Central Banking, Inflation and Empire
[audio:http://dissentradio.com/radio/07_08_20_rockwell2.mp3]
Lew Rockwell, founder and president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, discusses the corruption of the modern conservative movement, the detrimental effects the Federal Reserve System has on the economy, and how it perpetuates the warfare/welfare state.
MP3 here. (40:34)
More here.
Lew Rockwell is the founder and President of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, Vice President of the Center for Libertarian Studies in Burlingame, California, and publisher of the political Web site LewRockwell.com. He served as Ron Paul’s congressional chief of staff between 1978 and 1982.
Author: Scott Horton
Scott Horton is editorial director of Antiwar.com, director of the Libertarian Institute, host of Antiwar Radio on Pacifica, 90.7 FM KPFK in Los Angeles, California and podcasts the Scott Horton Show from ScottHorton.org. He’s the author of the 2017 book, Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan and editor of The Great Ron Paul: The Scott Horton Show Interviews 2004–2019. He’s conducted more than 5,000 interviews since 2003. Scott lives in Austin, Texas with his wife, investigative reporter Larisa Alexandrovna Horton. He is a fan of, but no relation to the lawyer from Harper’s.
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Fascinating.
I agree that the current monetary system is not ideal, but if one were to receive % interest on money in a bank account wouldn’t that compensate for inflation? Also, salaries, at least in Europe, are adjusted annually for inflation.
If % interest on your savings account goes up, that extra money has to come from some where. Normally it should come from the % interest your bank charges people who take out loans, many of whom are private business owners.
If your bank increases the % interest on your savings account when inflation goes up, then your bank also has to increase the % interest it charges people to whom it loans money. When interest rates on loans go up, the biggest impact is that small businesses tend to get pushed just over the line of what they can afford and they go out of business. Also, if you look at graphs of inflation, the federal reserve pretty much makes it a one way street.
Average inflation always increases and just about never decreases, so % interest charged from people who take out loans would also always increase and eventually no one would be able to afford to stay in business.
Do your own research. Lew Rockwell is 100% correct on this stuff, as is Dr. Ron Paul.
The federal reserve is a tool to effect wealth-transfer to government, big investors and crony corporations. The Keynsian myth that they act in the interest of ‘the public’ in ‘steering the economy’ has been exposed by the Austrian economists.
Thanks to Antiwar.com – the best d*mn interviews in the world. You guys have kicked my awareness up a good ten notches. I plug your site to everyone I meet.
A few quick thoughts:
0) Excellent.
1) I shall reflect more on those unorthodox economics.
2) I don’t know about that Gold Standard idea. It will certainly stop the economy from overheating, but will anyone be able to develop, say, a mobile-phone infrastructure? The value assigned to a paper bill should not be linked stuff created in a stellar explosion a few billion years ago, it should be a function of people’s expectation of what the future will be like divided by the number of bills (real or not) in circulation. Sure, this only works if people are behaving responsibly (no counterfeiters, the Central Bank does not print money to kill its debts, overpaid guys in banks do not decide to increase the money supply by inventing new “monetary instruments” and the Gummint refrains from borrowing like crazy to buy war cr*p) and your luck does not run out (climate change destroys a good percentage of your food supply). Actually, if your luck runs out, you will have inflation even _with_ a Gold Standard.
3) At 40:30 – I would not call FDR “fascist” in the sense of Mussolini. There _are_ features of Mussolini that were missing with FDR, for example sending out armed thugs to bash in heads and suppress worker strikes using the Mob etc. “Corporatist” maybe?
4) The Gold Idea always makes me think of the first chapter of Cryptonomicon
1) I shall reflect more on those unorthodox economics.
Exceedingly funny. Rockwell’s is real and original economics. What’s really unorthodox is all the nonsense that the mainstream sputters.