Sound Money
Contra Mises, explicit coordination might be used to launch an intrinsically worthless item. Such a view is in line with standard models of money employed by economists today. Coordination also seems to have played a role in launching bitcoin.
In the fall of 1974, AIER founder E.C. Harwood wrote a letter to President Gerald Ford.
The Panic of 1907, 110 years ago, was used to justify the creation of the Federal Reserve. From an economic perspective, the justification was a weak reed.
It’s not systemic reform, but the Federal Reserve’s recent indication of climbing down from its $4.5 trillion balance sheet is being met with at least half smiles by free market economists.
In 2007, at the initiative of Chairman Ben Bernanke and New York Federal Reserve Bank President Timothy Geithner, the Federal Reserve System began a set of unprecedented credit allocation policies that have been wasteful, morally hazardous, studded with favoritism, and in some cases of dubious legality.
AIER Trustee Walker Todd recently took note of this provocative piece from George Selgin, which argues that the Federal Reserve Bank’s actions since the Great Recession have done little good to boost the economy.
Facing the Facts
How the federal government collects and spends money has changed substantially over the years. Policy decisions made many years ago influence federal outlays today in important ways. Because of changes in the structure of the budget, the annual appropriations process is constrained, and therefore, is a less powerful tool for addressing fiscal challenges than it used to be.

“As long as the government has the power to manufacture currency with simple paper st