Monetary Policy

The Origins of U.S. Monetary Debauchery

by Jacob G. Hornberger April 1, 2023

One of the unsung heroes in American history was a prominent New York City lawyer named Frederick Barber Campbell. Campbell graduated from Harvard Law School in 1894 and was a partner in the law firm of Campbell and Whipp. Its offices were located at 20 Exchange Place, which was in the middle of the Wall Street area of the ...

The Great German and Austrian Inflations, 100 Years Ago

by Richard M. Ebeling March 1, 2023

This year marks the 100th anniversaries of the great German and Austrian inflations that began with the coming of the First World War in 1914 and reached hyperinflationary severity following the war’s end in November 1918. While the German and Austrian inflations were particularly pronounced, all the belligerent countries in the conflict resorted to the monetary printing press to ...

Fed Up with the Fed

by Robert E. Wright March 1, 2023

The Federal Reserve (“the Fed”) began operations in 1914. Thus, many find it difficult to fathom an America without it. Yet as it conducts its own major framework review, everyone, including the Federal Reserve itself, knows that the Fed is unnecessary. Congress could abolish the institution and ...

Fiat Money and the French Revolution

by Phil Duffy February 1, 2023

Weimar Germany’s hyperinflation is well known, as are more recent hyperinflations in Argentina and, most recently, Venezuela. Perhaps fewer people have heard of John Law’s Mississippi Scheme in France and the issuance of paper money that underlay it. And perhaps even fewer still have heard that the issuance of paper money by the government contributed to the French Revolution ...

Monetary Freedom Instead of Central Banking

by Richard M. Ebeling December 1, 2022

The United States and most of the rest of the world are, once again, in the midst of an inflationary crisis. Prices in general are rising at annualized rates not experienced by, especially, the industrialized countries of North America and Europe for well over 40 years. More than 50 percent of the U.S. population is under 40 years of ...

Help FFF Restore Sound Money

by Jacob G. Hornberger August 11, 2022

Gas prices are at an all-time high. Rents are skyrocketing. Prices at the grocery store are surging. Prices of new and used cars are spiraling out of control. That’s what happens when the Federal Reserve debases the currency by inflating the money supply, which the Fed has been doing for the past several years and, actually, since its inception ...

Now That Inflation Is Back, Here’s the Book to Read

by George Leef August 1, 2022

Inflation: What It Is, Why It’s Bad, and How to Fix It by Steve Forbes, Nathan Lewis, and Elizabeth Ames (Encounter Books, 2022). We have been through this many times before — prices start to increase at an accelerating pace and consumers grumble about inflation, while politicians try to pin the blame for it on parties other than ...

My Two-Bit Political Awakening

by James Bovard December 1, 2021

Samuel Johnson may have been wrong when he declared, “There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money.” But for young kids, collecting coins is a less pernicious pastime than becoming a pyromaniac or Tik-Tok star. My own experience collecting, buying, and selling coins vaccinated me against trusting politicians long before ...

Inflation Is a Dangerous Way to Get Rid of Debt Burdens

by Richard M. Ebeling June 2, 2021

Suppose you lent someone $100, and when they paid you back they only handed you, say, $99 or $80. Would you consider the borrower to have kept his promise and contractual obligation? Or would you think that he had cheated you out of a part of the money you had lent him in good faith? Well, there are those ...

Monetary Inflation’s Game of Hide-and-Seek

by Richard M. Ebeling May 18, 2021

The May 12, 2021, press release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics reporting on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for the month of April sent the stock markets tumbling for two days and generated fodder for the news pundits with the announcement that the CPI measure of the cost-of-living had increased 4.2 percent at an annualized ...

Dangerous Monetary Manipulations and Fiscal Follies

by Richard M. Ebeling April 7, 2021

Back in the 1960s, Everett Dirksen (1896-1969) served as the Republican Party minority leader in the U.S. Senate. One of his famous lines about federal government spending was, “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.” Those days are long past. Now it’s: A trillion here, and a trillion there, and then you ...

The Gold Clause: A Free-Market Gold Standard

by Wendy McElroy December 1, 2020

President Franklin Roosevelt destroyed one of the most valuable uses of gold when he nationalized ownership of the metal in 1933: the gold clause. This value did not return when private ownership of gold was legalized once more in 1974, partly because its use is still discouraged by anti-usury laws. The impact of its sudden absence was dramatized by a ...