Recent content by NolanLawson

I'm no expert in monetary policy, but by reading between the lines I think I can figure out what this article REALLY means. So China hasn't been printing as much money as us? How is this currency manipulation? If anything, it's currency non-interventionism. Aha! Now I see what the real...

Great video. One of my favorite economics videos, along with Money as Debt (which would have been better without the last 1/3, where it started making factual and logical errors that Griffin covers in "Jekyll Island"). Anyone know if this guy is a libertarian? Or Austrian School?

Sorry, I should also add Murray Rothbard's "Mystery of Banking" (also available for free at Mises). The reason I especially recommend this one is because it not only covers a lot of the monetary questions from "What Has Government Done to Our Money" - it also gives you a crash course in...

My favorite starter book was What Has Government Done to Our Money, which is free: mises.org/money.asp This article is also short, sweet, and enlightening: http://blog.mises.org/archives/008672.asp But if you want to drop some coin (it's not free), the absolute BEST book on this subject is...

From http://mises.org/story/3236: Put simply - the banks are holding onto a ton of money in reserves, which is making the money supply contract (i.e. value of the dollar goes up). In fact, they're operating at about 100% reserves. They're going to keep contracting, though, as long as they...

Maybe the $1 trillion figure come from what we pay through inflation as well? If I'm not mistaken, if the government sells $10 worth of treasury bonds to the Federal Reserve, the Fed prints the $10 for the government deposit. So that means we not only owe $10 to the Fed (plus interest) - we...

I guess it makes sense that credit would be more valuable than cash, since due to the Fed's pump-priming M1 (cash) has gone through the roof, while M3 (credit) has been contracting due to banks gearing up for losses. The supply of cash goes up, so its value goes down. Conversely, the supply of...

Estonia, Hong Kong, Ireland, New Zealand, and the Netherlands are all good choices. Look up their policies and see which ones fit you best. (Like social freedom but don't mind too little economic freedom? Choose the Netherlands. Like economic freedom better? Choose Hong Kong.) Also, keep...

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/images/hewitt_31_5_07a.jpg This one's my favorite.

What you say ?! This made me laugh. :) Seriously, though, it's true. Check out this graph from shadowstats: http://www.shadowstats.com/charts_republish#m3 As far as I can tell, the gray line is the spike in cash that the Fed has been printing out (inflation), and the blue line is all the...

The best source to answer the 3rd question comes from The Road to Serfdom. Hayek says that socialism is incompatible with democracy, because eventually the central planners discover that majority rule is completely ineffective for creating economic policy. That's because central planners need...

The thing is, no matter how well-intentioned language reform laws are, they rarely work. It's like trying to legislate against gravity. California made English their official language in the 80's, and you can see how well that worked for them - the percentage of Spanish speakers has been...

At my local pet food store (which mostly sells organic/healthy pet food and is not a major chain), the price of canned cat food went up about 20% for all brands since the beginning of October, including the big Wellness brand.

I only vaguely remember from my economics course, but I think the "natural rate of unemployment" is what unemployment would be if there were no inflation/deflation, or if labor supply met labor demand. So for instance, because France has laws that restrict businesses from operating at certain...

When you actually buy gold, it's pretty startling to see how much value can be packed into such a tiny piece of metal. I mean, I knew how much gold was worth, but it didn't really hit me until I actually bought a gold eagle that something the size of a Pog could be worth $800. In a pinch, I'd...