The Folly of Central Banks

US Federal Reserve Bank

As we prepare for a monetary policy decision today by the South African Reserve Bank, and all and sundry fawn over every hollow word of Governor Gill Marcus,  it seems appropriate to consider once again whether we even need a central bank in the first place?  George F. Smith over at Mises.org offers up some pertinent questions that we should be asking of our central bank-controlled monetary system and concludes that there is no such thing as good monetary policy because monetary policy is necessarily managed by the central bank which is inherently an unnecessary and destructive institution.

In his article, Smith concludes,

“By enacting monetary policy, the Fed claims to provide “the nation with a safe, flexible, and stable monetary and financial system.” How can a monetary system be regarded as “safe” when monetary policy has stripped the dollar of 95 percent of its value?

But that’s only the beginning. Other questions have been circulating that challenge the Fed’s purpose.

1. Why did the CPI take off in earnest following FDR’s gold confiscation order of April 5, 1933, and Nixon/Volker’s leap of faith to a world of pure fiat paper on August 15, 1971?
2. Why did the value of the dollar, though volatile at times, nearly double between 1865 and 1912, a period when “monetary policy” was rudimentary at best and Fed monetary policy was only a pipe dream for a few?
3. What historical data underlie the Fed’s contention that massive money creation and huge deficits are the medicine needed to treat a bust? (Robert Higgs has rebuttedthe World War II argument about hyper-Keynesianism bringing prosperity.) Why was the depression of 1920–1921 in the United States short-lived in the absence of such interventions? Why is accommodation so highly regarded when Japan, in the same period, intervened to keep prices from falling but prolonged their recession for seven years?
4. What is the connection between the rise of central banking and the numerous hyperinflations in the twentieth century? What role did central banks play in making the European war that began in 1914 a world war? In what ways did Germany’s post-war hyperinflation foment World War II?
5. Given the presence of money in virtually all economic transactions, that money “is the nerve center of the economic system,” how can Bernanke justify saying, “I don’t think that monetary policy was a particularly important source of the crisis”?
6. Why is a government-enforced monetary cartel somehow good for the public, when public cartels are generally recognized as harmful?
7. If gold is such a “barbarous relic” and too inflexible to be used as money, why is the Fort Knox Bullion Depository, home of the gold Roosevelt confiscated in the 1930s, so heavily protected that only an invasion — or Fed policy — could threaten its security? Why does gold require such protection but not the stuff the Fed issues?
8. Why is it that if a private individual or firm prints money they’re engaged in the high crime of counterfeiting, which is another name for inflation, whereas when the Fed prints money it’s called “monetary policy” and is considered our best tool for avoiding inflation?

The only good monetary policy is no monetary policy.”

Read the full article here…

South African Reserve Bank

We would add one other question: If the money the central bank creates, and is the monopoly custodian over, is so good, why does it disallow by legislative force competing currencies and payments systems?

The answer, we think you’ll agree, lies within the question…