Tag Archives: Keynesian

I guess in some ways it’s a race against the clock. What the optimists are really saying is the equivalent of the old eighties neo-Keynesian notion of filling in the troughs. That’s what government spending and monetary “stimulus” intend to accomplish, to limit the downside in a bid to buy time. Time for what? The economy to heal on its own. Fill up the bathtub, so to speak, with artificial stimulus water (aggregate demand) until such time as the basin stops...

The priesthood’s insane obsession with forcing people to spend their savings by punishing savers with ZIRP/NIRP has failed spectacularly for a simple reason: it completely misunderstands human psychology. Let’s start with a simple chart of the Fed Funds Rate, which the Federal Reserve has pinned near zero for years. This Zero Rate Interest Policy (ZIRP) is the god the PhD economists in the Fed and other central banks...

One of the chief virtues of a gold standard is that it serves as a restraint on the growth of money and credit. It makes runaway government deficit spending and major monetary catastrophes such as hyperinflation practically impossible. Opponents of a gold standard can’t defend the political malpractices that are enabled by a fiat currency regime. So instead they spin a narrative about how gold supposedly hampers the economy. According to Keynesian economics, spending boosts the economy...