Peter's Blog

Fed Critics’ Three Central-Banking Myths

Some free-marketers mistakenly believe that the Federal Reserve would be more effective if it operated in a different political environment or had more resources to control the monetary supply. Instead, as the Austrian school emphasizes, the problem is with central banking per se. Central planning never works, especially when the planning is over the money […]

Trump Demands Fed Easing to Finance Even Larger Deficits

While it’s correct to criticize the Federal Reserve for inevitably bungling monetary policy, the Trump administration is wrong to criticize Jerome Powell and the FOMC for failing to cut rates. Printing money, contrary to President Trumps belief, is never the answer.

The Market’s Safety Net: How Underwriters Laboratories Keeps Us Safe

Free-marketers rightly argue that the market is capable of providing many services that the government currently controls, from the choice and use of money to contract enforcement. There are even private means of regulating business, and as it turns out, we already benefit from them.

Industrial Policy’s Risky Revival

The American right, the progressive left, and politicians around the world have long been enamored with industrial policy. While it fell out of Americans’ favor for a time, industrial policy is making a resurgence in the Trump administration and accordingly must be refuted once again.

Trump’s Trade Trap: The Triffin Dilemma

As the Trump administration continues to navigate turbulent trade waters, it’s faced with an impossible set of economic trade-offs. These trade-offs, known as Triffin’s paradox, are key to understanding the United States’ current trade predicament.

Why the Money Supply Should Stay Fixed

Much of the current regime is predicated on the notion that ivory tower intellectuals are capable of determining and controlling the “optimal money supply.” In reality, this is preposterous. All the Fed’s tinkering accomplishes is cultural decline, rising prices, and misplaced anger at the private businesses that serve the economy.

How Inflation Undermines Culture and Values

Inflation has come to be one the defining economic phenomena of this generation. As the money supply grows seemingly without end, it’s easy to miss how the erosion of our money wreaks both economic and – more subtly– cultural havoc.

Free Markets: From Competition to Cooperation

Critics of free markets often argue that the competition found in markets is akin to animals in the wild; in the “dog-eat-dog” world of capitalism, they say, people must fight for survival. In this argument, however, lies insidious equivocation. On the contrary, markets are the most effective means for promoting both peace and social cooperation.

Why Critics of Free Markets Can’t Resist Free-Market Platforms

While free trade has never been universally popular in America, today its principles are under economic and moral attack from both the left and the right. Yet, the greatest concession that opponents of free trade make is, ironically, their love of the services that the market makes available to them.

What’s Behind the Logic of Today’s U.S. Tariff Policy?

Last week the Trump administration hinted at the possibility of new tariffs that would target the European Union and tech giant Apple. As the presidency continues to flip flop on this issue, American citizens should only conclude that the protectionist right is hopelessly deluded on trade.