Antal E. Fekete
Antal E. Fekete Articles
That central bankers are the quartermasters of inflation is no longer a controversial assertion. That much was admitted by central banker Alan Greenspan in his speech before the Economic Club of New York on December 19, 2002 (see: www....
Corruption of the Gold Standard
The gold standard is a monetary system which, unlike the regime of irredeemable currency, is free of coercion. Its main significance is not to be found in the stabilization of prices, which is neither...
Chapter 12
in which the gentle reader learns why the miller and the baker
did not succeed to commit the perfect crime
Having burnt their fingers once before, the miller and the baker proceeded very cautiously. They understood very...
Illicit Interest Arbitrage
There was nothing sinister about the appearance of the Discount House, as a precursor of the bank. Nor was there anything suspicious about the bill of the goldsmith, as a precursor of the bank note. Fraud came...
The Portuguese Bank Note Case
At the end of the previous Lecture I ran out of time and couldn't include the story of the Portuguese bank notes as I had intended. It is such an amusing and instructive story that I would not let you miss it...
Today the concept of legal tender refers to coercion. The government orders its subjects to accept irredeemable promises in payment for the real goods and real services they produce. If people refuse to comply with the order, then they put...
Evolution of Marketability
I dedicate this Lecture to the memory of Carl Menger (1840-1921), monetary scientist; the founder of the Austrian School of Economics; author of the greatest book ever on economics (Gundsätze der...
One Discount Rate or Many?
In the previous Lecture I explained how discounting bills of exchange was invented, how the discount rate appeared, and how changes in the propensity to consume made it go up or down. I also presented the...
