, Public Policy
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Also tagged asset bubbles, Austrian school, Bank of China, Bank of England, Bank of France, Bank of Iran, Benjamin Strong, central banks, china, clipping, convertibility, equation of exchange, Euro, fixed exchange rates, Friedrich Hayek, George Selgin, gold, gold standard, India, jewellery, Marc Flandreau, real interest rates, reeded edges, silver standard, Thomas Sargent, US Federal Reserve, USA, William Garrison, Wizard of Oz, World Gold Council, WWI
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This is a guest post by Steven Horwitz which was originally posted at Critical Thinking Applied but which Dr Horwitz has kindly agreed to be also posted here. Dr. Horwitz is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Economics at St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY. He is the author of two books, Microfoundations and Macroeconomics: An Austrian Perspective (Routledge, 2000) and Monetary […]
By Lorenzo
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Posted in Economics, Guest Post, History
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Also tagged Austrian business cycle, Austrian school, Carl Menger, central banks, James Buchanan, Jean-Baptiste Say, John Maynard Keynes, money, Peter Lewin, Say's Law, Steve Horwitz
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