Articles
Abolish the Income Tax and IRS, by
Sheldon Richman, 28 Oct 2014
Comments on a
New York Times article describing the IRS practice of seizing bank accounts of ordinary people merely on the suspicion of avoiding reporting requirements on deposits of $10,000 or more
The New York Times reports that the IRS seizes bank accounts of people whose only offense is routinely to make deposits of less than $10,000. If you do this enough times, the IRS may suspect you are trying to avoid the requirement that deposits of $10,000 or more be reported by the bank. The IRS keeps the money, but the depositors need not be charged with a crime. You read that right. The government demands notification whenever a bank customer deposits $10,000 or more. If you are merely suspected of avoiding that requirement, it can cost you big time. Welcome to the land of the free.
The Anatomy of Antitrust: An Interview With Dominick T. Armentano, by
Dominick T. Armentano,
Austrian Economics Newsletter, 1998
Discusses aspects of the United States v. Microsoft Corp case and related issues, such as product tying, exclusivity agreements, theories of compettion, price fixing, Robert Bork's views, government monopolies and Armentano's antitrust book
AEN: Would your case against antitrust apply in heavily regulated industries, like banking, for example?
ARMENTANO: ... Banks are heavily regulated in some ways and privileged in others. I would like to see those interventions repealed. But this is a different problem from that of antitrust. In banking, entry is not completely free. There are minimum capital requirements. But these are modest restrictions. So the analysis I would use on bank mergers would be the same as for any industry. Mergers take place because there are efficiency gains to be realized, and these mergers ultimately benefit consumers.
Anatomy of the Bank Run, by
Murray N. Rothbard,
The Free Market, Sep 1985
Explains fractional reserve banking, deposit insurance and monetary inflation
... the depositor who thinks he has $10,000 in a bank is misled; in a proportionate sense, there is only, say, $1,000 or less there. And yet, both the checking depositor and the savings depositor think that they can withdraw their money at any time on demand. Obviously, such a system, which is considered fraud when practiced by other businesses, rests on a confidence trick ...
The Banker's Bank, by
Sheldon Richman,
The Goal Is Freedom, 8 May 2009
Reviews the pre-history of the Federal Reserve and its origins in the Progressive Era, with various quotes from
The Mystery of Banking (1983) by Murray Rothbard
[The] corporate elite ... disliked the vigorous market competition of the late nineteenth century because it cost them market share, and their efforts to stifle competition through mergers had failed miserably. So the elite turned to the state for protection ... In no industry was this more true than in banking. There has hardly ever been anything we could call genuine free banking in America, even when a gold standard was in effect. States and the national government regulated the banks by, among other things, tying the issuance of currency to the holding of government bonds and banning interstate and intrastate branch banking.
Barack Obama: Corporatist, by
Sheldon Richman, 17 Apr 2012
Reviews Obama's corporate-friendly actions, particularly regarding donors and lobbyists and towards banks like Bank of America, while saying that government needs to be "responsive to the needs of people, not the needs of special interests"
Take Bank of America. BoA is what you'd expect of a financial institution coddled by government subsidies and privilege: inefficient, corrupt (unjustly foreclosing on homeowners), and a frequent corporate-welfare recipient ... Taibbi writes that BoA is "a de facto ward of the state that depends heavily upon public support ... It would have been liquidated and its component parts sold off, perhaps into a series of smaller regional businesses ... But Bank of America hasn't gone out of business, for the simple reason that our government has decided to make it the poster child for the "Too Big To Fail" concept."
Book Note: Rothbard: Man, Economy, and State: A Treatise on Economic Principles [PDF], by
Manuel S. Klausner,
New York University Law Review, Jun 1963
Review of Rothbard's
Man, Economy, and State with emphasis on areas of interest to lawyers
Is there any way to prevent a depression? Yes, states Rothbard, the answer is simple: "[A]void starting a boom. And to avoid starting a boom all that is necessary is to pursue a truly free-market policy in money, i.e., ... a policy of 100% specie reserves for banks and governments." The practice of fractional-reserve banking is what permits the banks to expand credit. To Rothbard, this basic banking procedure, whereby banks are not required to retain in their vaults the full amount of the liabilities that must be paid to their depositors on demand, is tantamount to fraud.
Cartels: Economists and Central Bankers, by Gary North, 11 Jul 2007
Discusses why economics textbooks never delve into the necessity of central banking
Those few people who understand the inherent moral fraud in all fractional reserve banking find that they are not understood by their peers. They also find that their arguments are not taken seriously by academic economists. They find it difficult to explain why the entire profession has made a monumental methodological error in not applying the theory of monopoly to central banking.
Competing Money Supplies, by Lawrence H. White,
The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, 2002
Discusses the arguments in favorand against free banking, with multiple private banks issuing their own notes, including historical precedents and proposals for the medium for note redemption
Competition among banks would, history indicates, compel all banks in the system to redeem their deposits and banknotes for a common basic money, such as gold or a standard paper currency issued by the government ... To attract customers, Citibank would be glad to accept deposits in Chase notes or Chase deposits, which it would then return to Chase for redemption at the clearinghouse ... The reason is that by agreeing to accept each other's notes and checks at par, both Citibank and Chase would make their own money more useful, and therefore more widely accepted.
Economic Fascism and the Bailout Economy, by Gary North, 7 Feb 2009
Discusses the fascist roots of the U.S. political system and events since September 2008 to extend government control of private institutions
The second event ... was the collapse of the American banking system that took place in September and October of 2008 ... [I]nstitutions that had survived since the mid-19th century went down: investment banks. These were banks that ... pooled large quantities of capital from private, wealthy investors. Within a matter of weeks, that business model collapsed. The investment banks scrambled to restructure their legal operations so as to be defined as commercial banks and therefore become eligible for the Federal bailout money. Meanwhile, huge commercial banks almost went bankrupt.
Les Economistes Libertaires, by Carl Watner,
Reason, Jan 1977
Discusses the French economists of the 19th century and in particular Gustave de Molinari and his thoughts on the provision of security and defense services by private agencies
Although Molinari made these compromises with the State, he was not so ready to concede any government involvement in monetary matters. As Vera Smith noted, the subject of centralized, "state controlled banking vs. free banking was one of the most keenly debated of its time in France ..." Molinari thought the money industry should be open to free competition. It was his view, says Gaetan Pirou, that "banks should be free to offer metal coins or paper money and the public [should be free] to choose whichever served their best interest."
Gold Policy in the 1930s, by
Richard H. Timberlake,
The Freeman, May 1999
Discusses U.S. government monetary policies during the 1930s, in particular, the Gold Reserve Act (1934) which allowed FDR to devalue the dollar, the Banking Act (1935) which reformed the FRS and the misguided policies of Treasury Secretary Morgenthau
Prior to the Banking Act, [member bank] reserve requirements were statutory at 7, 10, and 13 percent—not based on the size of the bank, but on the size of the city in which [it] was located. The larger the city, the higher the legal reserve requirement. The Banking Act of 1935 used the existing set of reserve requirements as the lower end of a new range of requirements: 7–14, 10–20, and 13–26 percent. Board of Governors' decisions in Washington were to specify the precise set of requirements in force at any time. Thus Fed policy could be restrictive by mandating an increase in requirements.
The Housing-Financial Meltdown Revisited, by
Sheldon Richman,
The Goal Is Freedom, 11 Oct 2013
Examines the history behind the 1933 Glass-Steagall act, its repeal in 1999, and the causes behind the 2008 financial meltdown, with quotes from "The Rise and Fall of Glass-Steagall" (2010) by Jeffrey Rogers Hummel and Warren C. Gibson, and other sources
According to folklore, Glass-Steagall was passed because of rampant conflict of interest and abuse among banks that both served savers and borrowers (commercial banking) and underwrote and sold securities (investment banking) ... Sen. Carter Glass realized his long-held goal of separating these two banking functions only after the 1933–34 so-called Pecora hearings in the U.S. Senate ... A few anecdotes and the potential for a conflict of interest were hardly good reasons for the government to arbitrarily separate financial functions, depriving customers of the benefits of integrated services.
In Defense of Bank Deposits: An Open Letter to Professor Omarova, by George Selgin, 12 Oct 2021
Criticizes
The People's Ledger: How to Democratize Money and Finance the Economy (2020) by Saule T. Omarova
It's true that, whenever a commercial bank makes a loan, it "creates" deposits by crediting the borrower's account ... But the equilibrium real (that is, inflation-adjusted) extent of bank lending is nevertheless a function of people's real demand for bank deposits; and every individual bank's contribution to total lending is ultimately dependent on the real demand for its deposits. That's why commercial banks typically compete aggressively for "core" deposits, and why those that fail to attract such deposits, or that try to succeed just by creating credit ex nihilo, tend to go out of business ...
Inflation Deflation Red-flation Blue-flation, by Matthew Beller,
Mises Daily, 24 Jul 2008
Explains what is inflation, what is money, contrasts "bad" vs. "not-bad" inflation and analyzes the Federal Reserve's recent and potential actions
When a depositor places a sum of money in a checking account at a fractional-reserve bank, the bank may loan out 90% of his deposit to another person with the assumption that the depositor will not withdraw all of his funds. When the bank extends such a loan, the depositor has effectively loaned his money to the borrower, but without his knowledge. In fact, both the depositor and the lender will have legal title to the same sum of money at the same time.
Jean-Baptiste Say: Neglected Champion of Laissez-Faire, by Larry J. Sechrest, 15 Jul 2000
Biographical and bibliographical essay, discussing Say's life, methodology and his writings on money, banking, the law of markets, entrepreneurship, capital, interest, value, utility, taxes and the state
["Banks of circulation"] hold fractional reserves, issue banknotes, and generate an interest income by discounting promissory notes and bills of exchange. ... Say even argues that these ... banks ... bestow a benefit upon society because they provide "the advantage of economizing capital, by reducing the amount of the sum kept in reserve." And if it happens that such fractional-reserve banknotes also supplant part of the specie that had been in circulation, then "the functions of the specie, that has been withdrawn, are just as well performed by the paper substituted in its stead."
Lysander Spooner, Part 1, by
Wendy McElroy,
Freedom Daily, Oct 2005
Lengthy biographical and bibliographical essay; from Spooner's birth to 1850-1860, examining his writings on economics, money, banking, mail delivery and slavery
[A]s stated in Poverty, [Spooner] believed private currency and unregulated banking were necessary conditions for working people to emerge from poverty ... Through the National Banking Act of 1863, Congress guaranteed the notes of authorized bankers and legally protected them from liability for debt. A national tax of 10 percent for all money not authorized by Congress was also established. Through such measures, Spooner believed that Congress held a de facto and unlawful monopoly over the most important industry to the American economy—banking.
The Many Monopolies, by
Charles W. Johnson,
The Freeman, Sep 2011
Describes four ways in which markets are distorted by government interventions, explains Benjamin Tucker's "Four Monopolies", examines five present-day monopolies and discusses Tucker's libertarian views
Tucker saw that monetary control not only secured monopoly profits for insulated banks, but also concentrated economic ownership throughout the economy, favoring the large, established businesses that large, established banks preferred to deal with. Tucker identified the Money Monopoly as an economic force in 1888—before the Fed and fiat currency, the FDIC, Fannie, Freddie, the IMF, or trillion-dollar bailouts to banks "too big to fail."
Related Topics:
Communications Technology,
Farming,
Free Market,
Free trade,
Health care,
Intellectual Property Laws,
Land,
Libertarianism,
Occupational Licensing,
Monopoly,
Transportation,
Benjamin Tucker
Martin Van Buren: The Greatest American President [PDF], by
Jeffrey Rogers Hummel,
The Independent Review, 1999
Discusses the Van Buren presidency and why he should be considered "the greatest president in American history", even when compared to other nonactivist presidents
Although traditional historians have subjected this era of relatively unregulated banking to trumped-up charges of financial instability, many economists are coming to agree that it was probably the best monetary system the United States has ever had. The alleged excesses of the fraudulent, insolvent, or highly speculative "wildcat" banks were highly exaggerated. Total losses suffered by banknote holders from 1836 to 1861 in all the states that enacted free-banking laws would not equal the losses for one year from an inflation of 2 percent, if superimposed onto the economy of 1860.
Milton Friedman, 1912-2006, by
Hans F. Sennholz, 7 Dec 2006
Memorial essay, but critical of professor Friedman's advocacy of monetary policies which would leave money issuance in hands of the government
The increasing importance of government obligations as bank assets gives great confidence to monetarists; however, it creates anxiety because government obligations merely are receipts for money spent and savings consumed ... The growing importance of government obligations in bank portfolios actually signals government consumption of economic substance and wealth. To commercial banks, it means the loss of real property securing the loans, and the addition of yet more government promises to tax, print and pay. A banking system built primarily on government IOUs is in a precarious condition.
Monetary Central Planning and the State, Part 31: Ludwig von Mises on the Case for Gold and a Free Banking System, by
Richard M. Ebeling,
Freedom Daily, Jul 1999
Examines Mises' thinking on why the gold standard is needed, why it is necessary for it not be subject to political manipulation, why free banking is needed and the ideological environment required for its success
The only monetary and banking system that would have the potential capability of minimizing, if not preventing, monetary abuses on the part of governments would be a free banking system ... Would the establishment of a truly free banking system make a country's monetary system impervious to state control, manipulation, and destruction? Mises admitted that it might not, because ultimately a sound monetary and banking system could be maintained only against the background of an ideology consistent with the classical-liberal ideals of individual freedom, a free-market economy, and free trade.
Monetary Central Planning and the State, Part 32: Friedrich A. Hayek and the Case for the Denationalization of Money, by
Richard M. Ebeling,
Freedom Daily, Aug 1999
Shows the progression of Hayek's thinking on money from 1945 when he was agreeable to central monetary control to 1976 when he advocated a system of private competing currencies
Hayek outlined a system of free, competitive private banking, outside the control of government, that would supply the money ... By "private competitive currencies," [he] did not mean a system of private and independent banks accepting deposits in, say, gold or silver, and issuing coins or paper notes representing fixed quantities of gold and silver, redeemable on demand. Instead, he suggested a system of alternative currencies in which each issuing bank would promise and attempt to keep the value of its private money constant through an expansion or contraction of its currency in circulation.
Monetary Central Planning and the State, Part 33: Murray N. Rothbard and the Case for a 100 Percent Gold Dollar, by
Richard M. Ebeling,
Freedom Daily, Sep 1999
Examines the arguments made by Rothbard in his 1962 essay "The Case for a 100 Percent Gold Dollar"
The problem, Rothbard explained in his 1962 article ..., is that the owners of the warehousing facilities often also operated as lenders of their own funds to potential borrowers in the market. That is, they began to function as bankers also. But these emerging bankers soon came to realize that they could extend additional loans to borrowers in the form of "notes" that looked exactly like the warehouse receipts issued to their gold and silver depositors. And that the look-alike notes were accepted in trade on the market ... This, [he] argued, was the beginning of "fractional-reserve banking."
Money and Gold in the 1920s and 1930s: An Austrian View, by
Joseph T. Salerno,
The Freeman, Oct 1999
Criticizes Richard Timberlake's
The Freeman articles on U.S. monetary policy during 1920-39, contrasting the British Banking School vs. Currency School definitions of inflation
In practice depositors could withdraw their savings deposits from commercial banks on demand, because the law that permitted the banks to insist on a waiting period was rarely if ever invoked. Similarly, while savings and loan associations were contractually obligated to "repurchase" their "shares" at par on request of the shareholder, they could legally delay such repurchase for shorter or longer periods ... Nonetheless such delays rarely occurred and "for many years savings and loan associations have made the proud boast 'every withdrawal paid upon demand' or some similar statement."
Money in the 1920s and 1930s, by
Richard Timberlake,
The Freeman, Apr 1999
Attempts to set the record straight on the economic and monetary events of the 1920s and early 1930s, arguing against both the Austrian view (as expressed by Murray Rothbard) and those who put the blame on stock market speculation
Four definable institutions created the money in use during the 1920s: the gold standard, the U.S. Treasury, the Federal Reserve System of 12 regional banks and the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, and the commercial banking system of 20,000-odd banks ... Only the gold standard and the Fed, with a notable assist from the Treasury, were important ... The commercial banks could only take what came their way from the central bank and the gold standard. They, too, created money. But their money-creating activities were all unintentional and strictly a byproduct of their lending operations.
New Declaration of Independence, by
Vince Miller,
Jarret Wollstein, Jan 2000
Prefaced by quoting the second paragraph of the original Declaration, lists—in a manner similar to the original—the outrages of the "modern American State" (referred to as "They") and ending with a list of demands
- They have destroyed our financial security. They have debauched the currency, substituting worthless paper for gold and silver. They have clandestinely seized our banking system–inflating currency and credit and looting the real wealth of the people.
... To restore the freedom, peace and prosperity of the people, we therefore demand: ...
- That the Federal Reserve, FDIC, FSLIC and currency laws be abolished, and that banking and insurance systems be left to the private sector in order to restore security to our banking system.
The Nightmare of the New Deal, Part 2, by George Leef,
Freedom Daily, Jan 2008
Review of
The Forgotten Man (2007) by Amity Shlaes; discusses the Schechter Supreme Court case which caused the National Recovery Administration (NRA) to be declared unconstitutional, the 1940 election and offers some concluding remarks
Second, I wish that Shlaes had spent a little more time on the causes of the 1929 crash and especially the banking panic in 1930. She leads the reader to understand that the failure of the Bank of the United States had a cataclysmic effect on the banking system but doesn't clearly explain precisely how the bank collapsed and why it had such widespread repercussions. Some discussion of fractional-reserve banking and America's banking laws that prevented interstate branch banking would have clarified a point that's a crucial part of the case that government intervention was the real culprit.
Non-Marxist Theories of Imperialism, by Alan Fairgate,
Reason, Feb 1976
Examines writings of critics of imperialism that are not based on Marxist analysis
Hobson's focus on the crucial role of overseas investment outlets naturally brought him to emphasize the strategic position of international bankers ('the central ganglion of international capitalism') in formulating imperialist policies ... Like Hobson, Moon attributed particular importance to the role of bankers: 'The most influential of all business groups, the bankers, may be said not only to have a direct interest in imperialism, through colonial investments, but to represent indirectly all the above-mentioned interests, for banks have financial fingers in every industrial pie' ...
Related Topics:
Latin America,
John Bright,
Richard Cobden,
John T. Flynn,
Foreign entanglements,
Garet Garrett,
Imperialism,
Leonard Liggio,
Militarism,
George Orwell,
Murray N. Rothbard,
Jean-Baptiste Say,
Joseph Schumpeter,
Adam Smith,
Joseph R. Stromberg,
William Graham Sumner
The Organization of Debt into Currency: On the Monetary Thought of Charles Holt Carroll, by Robert Blumen, 27 Apr 2006
Review of the fractional reserve banking and monetary arguments made by Charles Holt Carroll, a 19th century Massachusetts merchant, in a collection of 36 essays re-published in 1964 in
Organization of Debt into Currency and Other Papers
Fractional reserve banking is a term describing the capital structure of a bank that has loaned funds that were placed there on deposit. This is problematic because deposit and loan transactions are fundamentally different. A deposit is a contract for the storage of currency in the bank to be held in safekeeping and returned immediately on demand. The deposited funds must be available at all times should the depositor wish. In contrast, a loan is a transfer of ownership and availability for a definite term. The creditor in a loan transaction has the right to invest the funds ...
The Prophet of the Great Depression, by Frank Shostak, 4 Oct 2006
We can thus see here that as long as banks facilitate commodity credit, they should be seen as agents of wealth generation. In contrast, whenever banks embark on the lending of circulation credit they in fact become agents of real wealth destruction. As opposed to commodity credit, circulation credit is not supported by any real saving. This type of credit is just an empty claim created by banks.
The Reserve Requirement Debacle of 1935-1938, by
Richard Timberlake,
The Freeman, Jun 1999
Delves in greater detail into the reserve requirement policy of the Federal Reserve during 1935-38, discussed in the previous article "Gold Policy in the 1930s"
Before governments imposed legal reserve requirements, bankers maintained their own reserve accounts. The typical banker considered a variety of circumstances to determine the fraction of reserves he should keep against the bank's demand obligations: the volatility of his lending business, his bank's geographical location—rural or urban and its proximity to financial centers, the season of the year, and the general state of business ... Whatever his reserve position, the banker had his reserves on hand and knew he could use them to the fullest if any panic or emergency threatened.
Will 2016 Be a Good Year for the Corporate State?, by
Sheldon Richman,
The Goal Is Freedom, 13 Dec 2013
Considers the prospective 2016 U.S. presidential contenders preferred by "Wall Streeters", Hillary Clinton and Chris Christie, and how they line up with the aims of the corporate state, and further comments about South Africa under Mandela
Clinton recently spoke to a gathering in New York organized by Goldman Sachs, the giant, influential (and bailed-out) investment bank, ... attended by "a few hundred major investors." .... She got one thing right: The politicians and big bankers "all got into this mess together." The financial and housing collapse of 2008 was the fruit of that malign partnership of big government and big business ... But the big banks are doing fine now, thank you, and there's no reason to think that too-big-to-fail is over. It's regular people who are still hurting. So the bankers liked what they heard.