John O’Donnell: How Central Banks Affect Culture

This weekend, Jeff Diest and John O’Donnell discuss central banking and culture. We tend to think of central banking as a dry subject for professional economists, rather than a cultural and even moral issue. But the Fed and other central banks create huge moral hazards, degrade longstanding social mores like hard work and thrift, and encourage economic hedonism today at the expense of tomorrow. Every healthy society is built on capital accumulation and building for a future beyond lives, whereas central banks encourage consumption and turn us into zombie debtors. What happens to the future when ultra-low interest rates mean saving is for chumps? And why have we allowed Greenspan, Bernanke, and Yellen to hide the Fed’s harmful cultural effects behind a wall of technical Fed-speak?