<blockquote>'This notion of Bernanke being “critical” further suggests that Wall Street believes or knows he has and will manipulate markets on their behalf...'
- Yves Smith,
Most Senators “Have Fingers in the Wind” on Bernanke, December 2, 2009
'I first realised that the world faced a serious financial crisis in the very near future in December 2005, as I prepared an Expert Witness Report ... on the subject of predatory lending.'
- Steve Keen,
Debtwatch No 41, December 2009: 4 years of Calling the GFC, December 1st, 2009</blockquote>
'So it is high time that we turn fundamental attention to the life-blood of our economy—money.'<blockquote>'FEW ECONOMIC SUBJECTS ARE more tangled, more confused than money. Wrangles abound over “tight money” vs. “easy money,” over the roles of the Federal Reserve System and the Treasury, over various versions of the gold standard, etc. Should the government pump money into the economy or siphon it out? Which branch of the government? Should it encourage credit or restrain it? Should it return to the gold standard? If so, at what rate? These and countless other questions multiply, seemingly without end.
Perhaps the Babel of views on the money question stems from man’s propensity to be “realistic,” i.e., to study only immediate political and economic problems. If we immerse ourselves wholly in day-to-day affairs, we cease making fundamental distinctions, or asking the really basic questions. Soon, basic issues are forgotten, and aimless drift is substituted for firm adherence to principle. Often we need to gain perspective, to stand aside from our everyday affairs in order to understand them more fully. This is particularly true in our economy, where interrelations are so intricate that we must isolate a few important factors, analyze them, and then trace their operations in the complex world. This was the point of “Crusoe economics,” a favorite device of classical economic theory. Analysis of Crusoe and Friday on a desert island, much abused by critics as irrelevant to today’s world, actually performed the very useful function of spotlighting the basic axioms of human action.
Of all the economic problems, money is possibly the most tangled, and perhaps where we most need perspective. Money, moreover, is the economic area most encrusted and entangled with centuries of government meddling. Many people—many economists—usually devoted to the free market stop short at money. Money, they insist, is different; it must be supplied by government and regulated by government. They never think of state control of money as interference in the free market; a free market in money is unthinkable to them. Governments must mint coins, issue paper, define “legal tender,” create central banks, pump money in and out, “stabilize the price level,” etc.
Historically, money was one of the first things controlled by government, and the free market “revolution” of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries made very little dent in the monetary sphere. So it is high time that we turn fundamental attention to the life-blood of our economy—money.
- Murray N. Rothbard,
What Has Government Done to Our Money, page 7, 8</blockquote>