Joining those mourning the passing of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela recently, Sean Penn called him “a great hero to the majority of his people.” But how would he know? The final nail was driven into the coffin of independent journalism in Venezuela last week with the forced sale of the last remaining television network...
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One factor often cited as contributing to the decline of the Roman Empire was the debasement of the currency. In a period of about 150 years following Emperor Nero’s reign (from 54 to 68 AD) the value of Rome’s currency fell by 50%. By 250 AD, 200 years after Nero, the value of Rome’s...
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Despite the Fed’s breathtaking increase of base money since the autumn of 2008, the money stock as measured by conventional concepts such as M2 has not increased greatly, and hence, as ordinary quantity-theory-of-money thinking would lead us to expect, inflation as measured by conventional concepts such as the consumer price index (CPI) has been...
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As the U.S. government prepared for and then engaged fully in World War II, it made increasingly stringent efforts to control inflation by imposing price controls. Late in 1942, these controls were strengthened substantially, and from early 1943 through mid-1946, when the controls were allowed to lapse, the consumer price index rose very little....
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In today’s issue of the Wall Street Journal, economics editor David Wessel has a useful column about policy uncertainty—worries about government spending, the expiration of provisions in the tax code, inflationary expectations, and the like—and its role in hampering economic growth by discouraging private investment. (The piece is available online to WSJ subscribers here.)...
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In a recent blog post Robert Reich takes the Obama administration to task for—gasp—trying to forestall “Taxmageddon”—the potentially devastating combination of expired tax rate cuts and new taxes slated to go into effect automatically on January 1. Mr Reich suggests Mr. Obama ought instead let it occur as scheduled: his strongest bargaining position would...
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Since the fall of 2008, the Federal Reserve System has pumped an almost incomprehensibly large amount of reserves into the commercial banking system—about $1.4 trillion. In normal circumstances, this action would have given rise to hyperinflation. Of course, not only has no hyperinflation occurred, but scarcely any inflation at all has occurred, and policy...
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The chairman of the Federal Reserve and the President of the European Central Bank, arguably the two most powerful men in the world right now, have done what many people had been asking for—fire the monetary bazooka that will supposedly obliterate the four-year economic crisis. In Europe, Mario Draghi announced he would buy unlimited...
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On May 8th, five economists, including our Research Fellow Peter Klein, appeared in testimony before the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology Subcommittee, chaired by Congressman Ron Paul. The panelists included two economists from the Austrian School, two Keynesians, and one monetarist: Peter G. Klein, Research Fellow, The Independent...
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Conventional wisdom today is that the threat of inflation is low, despite the Fed’s easy money policy, and notwithstanding some economists in the minority (I’m in that minority) who see the Fed’s easy money policy as laying the groundwork for inflation. The March Consumer Price Index (CPI) numbers were recently released, so let’s see...
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