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December 2, 2019|Federal Reserve, Jacques Rueff, L’Ordre Social, monetary policy

Jacques Rueff’s Monetary Order and Us

by Samuel Gregg|

Jacques Rueff, Judge of the Court of Justice, European Coal and Steel Community. (Courtesy of National Archives Catalog)
Jacques Rueff was notoriously unafraid to speak economic truth to politicians of all persuasions—and we should heed his insights.

November 20, 2019|Federal Reserve, fiscal policy, John Maynard Keynes, monetary policy, Public Debt

The Fed Will Be Forced to Choose: Inflation or Insolvency?

by Antony Davies|

United States Federal Reserve Bank building on Constitution Avenue in Washington, D.C. (Rob Crandall / Shutterstock.com).
It is simply a matter of time before the Federal Reserve finds itself having to choose between inflation and federal insolvency.

January 25, 2018|Charles de Gaulle, Free Markets, Jacques Rueff, John Maynard Keynes, monetary policy

Jacques Rueff: Statesman of Finance and “l’anti-Keynes”

by Samuel Gregg|

French economist and adviser to the French Government Jacques Rueff at his home in Berville, 1965. (Photo by Henri Bureau/ Getty Images)
Rueff considered Keynes’s ideas to be counterproductive because they gave governments excuses to avoid responsibility

October 27, 2017|Bitcoin, Dodd-Frank, Federal Reserve, Gold Clause, Independence, monetary policy, Partisanship, Regulatory Policy

Worries about an Increasingly Partisan Fed

by John O. McGinnis|

Federal Reserve in Washington D.C.

As central banks go, the Federal Reserve is one of the best.   Much academic literature suggests that one of the reasons for its relative success is its relative political independence and freedom from partisanship. Central banks that are partisan or politicized are likely to engineer booms to elect the candidates of their party even if those booms have unfortunate long run effects on the nation. The classic case is a bank that pursues a loose money policy in the run up to the election to create a false sense of prosperity or to enable the party in power to finance…

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June 26, 2017|Federal Reserve, Inflation, John Maynard Keynes, monetary policy

Ending the Fed’s Permanent Inflation Policy

by James R. Rogers|

dollar

The Federal Reserve Board seeks to maintain an inflation rate around two percent per year. While this rate might sound low for older types who remember double-digit inflation rates in the late 70s and early 80s, and a rate of 5.4 percent as recently as 1990, why tolerate, let alone seek to sustain, any inflation at all? Why not seek to establish zero inflation and stable prices? After all, even an inflation rate of only two percent a year means nominal prices still double every 36 years. And while people can and do broadly adjust their behavior in the face of anticipated inflation, it’s not a seamless process. Inflation distorts people’s economic decisions, whether as producers or consumers, labor or capital, and so imposes costs on us all.

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September 19, 2016|Federal Reserve Act, Inflation, Janet Yellen, monetary policy, Paul Volcker

Jackson Hole and Democracy

by Peter Conti-Brown|

Janet Yellen, chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve, center, walks past a protester as she arrives for the Jackson Hole economic symposium, sponsored by the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank: Bradly Boner/Bloomberg via Getty Images

There’s some historical elegance to the fact that the Fed’s annual symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, is roughly as old as the modern Fed itself. The symposium, hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, started in 1978.

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June 13, 2016|Bretton Woods, Eric Rauchway, Fascism, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Henry Morgenthau, John Maynard Keynes, monetary policy, Samuel Dickstein, The Money Makers

Making Myths about “Money Makers”

by Paul Moreno|

To compare The Money Makers: How Roosevelt and Keynes Ended the Depression, Defeated Fascism, and Secured a Prosperous Peace to a 100,000-word inflationist op-ed by Paul Krugman would be unfair—unfair to Paul Krugman. It goes beyond Keynesian hagiography to Keynesian deification.

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August 18, 2015|European Union, fiscal policy, Keynes, monetary policy

The French-German Disconnect

by Theodore Dalrymple|

A recent article in the French newspaper Le Monde drew attention to an important difference between the French and the Germans. The French, said the author, think that the government spends other people’s money; the Germans think that the government spends their own money. This, if true, is important because each attitude must affect the politics as well as the economic policy of its respective country.

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May 20, 2014|Austrian Economics, Crony Capitalism, Education, Inflation, monetary policy, Peron

Easy Money and Vanishing Trust

by Alejandro A. Chafuen|

The key message of Stephen King’s book is that “we” have been living beyond our means. In his words: “We became delusional. We convinced ourselves that capital markets could deliver ever rising prosperity. We thought we could borrow without limit, always confident that the future would be better than the past.” And not for one moment, he adds, “did we think we would ever succumb to Japanese-style economic stagnation or Argentine-style broken promises.” King emphasizes that we are all in the same boat, and that we were all wrong. It is fair to say, however, that some raised a voice of…

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April 16, 2014|Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve Act of 1913, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, History of the Federal Reserve, Monetary History of the United States, monetary policy, Timothy Geithner

Is the Federal Reserve a Philosopher King?

by Alex J. Pollock|

A conference was held at the American Enterprise Institute on March 20, 2014 on the question: Is the Federal Reserve a philosopher king or servant of the treasury? Alex Pollock, a frequent contributor to Law & Liberty and participant in the AEI discussion, offers here in condensed form the arguments and the instructive history presented.

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Book Reviews

A Mirror of the 20th-Century Congress

by Joseph Postell

Wright undermined the very basis of his local popularity—the decentralized nature of the House—by supporting reforms that gave power to the party leaders.

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The Graces of Flannery O'Connor

by Henry T. Edmondson III

O'Connor's correspondence is a goldmine of piercing insight and startling reflections on everything from literature to philosophy to raising peacocks.

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Liberty Classics

Rereading Politica in the Post-Liberal Moment

by Glenn A. Moots

Althusius offers a rich constitutionalism that empowers persons to thrive alongside one another in deliberate communities.

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James Fenimore Cooper and the American Experiment

by Melissa Matthes

In The American Democrat, James Fenimore Cooper defended democracy against both mob rule and majority tyranny.

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Podcasts

Stuck With Decadence

A discussion with Ross Douthat

Ross Douthat discusses with Richard Reinsch his new book The Decadent Society.

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Can the Postmodern Natural Law Remedy Our Failing Humanism?

A discussion with Graham McAleer

Graham McAleer discusses how postmodern natural law can help us think more coherently about human beings and our actions.

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Did the Civil Rights Constitution Distort American Politics?

A discussion with Christopher Caldwell

Christopher Caldwell discusses his new book, The Age of Entitlement.

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America, Land of Deformed Institutions

A discussion with Yuval Levin

Yuval Levin pinpoints that American alienation and anger emerges from our weak political, social, and religious institutions.

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About

Law & Liberty’s focus is on the classical liberal tradition of law and political thought and how it shapes a society of free and responsible persons. This site brings together serious debate, commentary, essays, book reviews, interviews, and educational material in a commitment to the first principles of law in a free society. Law & Liberty considers a range of foundational and contemporary legal issues, legal philosophy, and pedagogy.

The opinions expressed on Law & Liberty are solely those of the contributors to the site and do not reflect the opinions of Liberty Fund.
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