thanks for the links Tom!
it was incredibly annoying to watch. comments like “money today is created by the market” or “gold was rejected by the market” or “the fed does not determine interest rates” made me just pull on the little hair i got left… do you have any explanation for this? do they really believe what they’re saying or are they just playing dumb??? (very successfully if i might add)

in great contrast, i really appreciated your opening statement and comments. i just wish you had got that john fund guy with “you don’t have a plan” kind of idiotic comments.

Coates said that interest rates would have been higher without the Fed. What’s wrong with higher interest rates? Absolutely nothing. The people will make natural self-directive decisions accordingly.

The problem with having higher interest rates is that the fed can’t induce easy-credit policies as easily. When we have these government-induced boom-bust cycles followed by bailouts, it allows the government to steal more from everyone. This is important to central planners.

“We need a plan to stop planning.”

At this point I knew the FED apologists were COMPLETELY full of crap.

@Quidam: There are capitals gains taxes on precious metals as well as legal tender laws that make only contracts negotiated in dollars protected in courts of law. If you make a contract in gold and the contract goes sour you can’t take the claim to court.

Liberty Dollar was most likely seized because it resembled too much of the real US dollar. Von Nothous could have gone to much greater lengths to distinguish the two, his laziness/shrewdness(depending on your perspective) being his downfall.

@TomWoods: What debate? I watched the whole thing and it was kind of a joke. John Fund’s argument: Its not politically realist to abolish the Fed. Warren Coats’ argument: We didn’t mess up ALL the time.

What scares me the most is that this Warren Coats is as establishment as establishment can get. How many years in the IMF? If this is one of the most senior representatives of the central banking cartel and these are the best arguments he can formulate, how can the world not see these banksters for the incompetent fraudsters they are? BTW, great job.

Thank god Estonia largely ignored the IMF advises in early ’90s and that we did not have a comprehensive “plan” to go to free market. I guess that is one of the main reasons we are so much more economically freer and more prosperous than some of our co-sufferers from Soviet Union…

I think that the fact that there was no “plan” to dismantle Soviet Union is one of the reasons it vanished without much bloodshed and damage. Had there been a conference a la Jalta I guess there would have been much more trouble.

“Actually, my recollection from the debate is that Coats said interest rates would have been _lower_ under the gold standard.”

Absolutely insane. They get more and more creative with each passing year.

Thank you Tom and Gene.

I actually think John Fund was sort of on our side.

Too bad you guys didn’t have more time to address other things that Mr. Coats had to say. You did great for the time allotted.

Also, one of Coats’ arguments for the Fed was that they did a great job last fall of increasing liquidity to bail out the system. Did he not realize that without the Fed no crisis would have happened in the first place? And thus no effort on their part would have been required otherwise? Their efforts were basically to “patch” a problem that they themselves created.

And Tom, thanks for Meltdown. I bought it for my wife and have since given it to my friends. I hope this book will become good bait to stimulate interest in Austrian Econ. and to get more people interested in free markets and Liberty.

Watching this, I had to wonder “Could there have been two more incompetent advocates for the Fed?” What they didn’t concede, they lost. A vehement statist would have had more interesting responses; just as idiotic, but more interesting.

The whole issue reminded me of the essay “Do You Hate the State?” by Murray Rothbard. It seemed we had two state haters verses two conservatives who think that the fed is too powerful, but that it’s silly to abolish it. Count me as a button pusher. http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard75.html

Because Austrians left Mises on the deflation issue Coates can make the claim that since Volker the inflation rate has been about 3% per annum. This is a bogus argument when you take into account that the FED has generated both inflation and deflation during this period sometimes within the same year. Austrians are afraid to point this out because they favor deflation.

Monetary gyrations are always destructive whether inflation or deflation. A floating currency creates both inflationary and deflationary problems and as Mises teaches they can both exist at the same time.

Not only does the FED face trying to hit two targets with one arrow, unemployment (or economic contraction) and inflation, but they are faced with dealing with shortage problems in one industry created by deflation (oil for example) while these problems are axacerbated by inflationary malinvestment “bubbles” putting additional pressure on the shortages through artificial demand.

A floating currency is a total disaster.