gold standard

This week we examine coinage from Roman times to the present in Western society.

“Taxes drive money”—these “money things” are accepted because there are taxes “backing them up”, not because they have embodied gold. As promised, this week I will begin try to dispel the view that coins used to be commodity monies.

Andy Lees takes a sceptical view of fiat currency and the excess credit it has created over the past forty years and uses a few charts to demonstrate his points.

Previous Modern Money primer blog posts were quite general and apply to all countries that use a domestic currency. It does not matter whether these currencies are pegged to a foreign currency or to a precious metal, or whether they are…

Richard Nixon unilaterally closed the gold window 40 years ago today. No longer would the U.S. permit other countries to exchange their dollars for gold and by breaking that link, he ended the Bretton Woods international financial regime…

We repeat: the “debt problem” is a currency problem and the currency must and will collapse. The global monetary system exists at the pleasure of the Fed, which legally exists at the pleasure of Congress, which as we have learned only has…

On July 13, 2011 Chairman Bernanke explained: "The reason people hold gold is protection against tail risk, really, really, bad outcomes. To the extent that the last few years have made people more worried about the potential of a major…

There seems to be an aggrieved sense on the part of creditor nations that after providing so much helpful funding to undisciplined debtors, the creditors are going to be left with losses. There is, they claim, something terribly unfair…

There is, and historically has been, some confusion surrounding sovereign currency. So, many policy makers and economists have had trouble understanding why the private sector would accept currency issued by government as it makes…

Felix Zulauf sees problems ahead because of private sector debt. Expansionary fiscal policy and deficit spending have allowed the real economy to cope while expansionary monetary policy has helped asset prices. Zulauf sees a pause in this…