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Written by Ralph J. Benko
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Thursday, April 11, 2013 |
 "In December 1981 a frantic man armed with a sawed-off shotgun, revolver, and knife burst into the Fed and was stopped by guards just outside the boardroom of convened Fed governors, whom he intended to take hostage to publicize the agony they were inflicting on the country."
The double-digit inflation of the late 1970s portended a potentially ruinous hyperinflation if confidence in, and demand for, the dollar were to collapse. The threat was real and the potential outcome catastrophic.
Reversing Read more |
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Written by Ralph J. Benko
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Sunday, April 10, 2011 |
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Found in a remote corner of the Web, reproduced with permission of the author:
Palimpsest of a gold standard
By Daniel M. Ryan
web posted April 4, 2011
Until recently, gold standard advocates could be divided into three groups: gold boosters, libertarian-oriented academics and wistful daydreamers. If there's one characteristic revolution from above that characterized the last century, it would be the substitution of Big Government for minimal government. The shift was largely effected by people that conservatives Read more |
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Written by Ralph J. Benko
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Thursday, April 25, 2013 |
 Senator Nelson W. Aldrich, an extremely influential political leader of his era, popularly called "General Manager of the Nation" (and ancestor of Vice President Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller), addressed the Economic Club of New York on November 29, 1909. His topic was the work of the National Monetary Commission which he had been instrumental in creating, chairing, and guiding and which laid the groundwork for the creation of the Federal Reserve System.
Sen. Aldrich Read more |
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Written by Ralph J. Benko
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Thursday, April 18, 2013 |
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"[T]he Fed exists in a twilight zone of political accountability ... because its role is to make choices that others deem necessary but don't wish to make publicly."
The independence of the Federal Reserve is an important axiom. In practice it is far more nuanced than the axiom reveals. The true politics of the Fed brilliantly is captured by journalist Steven Solomon in his The Confidence Game: How Unelected Central Bankers Are Governing the Changed World Economy (Simon & Schuster, 1995, pp. 153-4):
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Written by Ralph J. Benko
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Tuesday, April 19, 2011 |
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Found on the Web, a discerning observation:
In the world of humans we seem unwilling to allow a species to become extinct. Consider those entities that fostered and participated in the creation of the internet/technology bubble. Rather than let them become extinct, we saved them. They went on to create the great mortgage bubble. In both cases a nutrient rich environment allowed the top predators to remain. The survivors of the predator species have become fat, happy, and billionaires. Read more |
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