Thanks to our vigilant commentariat, I read this excellent, pithy demolition of central banking by Jamie Whyte, the banker and writer on philosophy and other subjects. Good on the Times (of London) for running it. It’s a healthy antidote to the flawed semi-Keynesian nonsense of Mr Kaletsky.
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A crackerjack of an articleJuly 3rd, 2009 |
 6 comments to A crackerjack of an article |
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Excellent article, and it applies equally to the US Federal Reserve. Unfortunately no one who matters will pay the slightest attention, since it doesn’t advance their personal or political agendas.
When I read the article earlier, I was astonished that people needed telling about this sort of thing, and in such simple terms.
If more people want to have holidays in Edinburgh than Brighton then people will build more hotels in Edinburgh. And if the government steps in to ‘protect’ the hoteliers of Brighton then they bugger things up and everyone, especially the taxpayer, loses.
When I read the Times comments earlier, most of them were only surprised, and pleased, that the article had appeared in the MSM. The actual content of the article elicited only a “Well Duh” reaction. Most of the dissenting comments were of the “Big Banking deliberately screwed the world economy and the government had to intervene” variety. No one ventured a theory on why Big Banking would do that, but so it goes.
(The obvious explanation, that when government intervenes in a market it is in the traders best interests to intervene in government to try and gain an advantage, never seems to occur to people like that.)
Glad to oblige, but full credit must go to Jeffrey Tucker at Mises.org.(Link)
I thought everybody knew this? Hasn’t government intervention in e.g. exchange rates been show to be a miserable failure, why would trying to influence interest rates be such a success?
But wait … the government has to keep interest rates artificially low to keep the land-owners and home-owners happy.
So on the basis that all policies must be tailored to suit land-owners and home-owners, I don’t see the government giving up its interventions in interest rates any time soon.
Marc, thanks, the Jeffrey Tucker article is very good indeed.
“no one of importance will pay the slightest attention”.
In the end even ordinary folk are of importance – because they can vote (and they can campaign),
One of things that has truely astonished me how anti big government books (especially those connected to the current crises) have taken off in the United States.
Not just books written for the popular market like Dick Morris’ “Catastrophe” or Glenn Beck’s “Common Sense” (and before people snear at Glenn Beck, he does more good with one show than the entire British Libertarian movement has done in two decades – and Glenn Beck has five shows a week, plus radio and writing). But also hard works like Thomas Sowell’s “Housing: Boom and Bust” or Thomas Woods’ “Meltdown”.
People not only buy such works (in the United States – British bookstores are brain dead) – they read them and they understand them.
Even a hard core gloomy guts like me is impressed by this.
The fight is not over, civilization is not doomed.
Not if we help – in whatever small way we can.