Money and Banking

Does the Fed play politics? As Gregory Bresiger recalls, it's been a part of the game for a very long time.

One thing that has achieved Holy Writ with economists and politicians is the Consumer Price Index, or the CPI. Each month, people from Alan Greenspan to traders at the New York Stock Exchange to the economist in the Economics 101 prison await the latest announcement from the US Department of Labor that tells us the change in "consumer prices" from the previous month.

The Hirohito gold coin was fixed at a very high legal-tender value in terms of yen. Then the price of gold fell.

Contrary to popular belief, interest rates have nothing to do with money. The attempt to manipulate interest via the money supply can only cause distortions. 

Everyone seems to agree that the printing press will forestall recession—everyone, that is, except the Austrians. Sean Corrigan explains why new money confers no social benefit.

The Sacagawea $1 coin was introduced with great fanfare. But so far as anyone can tell, it has disappeared. What happened? Burt Blumert explains.

The European currency is stuck in a rut because governments have insisted on using the conversion period as an excuse to collect more in taxes. Hans Sennholz explains.

Even before the recent rate cuts, Greenspan had opened the monetary spigots, in a duplication of the policy error that led to the artificial boom. William Anderson explains.

It was once an economic powerhouse, feared by the U.S., but Keynesian-style macroeconomic planning led to its undoing. William Anderson explains how and why it happened.

He has succeeded in misleading almost everyone into accepting a bizarre and idiosyncratic view of the business cycle, writes Joseph Salerno.