The Sound Money Project was founded in January 2009 to conduct research and promote awareness about monetary stability and financial privacy. The project is comprised of leading academics and practitioners in money, banking, and macroeconomics. It offers regular commentary and in-depth analysis on monetary policy, alternative monetary systems, financial markets regulation, cryptocurrencies, and the history of monetary and macroeconomic thought. For the latest on sound money issues, subscribe to our working paper series and follow along on Twitter or Facebook.
Advisory Board: Steve H. Hanke, Jerry L. Jordan, Gerald P. O’Driscoll, Jr., Lawrence H. White
Director: William J. Luther
Senior Fellows: Gerald P. Dwyer, Joshua R. Hendrickson, Nicolás Cachanosky, Alexander W. Salter
Fellows: Scott A. Burns, James L. Caton, Brian C. Albrecht
Contributors: J.P. Koning
Cash Is King in COVID-19
We’re still early in this crisis, so who knows what patterns in cash demand will emerge. But for now, cash is filling its normal role as alleviator of uncertainty. To cope with the turmoil, people are withdrawing a bit more of the stuff. And that’s fine!
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Burner Cards and Financial Privacy
The growing demand for virtual cards also serves as a good reminder that the ability to exert control over one’s personal information when making transactions isn’t just a feature that drug dealers want. Regular folks operating in the above-ground economy demand a degree of privacy, as well.
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Commercial Habits and Pandemics
Historian William Hutton recounts how country-folk were often too afraid to enter villages filled with potentially sick customers. Instead, they would bring their merchandise to the plague stone, usually set up on the outskirts of a town.
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The Best-laid Plans Often Go Astray, Even for Macroprudential Regulators
The problem with this comment is its failure to be the least bit realistic. It ignores a basic fact: whatever plans regulators have in place for a financial crisis or for a pandemic causing financial distress or some other event causing financial distress–any plan, that is–will be wrong in important ways.
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Coronavirus Lockdowns: When Will They End?
There is no evidence that these grave consequences are being considered in a serious way. Instead, presentations tend to focus on technical issues and avoid the widespread suffering that soon will overwhelm many in the United States.
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Judy Shelton Is Right: The Fed Is Lawless
Judy Shelton, President Trump’s nominee to the Federal Reserve board, got little love in her pre–Valentine’s Day confirmation hearing. (Shelton was previously the director of the Sound Money Project, prior to its moving to AIER.) Regardless of what cri …
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The Fed Cannot Combat Coronavirus
At a campaign speech on February 29, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) introduced her economic plan for combating COVID-19, more commonly known as the coronavirus. The Warren plan has two elements. First, it calls for “a major targeted fiscal st …
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Federal Reserve Codependence with Government Debt
For those familiar with the structure of quantitative easing, Bernanke’s claim to noble behavior by the Federal Reserve in its program of quantitative easing causes no small amount of cognitive dissonance.
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Bootleggers, Baptists, and Banking
Big tech giants like Amazon, Google, and Facebook are trying to enter the banking business. But they’re facing stiff resistance from a number of sources.
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The $1 Coin: World’s Worst Monetary Idea
There are a lot of bad monetary ideas floating around. Few are as awful as the American one-dollar coin, however. Despite almost fifty years of existence, the $1 coin has perennially failed to gain currency in the US.
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