Writer James Grant, publisher of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, debates Professor Jeremey Seigel, author of several books on stock market investing, on NPR’s On Point program. Streaming audio is available, but as of yet I have been unable to find a podcast. Grant, known for his Austrian views on central banking and the business cycle, makes the point that central bankers are price controllers, and like other price controls, there is no way for someone outside the market to know what the price of credit should be; also that historically, paper money systems have been highly inflationary, resulting in the value of the currency going to zero. Seigel’s view is that the market is inherently unstable at a macro level, and that we need central banks to keep the economy on track.
Source link: http://blog.mises.org/4630/grant-debates-seigel-on-central-banking/
Grant Debates Seigel on Central Banking
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“Seigel’s view is that the market is inherently unstable at a macro level, and that we need central banks to keep the economy on track.”
Seigel has written some reasonably good books on stock market investing, and to his credit he did not buy into the technology and Internet craze of the late 1990s. However, as the above indicates, his understanding of monetary theory, in that it basically relies on a superficial assertion, leaves much to be desired. Mirroring the standard mainstream explanation, his view starkly illustrates the illogical, unscientific disconnect between so-called micro- and macroeconomics. Seigel’s view also illustrates just how far the mainstream needs to go reach the level of achievement of Mises’s monetary theory, which was developed over the 1912 to 1949 period.
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