|Peter Boettke|
I will be heading off this weekend to Jekyll Island, Georgia to participate in a Liberty Fund seminar run by Jerry Jordan on "Questions About Liberty and Responsibility at the Federal Reserve System Centennial." Others in attendance include Michael Bordo, Kevin Dowd, Alan Meltzer, Jerry O'Driscoll, Larry White, George Selgin, Steve Horwitz, etc. Bottom line: everyone in attendance has forgotten more about monetary theory and policy than I will ever learn, so I need to be very quiet and listen and learn.
Still, I do know this -- the conversation will be slightly different in tone and substance than this particular take on the history of the Fed (except for those parts where Michael Bordo is talking). BTW, for GMU folks, our former colleague Gary Richardson makes an appearance in this video. Anyway, just on the claim about life prior to the Fed and life after in terms of economic volitility see Selgin, Lastrapes and White.
As Milton Friedman wrote in Capitalism & Freedom any institution that is capable of bringing an economy to its knees due to a sincere error by a few is perhaps an institution we cannot afford to have. The Fed at 100 does give us a good point of departure for reconsideration.
Prof. Boettke, would you please make a request to Messrs. White, Selgin, Dowd, and Horwitz to consider increasing their blogging output at freebanking.org? The site is in critical danger of dying out (see the latest post by reigning MVP Kurt Schuler).
Without a blogosphere presence, I fear that the already minuscule market share of "free banking" in the marketplace of ideas will simply evaporate.
Posted by: John S | March 26, 2014 at 07:45 PM