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Gunther Schnabl



Articles by Gunther Schnabl

Inflation, War, and Oil: How Today’s Crises Are Rehashing the 1970s

May 31, 2022

Persistently loose monetary policies always have negative growth and distributional effects that impair political stability. In extreme cases, there are civil wars and armed conflicts between countries.
Original Article: “Inflation, War, and Oil: How Today’s Crises Are Rehashing the 1970s”

Consumer price inflation has risen to 8.3 percent in April 2022 in the United States and 7.5 percent in the euro area. This raises the question of who is responsible. In the US, President Joe Biden has argued that 70 percent of inflation in March is attributable to Russian president Vladimir Putin. The European Central Bank has suggested that the high inflation should be seen in the context of the pandemic and the Ukraine war. ECB president Christine Lagarde sees steeply

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Bitcoin Isn’t Any More Dangerous than the Euro

December 7, 2021

Major representatives of the European Central Bank—including ECB president Christine Lagarde—continue to warn against bitcoin. In a recent article, addressed to the inflation-adverse German audience, the ECB representative Klaus Masuch together with the former ECB chief economist Otmar Issing has stressed five risks of bitcoin: a lack of intrinsic value, risks to financial market stability, the use in financing organized crime, high energy consumption, and the danger that taxpayers are held liable for financial risks. It is good that the ECB wants to protect us against possible risks, but a comparison between bitcoin and the euro in the five points mentioned should be allowed.
First, the authors write that bitcoin has no intrinsic value, i.e., no direct use value

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Central Banks May Be Driving Us Toward More Waste, More Carbon Emissions

December 12, 2019

Christine Lagarde, the new president of the European Central Bank (ECB), has added a new green dimension to monetary policymaking. The charming Frenchwoman signaled that the ECB could buy green bonds, possibly as part of the reanimated bond purchase program (a form of QE). This could reduce the financing costs of green investment projects. If interest rates were negative, the green bond purchases would even amount to a subsidy for climate-friendly investment. This could strengthen environmental protection in times of tight expenditure constraints for overindebted governments. However, from an Austrian overinvestment perspective, low interest rates can contribute to a waste of resources.
First, according to Hayek (1931), the too-low interest rates set by central

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