and Investing
“Honest money” is a phrase bandied about as a self-evident truth. As the accompanying graph indicates, its incidence coincides with the heyday of the gold standard. As such, it is the pithy summary of a strongly-held view on the nature of money, which at the time of the gold standard had a highly political charge. … Continue reading “Honest Money?”
Seeing as how the gold standard is a “money method”[1] by which all exchange value is made dependent upon the weight of a certain substance, viz., gold, it would seem appropriate to “weigh it up” to determine whether or not, “weighed in the balance,” it is “found wanting.” Indeed, weight measurement was the standard of … Continue reading “Weighing the Gold Standard”
In a previous post (“Quantitative Easing and Substitutionary Atonement”), I discussed some of the underlying philosophy of quantitative easing, the latest of the Fed’s attempts to “stimulate” the economy. Quantitative easing, to recap, is the term for central bank purchases of assets on the open market. The difference with traditional “open-market operations” is twofold. Firstly, the purpose: … Continue reading “Another Look at Quantitative Easing”