According to David Beckworth, the problem with our economy is that people aren’t spending enough. This simple idea is very powerful; it permeates our financial press when they wring their hands and wonder if “the consumer” will buy enough to fix the economy. FULL ARTICLE by Robert P. Murphy
Source link: http://archive.mises.org/15344/is-there-a-conservative-case-for-qe/
Is There a Conservative Case for QE?
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What if instead of QE the following had occurred?
1) Reserve requirements were set to 100% to put banks out of the counterfeiting business and preclude an inflationary spiral.
2) Every adult US citizen was sent a huge and equal check of new, debt and interest free full legal tender fiat, United States Notes.
Would that have not fixed the system from the bottom up?
Thus:
1) Borrowers would be debt free.
2) Savers would have been compensated for years of suppressed interest rates.
3) The banks would have been fixed.
4) State tax revenues would have been fixed.
5) Gross and unjust wealth disparity would have been reduced.
It’s not too late though.
And yes, we need fundamental reform too including separate government and private money supplies. And BTW, fiat gold or fiat silver is not part of a genuine solution either.
That’s the core issue. With 100% Reserve req’s there would be no need for a Central Bank, nor would there be a “need” for the kinds of regulation the government purports to provide. It’s about power, not about reallly fixing an economic system. It’s really interesting to me to see how there ARE actually ways to make the system more stable, but the people making money and gaining power from the current system are the only ones in charge that could make a change.
FB, seriously, STF about bailouts, be it to big business, be it to private individuals.
Why is it you can see the threat a large bureaucracy poses, yet you advocate to increase that very same bureaucracy in the name of “helping people”. You’re just trying to take the gun for yourself and that always brings about the same result: we all lose and government gets bigger
Why is it you can see the threat a large bureaucracy poses, yet you advocate to increase that very same bureaucracy in the name of “helping people”. Daniel
Why it that the Austrians claim to understand the injustice of FRL yet propose no restitution?
As for purging malinvestments, may their jobs be the first to go to give them more insight into that injustice.
“What if instead of QE the following had occurred? etc.”
More inflation
Further delays in liquidation of malinvestments
Continued misallocation of resources
Incentive/reward to undertake yet more spending and consumption
Disincentive to invest in productive activity
Economic signals to entrepreneurs and businesses further corrupted, making it difficult/impossible to align business activity with sustainable demand
Destruction of wealth and capital dilution
Immorality of rewarding theft, waste, stupidity, sloth, fraud, irrationality, failure to reason.
Moral hazard (lenders, bankers, borrowers, welfarists, politicians and the like allowed to avoid consequences of their actons)
Reward ignorance
Debasement of means of exchange
Creation of on-going economic instability and volatility
Continued enhancement of big-government authority/ownership over all
Etc.
Etc.
Etc.
–
Time to get this into your head. It is not possible to painlessly and magically bail everyone out of the economic mess that has taken decades of banal and short-sighted stupidity to come to fruition. The destruction of wealth that has occurred will (as it must) result in drastically modified living conditions for most, if not all, people in North America and Europe (and elsewhere). For some people the situation they encounter will be worse than that for others and in some cases it will be tragic. There is no way to avoid this overall. The unreasonable mode and style of living people have come to expect, allied with expectations of it continuing into the future, is unrealistic and unsustainable. It costs and the wealth to support it is not available.
For the Western World there are several waves of major change coming towards a crest. For example, the B-Boomers are starting to retire now. In general they leave the scene having created private and govt debt far larger than ever. In general their retirements are unfunded- mostly they lack the resources to pay. The expectation is that a younger generation of workers will front up and provide free resources for these guys. All it takes is a “scheme”, a political sleight of hand. It is merely a matter of time before that reasoning is demonstrated as fantasy. What is more than likely is the triage needle or something cheaper than that will make its appearance. This is not something that an allocation of free paper is ever going to be able to address. And this development is but ONE of the issues which has taken decades to mature to the point where the consequences of many, many faulty decisions are becoming plainly visible (to those who believed in socialism and who resided in the comfort of pig-ignorance). There is no easy avoidance- no painless escape- wherein an issuance of magic paper can achive solution. Pretending such would be beneficial is dishonest and would create yet more harm.
Frankly speaking, the willfully disgusting behaviour of the last two generations of welfarist consumers fecklessly consuming the seed capital of the West deserves no sympathy. That these critters now expect the rest of the world and future generations to be indebted so that they can continue to live in accustomed grace and elegance is degenerate. No magic scheme is going to save people from the consequences of their actions- yours included.
Sione
Sione
Frankly speaking, the willfully disgusting behaviour of the last two generations of welfarist consumers fecklessly consuming the seed capital of the West deserves no sympathy. Sione
I’m talking justice not sympathy.
F Beard
Your evasion is noted.
–
Re Justice
You are fooling yourself. What you are talking isn’t justice at all. You are promoting theft through fraud (that you may kid yourself it is other than what it is remains irelevant). What you are engaging in is yet another collectivist easy-money scheme in yet another attempt to pretend that consequences can be evaded when one believes hard enough. It is crack-pot stuff. In the end someone has to pay for your crank scam (that is, you need someone to generate the wealth that you intend to have hijacked and redistributed). It is not justice that someone be coerced or defrauded to pay for your beliefs.
In the end reality is the final arbiter. Accounts will be settled and some settlements will come in an unpleasant manner (such as the sharp point of the triage needle).
There is no defense against reality through ignorance. Whether you like that or not is irrelevant. Whether you find “justice” in that or not is irrelevant. Reality, ultimately, educates even the most willfully ignorant.
Sione
Yes, it’s all coming to a head.
However, if we would give up on the world empire that costs about $1 trillion a year and gets us nothing but trouble, we could probably lessen the pain that is coming.
I don’t see it happening since the people insist on socialism, and empire. And as the article by Fred Reed mentions, we’re the monkey that is not able to let go.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/reed/reed195.html
Eric
It sure is coming to a head. There are multiple conditions, issues and problems building simultaneously. There are no easy solutions, no “bail outs”, no escape from the consequences of multiple bad decisions. None. Nada. Nil.
What has been happening throughout the West is as the result of people allowing an ignorant blind belief in govt power and “expert” authority. By deferring to the trinity of fantasies that government is a painless, free solution in reference to personal difficulties, problems, circumstances, arbitrary preferences etc., that the government SHOULD intervene to “do summit for me” and that the government actually can achieve that which is patently impossible, a social and political structure has been erected which contains multiple fatal attributes. As the nature and consequences of each of these manifests itself what is then sought is a quick fix- a painless patch. Each quick fix contributes to raising more difficulties, greater dislocations which builds up yet more sets of troubles. In order to kick these away into the future another quick fix is sought and applied. Gradually at first and then with accelerating severity, the magnitide and number and types of the difficulties, dislocations and troubles become more and more serious. Now the situation has been arrived at where it is becoming clear, even to the passively ingorant or disinterested, that the “lid’s gonna blow” and that it isn’t a matter of being able to quick fix kick the issues down the road and into some indeterminant far future. The troubles are here right now and are not going to be escaped- not for much longer anyhow.
I strenuously object to the demonsrated falsehood that what is required is yet another quick fix bailout. That notion is a baseless faith which needs to be exorcised. What must occur (and is going to occur one way or another) is that responsiblity for the consequences of decisions is recognised, accepted and faced. It is preferable that this occur right away- not emburden children, the grand-children and the great-grandchildren. These are all reasons why F Beard’s schemes remain immoral.
You are more than likely correct with your contentions. I hope that there is a realisation in this direction sooner rather than later.
Sione
Yeah, but it’s OK for government to monetize your favorite shiny metal and make the rest of us use it?
Yes, abuse of government is rampant but it started in the US with the fascist bankers, not the socialists.
But a shiny metal as money will fix all that, eh?
“But a shiny metal as money will fix all that, eh?”
That “shiny metal” has a nearly fixed supply, which is a necessary property of any sound money.
Forcing the government’s monopoly on money to operate on 100% reserves will get rid of a lot of the fascist banking policies (i.e. the bankers cannot print or borrow at will). That is a move in the right direction. Getting rid of the government’s monopoly would be better. No laws requiring gold. Only the recognition that without laws about what money to use most people will probably start using gold *voluntarily* because it is a very good form of money.
Gold was the international currency in the 19th Century. No unbacked piece of paper has ever come close to being an international currency.
I want to make something extra clear though: Those who advocate the gold standard like Ron Paul are not advocating making gold the legal tender. Your first statement seems to say you don’t understand that. Advocates of the gold standard are explaining why gold is a good money and why people, left to their own devices, would most likely start to use it again like they did in the 19th Century. Anyone who is suggesting that gold become the legal tender is not approaching this from an Austrian economics perspective. The Austrian case for the gold standard is the Austrian case for free banking plus the recognition that gold has better served as money than anything else humans have discovered.
It is the recognition that without government intervention into money, which is what destroyed the international gold standard that developed through voluntary market forces, that gold standard would still be here, and removing government intervention is likely, almost certainly, to result in the voluntary reconstruction of such a standard.
Experiments in fractional-reserve banking on a market of free banking will be short-lived and disastrous for those involved.
F Beard
Gosh, you really are evasive & dishonest.
Firstly, I have not written that I’d support a demand fo government monetisation of ANYTHING (& before you protest that you think someone somewhere once may have, try remembering you are directing your sly-dog accusation at me, not some arbitrary identity you can scare up from your imagination).
Secondly, you are still evading. The shockingly impractical and immoral dream scheme you’ve generated has been utterly demolished on this site on several occasions and by several contributors. Each time you fail to respond honestly when specific and general failings of the dirty little scheme are pointed out to you. Instead it’s a retreat to sentiment along the lines of, “oh well, let’s try it and see” or “I want something better than shiny metal” or repeated expressions of YOUR personal belief that YOUR scheme will work out OK and so on and on and on and on… which leads to…
Thirdly, you spend thousands of words repeating the same noxtious waste over and over again, piling assertion upon assertion- all of it baseless and unsupported. Argument by insistence and agument by repetition does not validate your position. In fact your position is little more than a repackaging of simple economic fallacies which a basic reading of Austrian economics would demonstrate. It is to be recommended you actually takle the time to study Austrian economics in depth…which we both know you have refused to do since….
Forthly, you have made the admission that you have not bothered to study Mises because he was a “secular Jew”. That is an example of intellectual degeneracy. It’s your problem and unfortunately appears to be deliberate and willful.
Fifthly, this site is for the purpose of the study, promotion, discussion and analysis of Austrian economics, the work of Von Mises, his colleagues, students, academic successors, associates, practitioners, research in Austrian economics, applications of Austrian economics and the like. See, up there at the top of the page, it says “Ludwig Von Mises Institute”. There is a reason for that being there instead of “F Beard’s institute for the promotion of weird workings of funny-money monkey-business” or whatever you might like to call a site for the promotion of your “economics” ideas. Go set up your site and promote your “economics” over there. That way anyone who is interested can go check it out. Those interested in Austrian economics have already got a site and that site is not the appropriate venue for what you are engaging in.
Sione
Are you suggesting that everyone should given a check of equal amounts? If not, how do you determine how much each person is to receive? Also, wouldn’t that jack prices up immediately?
“Why it that the Austrians claim to understand the injustice of FRL yet propose no restitution?”
There are solutions proposed, you just have to do some reading. They are more thought out and detailed than, “let’s send everyone a check”…
I love this article. Keynes wrote the General Theory (GT) 20 years after the Fed started operating. Keynes supported the Fed doing what it was going to do anyway. The crime in Keynes’ GT is that most economists at the time were classical and knew that it would not work. Our Keynesian masters think that the choice is between a roller coaster economy and stagflation like in Japan and Europe. They will be surprised by hyperinflation just like they are always surprised by the deflation of the Fed generated debt bubble.
“[QE2] is about fixing a spike in the demand for money that has significantly hampered spending.
To better understand this excess-money-demand problem, etc….”
This sounds almost like Horwitz and Selgin.
Hayek explained on “Firing Line” (of all places) in 1977 that the purpose of Keynesian money dilution was to trick British workers in the 1930s into accepting lower real wages than they would otherwise accept if aware of what was going on. As Hayek said, the theory was completely “ad hoc”.
http://hayekcenter.org/?p=2701
In the context of “fixing” a bust following a Keynesian boom (like now), all that money dilution can do is the same thing: Lower real wages and prices that were only bid up as high as they are due to prior Keynesian money dilution. Of course, this will again continue and re-energize the distortion of the pricing process so that another painful readjustment of prices must occur yet again in the future.
Apparently, it’s against the law for any critic of the Austrian School to have the slightest familiarity with basic Austrian School concepts. Add Beckworth to that incredibly long list (consisting of all of them).
I say “Amen!” to everything before the last paragraph.
“Apparently, it’s against the law for any critic of the Austrian School to have the slightest familiarity with basic Austrian School concepts.”
What do you mean? I did not see anything critical of the Austrian School in anything you wrote or in what Hayek said.
No, no. He said that “critics” of the Austrian School have no clue about it, not those who follow it.
Is this the same Beckworth who argued for productivity-driven deflation in the Cato Journal?
http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj28n3/cj28n3-1.pdf
Read Beckworth’s blog. http://macromarketmusings.blogspot.com/
Sumner’s http://www.themoneyillusion.com/
And especially Woolsey’s http://monetaryfreedom-billwoolsey.blogspot.com/
if you really want to understand where the quasi-monetarists are coming from. You won’t learn anything from Murphy.
Where have any of these guys ever dealt with the primary Austrian point of how diluted funny money distorts the pricing process?
DT, I read Sumner religiously, and Woolsey occasionally. What specifically did you think I said that was wrong in this article?
Money is not wealth, goods and services are.
Money is a claim on goods and services, a promise to redeem the money in goods and services.
Quantitative Easing produces more money for the same amount of goods and services, assuring that we will further consume resources and impoverish us all.
Quantitative Easing, especially in the context of financial and economic meltdown, is a transfer of wealth from the already poor the the rich first users of the funny money.
There is no case for this crime.
You are dead on in every respect except your first statement. “Money is not wealth…” I try to avoid saying things that are inaccurate. Money is the most preferred commodity because it is a store of value. Paper money is a money substitute. It gets its value from the commodity by the promise of redemption. But if paper money did not have value, no one would accept it in exchange for goods and services. So a million paper dollars is wealth in the same way that a deed to a million dollar house is wealth. That is why the government wants the power to print money. So the Fed can steal the wealth out of our pockets without being obvious, as you explained.
It’s true that money isn’t wealth. It’s deferred wealth since you can’t do anything with money but spend it. By holding money, you indicate you haven’t decided what form your wealth will be. Money isn’t wealth, it’s a claim on wealth.
OK. I think I get it. Wealth is the actual things. Value is a person’s desire for something. The something can be an actual thing or a claim to a thing. Close enough for the blog-a-sphere?
This article by Robert Murphy might help: http://mises.org/daily/4507
Yeah, makes sense. The problem with my job performance is that I don’t sleep enough through it.
… because the money thrown previously from the helicopter is no more and thus people continued with their daily lives. We can’t have that.
How can it “reduce the likelihood” of what amounts to someone else’s decision? What if Congress decides to spend anyway? Then what?
QE as present monetary policy is of failed design and can do nothing to help the situation that any conservative can ever feel comfortable with.
The irony of the Beckworth idea is seeing the benefit of QE as banks will be lending again.
Sorry, I don’t think so.
The only real benefit from an expansionary monetary policy can be consumers spending again.
Given today’s individual penchant for reducing the overgrown private debt burden, caused by the debt-money system colloquially referred to as fractional-reserve banking, the only way to get consumers spending is by putting money into the hands of the 35 million under-employed Americans.
This would require a government employer-of-last-resort public policy stance.
Not very likely, given the ignorati leading the political debates today.
We should abandon any QE measure that sees the central bank basically growing the reserves of the private bankers and resort to Treasury-driven job-creation mechanisms where the money supply increase goes directly to M1 and M2 – where the consuming masses do their business.
Then, if productive capacity requires it, banks can be lending again.
So, what, the federal government should pursue inflationist economic policy through the Treasury Department rather than the Federal Reserve? I fail to see how your plan differs from Mr. Bernanke’s, except that you utilize the Treasury and he doesn’t.
Also, what happens if those “35 million under-employed (what?) Americans” decide to go and save that money rather than spend it? And if people started consuming in mass droves rather than investing, wouldn’t that eventually result in capital consumption which would reduce the standard of living for all Americans?
I do not comprehend.
What the mainstream economists can’t seem to get is that the only way that wealth can be generated is by some poor bastard in the private sector (or overseas) producing goods and/or services that other people want.
The US Government reminds me of the Henry Adams character in Mark Twain’s “The Million Pound Bank Note”. Adams, a drunken sailor, is given a million pound bank note by two eccentric brothers. The novel is set in Edwardian England. The brothers have a bet. Will Adams be able to live for free because of his perceived wealth, or will the bank note be worthless to him because nobody will cash it? In the novel Adams goes from pauper to prince in a month without cashing the bank note. The US is the same, receiving enormous amounts of goods and services from overseas on the perception that $1 billion of US fiat currency is actually worth something tangible.
Do Austrians admit that there can ever be a problem with aggregate demand, even as a theoretical possibility?
Suppose we were on a gold standard with a 100% reserve requirement. A new kind of termite (call it a “gold bug”) evolves that eats gold, and before it is eradicated 20% of the gold supply has been eaten up. What effect would this have on the economy? Suppose there was a button you could press that would create a comparable amount of gold to what was destroyed. Would Austrians condemn pushing the button as creating malinvestments?
Blackadder,
A question: would your magic button create comparable amounts of gold AND destribute them in the exact amount that was lost to the exact people who lost it? Or would your magic button give gold to panks to destribute as loans?
If the former, then yes, they could push the button, but since that would in effect be the exact situation before the gold bug the entire scenario is meaningless.
If the latter (the magically created gold is given to banks or destributed politically) then yes, the newly created gold could create malinvestment.
The whole example is rather silly, though. What process is removing fiat money from the economy today? Remember that money held as savings is still in the economy and can be spent when the holder of it deems the conditions right.
In conclusion, “aggregate demand” is NOT a valid concept according to Austrian theory (which is supported by logic, rather than wishful thinking and calculus).
“Do Austrians admit that there can ever be a problem with aggregate demand, even as a theoretical possibility?”
No. The talk about the “aggregate demand” is a Keyensian nonsense.
“Suppose we were on a gold standard with a 100% reserve requirement. A new kind of termite (call it a “gold bug”) evolves that eats gold, and before it is eradicated 20% of the gold supply has been eaten up. What effect would this have on the economy? Suppose there was a button you could press that would create a comparable amount of gold to what was destroyed. Would Austrians condemn pushing the button as creating malinvestments?”
Any given quantity of money is “optimal”. Therefore, there is no need neither do increase nor to decrease it artificially. If gold bugs start to eat gold, the first reaction of the market would be to seek another commodity which is not susceptible to that bug. And the purchasing power of gold would decrease. Gold is not money because somebody decided so and imposed it by fiat, but exactly because, among other things, there is no “gold bug” that can impair its quality while stored.
The “remedy” you mentioned (pushing the button) would amount to the government intervention to artificially prop-up the price of goods and commodities in terms of gold. And that would be essentially the same thing as Bernanke’s printing fiat dollars to prop-up the price of housing and everything else, and thus, yes, would create malinvestments.
Isn’t it true that economic pundits have confused effect with cause? Isn’t spending a result of prosperity, not the cause of it? Pundits are using the measurement of consumer spending as a barometer of economic health: the higher it is, the more prosperous we must be. But the cart has been put before the horse. Higher spending, rather than being recognized as a resultant corollary of prosperity, is now thought of as a driver of prosperity. Under this convoluted logic, borrowing money and spending it raises economic activity as measured by GDP. This is a flawed measurement. It does not consider the efect on net worth. Shouldn’t the ecconomic prosperity of a nation be determined by a measurement of it’s net worth, and not just GDP which doesn’t subtract debt?
Anyone who is suggesting that gold become the legal tender is not approaching this from an Austrian economics perspective. The Austrian case for the gold standard is the Austrian case for free banking plus the recognition that gold has better served as money than anything else humans have discovered. sweatervest
Gary North, an Austrian I presume, advocates that taxes be required in gold. That would be making gold legal tender for government debts. It would force all tax payers to buy gold to pay their taxes. But any recognition by government of any money form but its own fiat is a form of fascism, government privilege for special interests.
Let’s see if a true free market in private money creation will choose gold as an international money, eh?
Or if the Austrians are fascists, then let’s have that honest admission. Please admit that you think government should force us all to use PMs for money, by one means or another.
Or if you claim to be libertarian then let’s see you decry any attempts to have government recognize gold or any other private money forms as government money.
Folks, the money problem is too serious to imagine that shiny metals will fix it. Yes, to those who can imagine no other money forms but fiat and PMs, PMs may seem the ONLY solution. But they aren’t. So let’s not allow government to impose them on us then, eh?
Libertarians or fascists? The choice is yours.
I don’t know if Gary North is an Austrian or not, but sweatervest clearly did not suggest forcing the use of gold. Instead, he suggested that, as in the past, gold would most likely be chosen in a free banking situation, because it has the many attributes that make it a good form of money. “Shiny” is not one of those attributes, durability and divisibility are. I’m perfectly willing to go with free banking and let the market decide what to use as money. But a more serious problem currently faces us: getting the government to allow free banking in the first place.
Instead, he suggested that, as in the past, gold would most likely be chosen in a free banking situation, because it has the many attributes that make it a good form of money. Michael A. Clem
I have no objection to gold as a purely private money form but I strongly suspect that it, fractional reserves and even usury itself ultimately depend on government privilege. I am determined, as a libertarian, that they shall not have it.
This latest F Beard mumbo-jumbo translates as follows:
Gary North is Austrian. I reckon he advocates gold specie being used to pay tax. Requirement to pay govt taxes in gold is facism because that’s what I say it is. Gary North is a facist and so Austrian economics is facist.
My idea is not fascist because and also I say so (also I have not read Von Mises et al so I am not a fascist because I dun evan know any of their stuff anyhow which must be good ’cause it’s all fascist). My ideas it is good and let’s see how good it is because if everyone uses my idea it is real good of them and it will work out.
Libertarian is what my idea is I reckon and say. If you are not into my idea you are facist and not a libertarian ’cause that’s what I say, so there.
The problems of the world are too serious for anything other than my idea because that’s what I also say and I are libertarian and if you disagree you are an Austrian right facist one.
You are having a choice to follow my way or be called a facist by me.
—
What a marvellous choice is on offer- follow the lunatic or be called fascist by a lunatic
Sione
The purpose of QEn is the destruction of the U.S. financial system, and subsequently produce alleged failure of free markets and Constitutional government.
At that point the U.S. will be told that only the European model of government works.
Gosh, you really are evasive & dishonest. Sione
I try to be straightforward and honest. I apologize for when I fail.
Firstly, I have not written that I’d support a demand fo government monetisation of ANYTHING (& before you protest that you think someone somewhere once may have, try remembering you are directing your sly-dog accusation at me, not some arbitrary identity you can scare up from your imagination). Sione
Gary North is no figment of my imagination. But as for you, I’m happy to hear that you have not supported government sanction for gold as money.
Secondly, you are still evading. The shockingly impractical and immoral dream scheme you’ve generated has been utterly demolished on this site on several occasions and by several contributors. Sione
Point out the immorality of it, please. Or apologize for your slander. What I am advocating it that only the government shall create government money and that only the private sector shall create private money. Do you have a problem with that? As for practicality, is liberty impractical?
Each time you fail to respond honestly when specific and general failings of the dirty little scheme are pointed out to you. Instead it’s a retreat to sentiment along the lines of, “oh well, let’s try it and see” or “I want something better than shiny metal” or repeated expressions of YOUR personal belief that YOUR scheme will work out OK and so on and on and on and on… which leads to… Sione
Now it is you who are being dishonest and you accuse me? And what is my “dirty little scheme”, pray tell? And please quote me accurately or remove the quote marks. I’ll accept your apology should you make it.
Thirdly, you spend thousands of words repeating the same noxtious waste over and over again, piling assertion upon assertion- all of it baseless and unsupported. Argument by insistence and agument by repetition does not validate your position. In fact your position is little more than a repackaging of simple economic fallacies which a basic reading of Austrian economics would demonstrate. It is to be recommended you actually takle the time to study Austrian economics in depth…which we both know you have refused to do since…. Sione
First, I have studied Austrian economics. Second, I only insist on liberty in private money creation. I would love to let the free market teach you lessons about shiny metals and usury. Third, I use Fire Fox with a built in spell checker in case you would like to reduce your misspellings.
Forthly, you have made the admission that you have not bothered to study Mises because he was a “secular Jew”. That is an example of intellectual degeneracy. It’s your problem and unfortunately appears to be deliberate and willful. Sione
No, I said he was an agnostic Jew. Please quote me accurately.
Fifthly, this site is for the purpose of the study, promotion, discussion and analysis of Austrian economics, the work of Von Mises, his colleagues, students, academic successors, associates, practitioners, research in Austrian economics, applications of Austrian economics and the like. Sione
And I point out some of its short comings. And if the Austrians claim to be libertarians, then I point out their hypocrisy if they support government sanction for shiny metals.
See, up there at the top of the page, it says “Ludwig Von Mises Institute”. There is a reason for that being there instead of “F Beard’s institute for the promotion of weird workings of funny-money monkey-business” or whatever you might like to call a site for the promotion of your “economics” ideas. Go set up your site and promote your “economics” over there. That way anyone who is interested can go check it out. Those interested in Austrian economics have already got a site and that site is not the appropriate venue for what you are engaging in. Sione
I might do that. But meanwhile I have learned a lot about the strength of my libertarian ideas about money by engaging the folks here. I appreciate the feedback.
Oh, I get it. My immoral, impractical, “dirty little scheme” is to abolish fractional reserve lending and to compensate the victims of it, both savers and borrowers equally.
Well debt forgiveness is Biblical (Deuteronomy 15) and so is restitution for theft, from 2-7 fold.
But if you want to refine the solution then consider how one might run the fractional reserve looting scheme BACKWARDS so as to reverse the theft.
Debt forgiveness is only family members, not fellow citizens of your nation. Nation-states did not exist in those days and it specificially only mentions tribes, which is an extended genetic family. Debt forgiveness is not Biblical if you lent to the tribe on the other side of the hill. Nothing orders the lender to forgive the debt of a “foreigner”, or someone not part of your extended family.
Try not to twist religious writings to fit your own personal viewpoints. Just come out and say what you think needs to be done without attempting an Appeal to Authority logical fallacy. If you can’t support it on the logic alone and need to lean on someone else saying it, then it’s a bad idea.
Actually, ancient Israel consisted of 12 tribes. And as far as I know the prohibition against usury and the command for debt forgiveness applied across those tribal boundaries. So they applied to the whole country.
But in any case, just restitution does apply, from 2 to 7 fold. Fractional reserve lending cheats both borrowers and savers so a bailout of the entire population is justified.
If you can’t support it on the logic alone and need to lean on someone else saying it, then it’s a bad idea. J Murray
Your statement itself is illogical. Someone saying an idea makes it neither good or bad. However, there are respected authorities and their views should be respected.
Hehe, in essence: “Respect the views of authorities because authorities are respected”?
Yes, I respect the views of Mises and Rothbard but I am not bound by them. And my statement made sense though it seems recursive to you. For instance, Keynes is respected, so any monetary theorist should at least consider his ideas.
Not that I am a Keynesian. I believe in debt-free monies which are apparently unthinkable to Keynesian.
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