26,343
edits
Federal Reserve System: Difference between revisions
no edit summary
PeterDuffy (talk | contribs) (link) |
PeterDuffy (talk | contribs) No edit summary |
||
| Line 23: | Line 23: | ||
According to Austrian School economist Dr. Murray Rothbard, credit expansion (i.e., easy money) coupled with interventionism beginning in the 1920s interfered with natural business cycles of the free market system, resulting in the stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression. Rothbard cites inflation as the primary cause of the depression: | According to Austrian School economist Dr. Murray Rothbard, credit expansion (i.e., easy money) coupled with interventionism beginning in the 1920s interfered with natural business cycles of the free market system, resulting in the stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression. Rothbard cites inflation as the primary cause of the depression: | ||
<blockquote>Government is inherently inflationary because it has, over the centuries, acquired control over the monetary system.... Inflation is a form of taxation, since the government can create new money out of thin air and use it to bid away resources from private individuals, who are barred by heavy penalty from similar “counterfeiting.”... | <blockquote> | ||
Government is inherently inflationary because it has, over the centuries, acquired control over the monetary system.... Inflation is a form of taxation, since the government can create new money out of thin air and use it to bid away resources from private individuals, who are barred by heavy penalty from similar “counterfeiting.”... | |||
Given the Federal Reserve System and its absolute power over the nation’s money, the federal government, since 1913, must bear complete responsibility for any inflation. The banks cannot inflate on their own; any credit expansion can only take place with the support and acquiescence of the federal government and its Federal Reserve authorities. The banks are virtual pawns of the government, and have been since 1913.<ref>Murray Rothbard, ''America’s Great Depression'' (Kansas City: Sheed and Ward, 1975), pp. 29, 33.</ref> | |||
</blockquote> | |||
== Abandonment of the gold standard == | == Abandonment of the gold standard == | ||