Monthly Archives: February 2019

By J.D. ALT

Whenever I get frustrated—which is quite often these days—I vent some steam (and feel somewhat better) simply by imagining a response that Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez might give to some conservative pundit when they say, “Yes, but that’s going to increase deficit spending beyond anything imaginable!”

REPLY: “Excuse me, Anderson, I don’t use the term ‘deficit spending’ because it suggests or implies something which is demonstrably not true. It implies that when the federal government spends more dollars than it collects in taxes it is creating a debt that it will have to repay in the future. This is factually not the case. If the government spends three dollars and collects one dollar in taxes, it creates a ‘net spending’ of two dollars. It’s as simple as that.

Continue reading →

By J.D. ALT

I know nothing about motorcycles, and not much more about the U.S. Federal Reserve system—yet I feel compelled to dismantle, pick apart, and understand the latter for the simple reason that it seems to be a machine I’ve been riding on (and vaguely writing essays about) for some time now. So, it stands to reason I shouldn’t be ignorant of it. Not that I would get much help in this effort from American economists. Indeed, they seem intent on keeping the mechanism under wraps—as if it were a proprietary secret which they can only refer to in code. Or, perhaps, they are just the kind of bikers who leave it to their mechanic to know how the carburetor works. There are a few exceptions—one being Eric Tymoigne who saw fit to post a kind of on-line parts manual for anyone who wants to take the time, and make the mental effort, to figure the machine out. So, I have the parts spread out now on my workshop floor. Here’s my own interpretive consideration, thus far, of what I’m looking at:

Three Dollars

There are not just “U.S. dollars,” but three kinds of dollars—or, perhaps a better description: there are three “states of existence” a dollar jumps back and forth between. The most fundamental state of a U.S. dollar is as a “reserve” in the Federal Reserve banking system. “Reserves,” as they’re commonly referred to, are what you might think of as “real money”—the “actual thing” of which the other two states are what I’m perceiving to be “pre-reserve” and “post-reserve” variations.

Continue reading →