The Evidence Keeps Piling up: Lockdowns Don’t Work

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Princeton University has made it official: Woodrow Wilson’s name no longer will have any place on campus. The former president, or at least his memory, now is part of cancel culture, which is sweeping the nation. The Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs will replace the former president’s name with “Princeton,” and Wilson College now will be called First College.

Most economists hold that a growing economy requires a growing money stock on grounds that growth gives rise to a greater demand for money that must be accommodated. Failing to do so, it is maintained, will lead to a decline in the prices of goods and services, which in turn will destabilize the economy and lead to an economic recession, or even worse, depression.

Let me tell you about Keynesian economists. They are different from you and me. They learn their mathematical models and aggregate terminology early and easily, and it does something to them, makes them proud and self-omniscient where the rest of us are circumspect, in a way that, unless you were born a Keynesian economist, is very difficult to understand.

In the weeks following the United States shutting down over what has turned out to be mainly a nursing home epidemic, the economic geniuses on CNBC and Bloomberg discussed the various letter recoveries.

According to popular thinking, not every increase in the supply of money will have an effect on the production of goods. For instance, if an increase in the supply is matched by a corresponding increase in the demand for money, then there will be no effect on the economy.

In June, for the third month in a row, money supply growth surged to an all-time high, following new all-time highs in both April and May that came in the wake of unprecedented quantitative easing, central bank asset purchases, and various stimulus packages.

Cryptocoins aren’t entirely anonymous, and the state is hard at work gathering as much information as it can on all crypto users.

Much has been written about the economic consequences of covid-19, yet, just as in many of the analyses of the Great Depression and the 2008 crisis, the years of accumulating debt preceding the event do not attract the attention they deserve.