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The Silver Lining in the Fed’s $600 Billion Decision

A good article from Ryan Streeter The Federal Reserve’s recent decision to buy $600 billion in bonds—another example of the mysteriously named “quantitative easing”—may have the unintended effect of solidifying GOP policy makers behind an economic growth agenda. House GOP Conference Chairman Mike Pence immediately issued a release, as did Republican Study Committee Chairman Tom Price, claiming […]

A Third Way: Instant Access By Exception

Come the Revolution, in a free banking world, where there is at least no lender of last resort, commodity backed money with no possibility of over issuing above that commodity in reserve and no deposit insurance, it would be possible for safe deposit accounts and savings accounts where money is lent to borrowers to exist. […]

Hayek vs Keynes @ Buttonwood

Readers, if you saw the first EconStories.tv video of Hayek v Keynes and the explanation of their key contributions in the rap format, then watch this Part Two, you will love it. If you haven’t seen the original, I urge you to watch Part One. Enjoy! [youtube height=”600″ width=”620″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7k7ob438hk0[/youtube]  

Video of Huerta de Soto's Hayek Lecture

We have previously posted the text of Huerta de Soto’s speech, and an audio recording via Cobden Centre Radio. It was a fantastic event, and I’m pleased that we can now provide a video recording as well: [vimeo height=”400″ width=”620″]http://vimeo.com/16528335[/vimeo] LSE Hayek Lecture 2010: Professor Jesús Huerta de Soto from Cobden Centre on Vimeo.  

Huerta de Soto Pays Tribute To Hayek

We were pleased to see this thoughtful and enthusiastic write-up of Huerta de Soto’s Hayek lecture by Andreas Kuersten for the LSE student paper, The Beaver. We reproduce it here by kind permission of the editor. Last Friday Professor Jesús Huerta de Soto, of the King Juan Carlos University of Madrid, delivered a lecture at the LSE on […]

Could The World Go Back To The Gold Standard?

Martin Wolf asks “Could the world go back to the gold standard?” During any period of monetary disorder — the 1970s, for example, or today — a host of people calls for a return to the gold standard. This is not the only free-market response to the current system of fiat (or government-made) money. Other […]

Banking: From Bagehot to Basel, and Back Again

As reported yesterday on Mises.org, there were some very encouraging statements in Mervyn King’s Monday speech to the Buttonwood Gathering in New York. King noted that “Of all the many ways of organising banking, the worst is the one we have today”. After considering various possible reforms, he moved on to some that were “more radical” (my emphasis): […]

The Staggering Economic Errors Behind The Policy of Quantitative Easing

In September of last year, I placed this article up on our web site detailing the theoretical errors behind the policy of quantitative easing. Clearly, as the MPC has now been given the green light by our chancellor, we expect this currency debasement to be starting soon. All it will “achieve” is a wealth transfer from those […]

FT: Osborne Go-Ahead For Bank Boost

On the front page of the Financial Times of Saturday the 9th of Oct 2010, under the title “Osborne go-ahead for Bank boost”, we read the following; Asked whether he would back a second round of quantitative easing, known as QE2, he said he would want to follow the practice of Alistair Darling, the former chancellor who […]

Halligan: QE Now Seen As An Aggressive Depreciation Tool

Another superb article from Liam Halligan: While the US has doubled its monetary base over the last 18 months, the UK’s base money supply has tripled. That’s right – UK base money is now three times bigger as a percentage of GDP than it was at the start of 2009. Given all that money-printing – sorry, […]