Money-Supply Growth Has Stabilized as Stealth Liquidity Keeps Bubbles on Life Support
2024-02-06
Money supply growth fell again in December, remaining deep in negative territory after turning negative in November 2022 for the first time in twenty-eight years. December’s drop continues a steep downward trend from the unprecedented highs experienced during much of the past two years.
Since April 2021, money supply growth has slowed quickly, and since late 2022, we’ve been seeing the money supply repeatedly contract, year over year. The last time the year-over-year (YOY) change in the money supply slipped into negative territory was in November 1994. At that time, negative growth continued for fifteen months, finally turning positive again in January 1996.
Money-supply growth has now been negative for fourteen months in a row. During December 2023, the downturn continued as YOY growth
An Open Letter to Walter E. Block
2024-02-01
Breaking up with a person you have known for more than thirty years, with whom you have participated in countless conferences and co-authored a couple of articles, even if only in the somewhat distant past, is nothing done lightly. It is even harder, if one shares with this person a common standing as a public intellectual and both our names are mentioned frequently in one breath as prominent students of the same teacher, Murray N. Rothbard, and as leading intellectual lights of the modern libertarian movement founded by Rothbard.
But then: in this position, it becomes near-imperative to always stay on guard and take notice if a person closely associated with your own name goes astray and falls into serious error, and you may be compelled to publicly distance and dis-associate yourself
Rothbard: Understanding the History of Banking from an Austrian Perspective
2023-11-07
A History of Money and Banking in the United States:
The Colonial Era to World War II
by Murray N. Rothbard
Edited with an Introduction by Joseph T. Salerno
(Auburn, Alabama: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2002; 510 pages)
A History of Money and Banking in the United States comprises a collection of essays written by Murray N. Rothbard and compiled and edited by Joseph T. Salerno. It is the most comprehensive and enlightening treatise on the history of money and banking (not only in the United States, but also, to a large extent, in the rest of the world) written to date. In short, this work constitutes the most illuminating historical interpretation, from the perspective of the Austrian school, of the evolution of money and banking over nearly the last 250 years. Therefore, all scholars who
Liberty: Stifled by the Stockholm Syndrome
2023-11-03
“Whenever and however [government] is instituted, the people must cede to it some of their natural rights in order to vest it with requisite powers.” (emphasis added)
—John Jay, “Federalist No. 2”
“Like breathing, [government] is not permitted to depend on our volition. Necessity will force it on all communities in some one form or another.”
—John C. Calhoun, A Disquisition on Government
“But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain—that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.”
—Lysander Spooner, No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority
Across the globe governments without exception are territorial rulers holding a supremacy of physical force over the
A Fed-Induced “Neutral” Interest Rate Is a Contradiction in Terms
2023-11-02
The New York Federal Reserve said on Tuesday, September 5, 2023, that the estimate for the neutral rate for Q2 has eased to 0.57 percent from 0.68 percent in Q1. Analysts typically translate that rate into a real-world setting by adding the neutral rate to the Fed’s 2 percent inflation target. The current reading suggests that a federal funds rate of around 2.5 percent would represent a neutral setting. Given that the Fed’s current target rate range is between 5.25 and 5.5 percent, this suggests that the interest rate policy remains very restrictive.
Based on this, it is quite likely that the Fed will loosen its interest rate stance ahead. This view is further reinforced by the massive increase in the ratio of the federal funds rate target to the neutral rate of 9.2 in Q2 this year from