Editor’s Pick

Although I've devoted many essays here to exploding myths about historical private currencies, there's one I've yet to directly challenge. That's the belief that such currencies only thrive in the absence of official alternatives. Otherwise, the argument goes, people would

(Although my contributions to this series have so far been more-or-less in their proper order, this one isn't:  it occurred to me only relatively recently that it would be worthwhile to take stock of the overall progress of the recovery

In a thought-provoking article published by the IMF in April, Ruchir Agarwal and Miles Kimball argue for moving away from a “paper money standard” and toward an "electronic money standard." The promised benefits include shorter recessions and lower average inflation.

The distinguished contributors to Populism and the Future of the Fed examine populist demands to expand the Fed’s mandate and the threat to the demarcation between fiscal and monetary policy.  All the essays, except those by Charles Plosser and me,

RevisingTheBankSecrecyAct_NorbertMichelAndJenniferSchulp_CMFAWP007   The post Revising the Bank Secrecy Act to Protect Privacy and Deter Criminals (CMFA Working Paper No.007) appeared first on Alt-M.

(As many Alt-M readers will know, my interest in Bitcoin goes back to its earliest days, and even before that: like my grad school mentor and regular Alt-M contributor Lawrence White, I took part in the 1990's "cypherpunk" movement that

In December 1946, Clark Warburton published an article in the Political Science Quarterly titled, “Monetary Control under the Federal Reserve Act,” which was reprinted in chapter 14 of his landmark book, Depression, Inflation, and Monetary Policy (1966). He argues that

(Previous installments of "The Keynesian Myth" are here and here.) Balancing Act As Richard Adelstein (1991, p. 177) observes, far from taking Keynes's advice that he ratchet-up the federal government's deficit spending, "Roosevelt held fast to the ideal of a balanced budget

(The first installment of "The Keynesian Myth"  is here.) All-American Money Makers Although conventional wisdom has it that Keynes considered government spending far more capable of ending the depression than monetary expansion, that certainly wasn't his view in 1931: during lectures he

(The first of an essay in 3 installments.) In The Money Makers, his 2015 book on the New Deal and its aftermath, Eric Rauchway says that FDR "conducted an active monetary and fiscal program of recovery…working along lines suggested by Keynes."