Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death!–Patrick Henry delivering his great speech on the Rights of the … [+] Colonies, before the Virginia Assembly, convened at Richmond, March 23rd, 1775. Currier &am...
Tag: gold standard
A Martian Assesses The Great 1970s Inflation
At the Federal Reserve conference in Jackson Hole this week, all attention was on inflation. Chair Jerome Powell seemed to have moved the markets when his tight-money comments coincided with a 1000-po...
Hi, Stagflation
We’re officially here. Growth is negative and inflation is at 9 percent. It’s 1974 all over again. In that year, all twelve months were spent in recession (one that lasted a year and a third) as price...
Nathan Lewis’s ‘The Magic Formula’
The economic discussion would be greatly improved if it were passably understood that what we call “the economy” isn’t some living, breathing machine that can be engineered. An “economy” is just peopl...
PhDs Killed Off the Gold Standard In 1971, Not ‘Guns & Butter’
It’s not very well known, but for much of the U.S.’s existence the dollar was linked to gold without any significant stock of gold as backing. This was logical. David Ricardo was clear that a gold sta...
Want to Arrest Inflation? There’s a Simple, Bipartisan Solution
It’s hard to fathom now given the debased nature of the monetary discussion today, but when Ronald Reagan ran for president in 1980, a standard line in his speeches was that “No nation in history has ...
Inflation, Omen Of Creative Destruction
Inflation is now running at the unconscionable rate of 7 percent per year. In the bad old days of the 1970s and the early 1980s, consumer price increases were regularly in the double digits. Inflation...