To listen to the audio version of this article click here. The Federal Reserve published Money and Payments: The U.S. Dollar in the Age of Digital Transformation, and solicits comments about its ideas for a central bank digital currency (CBDC). This is our extended commentary offered in response. Implications from the Federal Reserve’s Paper Our first comment is that every monetary change from […]
The Zombie Ship of Theseus To listen to the audio version of this article click here. The Ship of Theseus is an old philosophical thought experiment. It asks a question about identity. Suppose you replace all of the boards of a ship with new ones—is it still the same ship? We are not going to […]
Listen to the audio version of this article here! Inflation and Gold: What Gives? In the last Supply and Demand update, we discussed some different theories which attempt to explain what causes the gold and silver prices to move. We mentioned the: “…attempt to hold up a famous buyer of metal, while ignoring the thousands […]
To listen to the audio version of this article click here Opposing Monetary Directions “Real estate is the future of the monetary system,” declares a real estate bug. Does this make any sense? We would ask him this. “OK how will houses be borrowed and lent?” “Look at this housing bond,” he says, pointing to […]
Listen to the audio version of this article here Breaking Down the Dollar Monetary System If you ask most people, “what is money?” they will answer that money is the generally accepted medium of exchange. If you ask Google Images, it will show you many pictures of green pieces of paper. Virtually everyone agrees that […]
To listen to the audio version of this article click here. Prices move up and down, in the restless churn of our irredeemable monetary system. There are several schools of thought whose theories attempt to describe, if not predict, the next price move. The Different Theories on What Moves Gold and Silver Prices For example, […]
To listen to the audio version of this article click here Picture, if you can, a world in which gold circulates as the medium of exchange. People pay for everything, from groceries to rent, in gold. Employers pay wages in gold. Productive enterprises borrow gold to finance everything from food production to constructing apartment buildings. […]
To listen to the audio version of this article click here Many voices in the gold community are making a simple point. Look at the prices of oil, copper, and other commodities. They are skyrocketing. The mainstream explanation—shared by Keynesians, Monetarists, and many Austrians—is that the cause of this skyrocketing is the increase in the quantity of […]
To listen to the audio version of this article click here Can you remember back to when you were two or three years old? Toddlers often think that there are little people inside the TV (or maybe this was only true when the TV was about as deep as it was wide—and maybe kids today […]
The price of silver dropped a dollar, or over 4% on Wednesday. Some voices in the precious metals press want you to think that there is only one conceivable cause. We should coin a term for this form of logical fallacy: argumentum ad ignorantia. This is an argument of the form: “the cause must be […]
