Money & Banking

Professor Niles discusses the economic, political and moral aspects of the U.S. dollar, inflation, gold standard, fiat, money and legal tender laws.

The 1933-37 recovery fell far short of reversing the collapse the U.S. economy suffered between 1929 and 1933, and that this disappointing outcome was the result of New Deal policies aimed at boosting wage rates. The resulting higher wage rates prevented the revival of spending from sponsoring a corresponding revival of employment.

The causes of the gold inflow that fueled the post-1933 recovery, and especially the part played by FDR’s decision to devalue the dollar.

During the opening days of March, 1933, the U.S. economy resembled a stricken body slowly bleeding out, its organs failing one by one. The Federal Reserve System was hemorrhaging gold, and entire state banking systems were shutting down one after another. I

To understand how the world’s largest economy ended up shutting-down its entire banking system, one must first be aware of a long-standing defect of that system and of how it led, first to the proliferation of small and under-diversified banks, and then to as many bank failures.

If ever an administration had control over Fed policy, and monetary policy more generally, FDR’s was it. It follows that, if monetary policy did less than it should have to end the Great Depression, the Roosevelt administration must bear a good share of the blame.

Although almost everyone assumes that fiscal stimulus played a big part in bringing the Great Depression to an end, the truth is that its contribution was insignificant.

The New Deal wasn’t a grand scheme at all, but an assemblage of steps and programs, many of which were decided upon or concocted only after Roosevelt took office.

I hope to introduce my readers to evidence casting doubt on the view that New Deal programs ended, or mostly ended, the Great Depression.

When I say “the New Deal,” I mean the “series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1939.”

America’s disastrous history with central banking makes the case for why paper money and central banking are what should be challenged.

In the absence of government regulation and monopoly control, a free monetary and banking system would exist; it would not have to be created, designed, or supported. A market-based system would naturally emerge, take form, and develop out of the prior system of monetary central planning. 

A disturbing trend among true believers is to quip that “Bitcoin fixes this,” almost regardless of what the problem may be.

You can stretch a rubber band only so far, until it breaks. Our debt will wreck our children’s lives.

Judy Shelton is a high-class, high-quality economist, who should join the Fed not so much to burnish its image but to keep it at least a little bit honest and real. The Fed today doesn’t really deserve Shelton, but Shelton deserves a top place at the Fed.

Perhaps the money of the future isn’t some sophisticated crypto token, but a private promise to consume a widely used service. 

By helping to cut the dollar’s tether to gold, Volcker helped Washington’s politicians engage in perpetual fiscal profligacy.