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Central Banking: The Scourge Of Civilization

Authored by George Ford Smith via Mises Institute,

Apple builds and sells iPhones. I happen to own one of the older models, for the same reason I own a last-legs older model car. What if Apple could skip the build part and sell only the phone? The money saved would be an enormous boost to its bottom line. And if Apple passed the savings onto customers I could conceivably afford to upgrade.

Where would the phones come from? From a bookkeeping entry, of course.

Unfortunately, Apple's customers are very demanding and want the real things, so the build operations will have to stay. Perhaps their executives looked upon another business and envied their ability to sell loans without drawing down their savings. Customer with good credit wants a loan? Create the amount with a few taps on a keyboard and send him on his way.

The customer will spend his newly-acquired money, thus keeping people employed. Since he has good credit, he will be able to make monthly payments, and the lender, the bank, will normally apply his payments to extinguish the loan, with the interest being the bank's profit. Everyone's happy and the economy keeps expanding until it busts.

Experts will diagnose the bust. The usual fiends will get blamed. Government will step in to cure the problem its monetary and banking interventions helped create. The economy will slowly recover and continue on the same path as before, meaning banks will continue extending credit from ether rather than savings.

How did this racket get started? It's complicated. That's one reason it works-the crime doesn't exist if enough people don't see it.

Gold and silver coins have long served as money, until more recent times. For government, gold became an economic culprit during the Great Depression, as explained by JM Bullion,

The Great Depression officially began on October 28, 1929, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 13% of its value in a single day. The following day, it dropped an additional 12%, and in a matter of weeks, it was worth half as much as before.

In response, consumer confidence plummeted, and people began withdrawing their money from banks as quickly as possible. Banks, which work with reserves and don't keep much of their deposits on hand, began closing their doors. (emphasis added)

Bank-created money was disappearing, and prices fell accordingly. Let's expand on this.

The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 required the Fed to hold gold equal to only 40 percent of the currency it issued. By adjusting interest rates, the Fed could increase or decrease its stock of gold. Higher interest rates shifted "gold from the pockets of the public (both here and abroad) to the vaults of Federal Reserve district and member banks." Conversely, lower rates drove gold from the Fed's "coffers into the hands of the public both at home and overseas."

During the panics of 1930-1931 people were losing their trust in banks. A depositor with $1,000 in a shaky local bank could protect himself from that bank's failure by withdrawing $1,000 in currency. The dollars-fully redeemable in gold coin-gave him needed purchasing power. But the bank now had $1,000 less on which to pyramid new loans.

After Britain abandoned the gold standard on September 21, 1931, foreign holders of dollar assets began converting them into gold. Americans rightly feared Roosevelt would do the same when he took office on March 4, 1933. An owner of a $1,000 note or checking account would risk losing his legal ability to convert it into gold at $20.67 per ounce.

People knew what was real and they lined up at banks demanding gold. But the dual legality of fractional reserves and the promise of 100 percent redemption of notes and deposits made banks vulnerable to a panicked crowd demanding redemption. Thirty-six hours after his inauguration, Roosevelt shut down the banks for a week (the Bank Holiday of 1933). A month later he ordered Americans to surrender their gold or face heavy fines and imprisonment.

The inflationary Fed system wasn't limited to Wall Street, though stock market margin credit played a significant role during the 1920s. Businesses, farmers, real-estate borrowers and ordinary bank customers were also drinking the elixir of Fed bank credit.

Gold had powered the growth of civilization. "According to Herodotus, King Croesus, who ruled Lydia from around 560 to 546 B.C., was the first person to issue pure gold and pure silver coins." It only took the government-Fed cartel twenty years to get rid of it, 1913-1933.

What Have Been the Results?

Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, in addressing the Economics Club of New York in 2002, commented on the effects of Roosevelt's abandonment of gold:

Although the gold standard could hardly be portrayed as having produced a period of price tranquility, it was the case that the price level in 1929 was not much different, on net, from what it had been in 1800. But, in the two decades following the abandonment of the gold standard in 1933, the consumer price index in the United States nearly doubled. And, in the four decades after that, prices quintupled. Monetary policy, unleashed from the constraint of domestic gold convertibility, had allowed a persistent overissuance of money. As recently as a decade ago, central bankers, having witnessed more than a half-century of chronic inflation, appeared to confirm that a fiat currency was inherently subject to excess. (emphasis added)

Don't you love his use of "witnessed," as if central bankers were mere bystanders?

Inflation is Fed policy-a target of 2 percent. At that rate, and it's usually higher, the dollar loses roughly half its purchasing power in 35 years.

A month before Greenspan's speech, Governor Ben S. Bernanke of the Federal Reserve delivered a talk to the National Economics Club in Washington, DC, about making sure it doesn't happen here. The "it" refers to that terrible malady, falling prices, otherwise known as deflation. In what has become a legendary passage earning Bernanke the nickname "Helicopter Ben," he said:

Like gold, U.S. dollars have value only to the extent that they are strictly limited in supply. But the U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost. By increasing the number of U.S. dollars in circulation, or even by credibly threatening to do so, the U.S. government can also reduce the value of a dollar in terms of goods and services, which is equivalent to raising the prices in dollars of those goods and services. We conclude that, under a paper-money system, a determined government can always generate higher spending and hence positive inflation.

What's wrong with deflation? What's wrong with falling prices?

To the Fed and the economists who support it, deflation could bring on another terrible depression. Gold is much harder to inflate than paper, so it had to go. But even the printing press didn't cure unemployment, which stayed above 10 percent until WWII.

In his book, Less Than Zero: The Case for a Falling Price Level in a Growing Economy, George Selgin argues that a falling price level is a good thing when central banks either don't exist (US) or defend the gold standard (Britain). In a free market, one unhampered by the dual threat of government and the central bank, productivity improvements reduce unit costs, and prices should be allowed to reflect those reductions. Between 1882 and 1897, the general price level in the US fell approximately 1.7 percent annually while real output grew about 3 percent annually; during much of the same era, labor productivity increased by more than 2 ½ percent annually.

Falling prices is like getting a raise. Deliberately increasing prices, as the Fed does, steals the raise for first recipients of the new money. The "Great Depression" of 1873-1896, as Selgin called it, was a period of intense deflation because of "unprecedented advances in factor productivity."

Zero inflation might sound good, but it should be recognized as a stepping-stone towards something much better, Selgin advises.

Conclusion

In the words of Milton Friedman, "If a domestic money consists of a commodity, a pure gold standard or cowrie bead standard, the principles of monetary policy are very simple. There aren't any. The commodity money takes care of itself." Central banking is the scourge of civilization.

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/24/2026 - 22:35

Two climbers stranded on a treacherous cliffside 600 feet below a Big Sur roadway were dramatically airlifted to safety after rescuers swooped in with a helicopter Saturday evening. The high-stakes rescue that was caught on video, unfolded near Hurricane Point on Aug. 22, just north of Big Sur, according to the California Highway Patrol (CHP)....

The Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger should not be harder to resolve than the Middle East conflict. Yet California Attorney General Rob Bonta pulled out of talks at the last minute on Monday. Somehow, President Donald Trump is willing to sit down with the ayatollahs, who want to kill him and to destroy America, but Bonta...

In an ideal scenario, the Giants won’t need to rely on him much this season.

Reese has already solidified himself as a critical piece of the Giants defense and continued to impress.

The real estate agent's older sister called the "Nashville" alum's death a "massive tragedy."

The real estate agent's older sister called the "Nashville" alum's death a "massive tragedy."

World's Largest Refiner Says China's Oil Demand "Very Likely Peaked Last Year"

One of the most understated stories of 2026, and the reason why oil (and gas) aren't trading at persistently nosebleed levels (ignore diesel for the time being), has been China's unexpectedly weak oil demand. And while there has been much speculation surrounding the reason for this chronically weak oil demand, ranging from an accelerated - and offsetting - SPR drain, to a dramatic economic slowdown behind the scenes (or even in front of the scenes based on the latest dismal economic data), today for the first time we got a notable justification for this phenomenon coming from none other than the head of the nation’s - and world's - largest refiner,  who said that China’s oil demand probably peaked last year, earlier than previous estimates.

Clean energy development, electrification and low-carbon goals mean that the country’s oil demand has probably already crested, Sinopec Chairman Hou Qijun said Monday at an earnings briefing in Hong Kong, quoted by Bloomberg.

The company had previously forecast usage to top out in 2027, while the government is targeting oil and coal consumption to reach their limits during the current five-year plan period, which runs through 2030.

“Next year, even if the US-Iran conflict eases up, things might recover, but it won’t hit last year’s level,” Hou said. “So it’s very likely demand peaked last year.”

Since China is the world’s largest oil importer, an earlier start to reducing consumption would help rein in its world-leading emissions while raising questions for the world’s top crude drillers.

Sinopec, known officially as China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., said in its earnings report on Sunday that road fuel demand plummeted in the first half as consumers shied away from higher prices and shifted to electric vehicles. The declines are expected to narrow a bit in the second half because of supportive economic policies, said Tian Hongbin, a senior vice president at the company.

Even as fuel demand drops, the company is making sure domestic supply needs are met, President Wan Tao said during Monday’s briefing. It’s diversifying crude sources away from the Middle East while working with its suppliers in the region on shipping routes safe from the violence of the Iran War. The refiner has received 11 oil tankers previously stuck in the Persion Gulf that were carrying a combined 2.76 million tons of crude, he said.

The company typically keeps about 20 days of crude storage for refining purposes, and 15 days of refined products for marketing, Wan said. Inventory levels have remained steady during the war, and Sinopec will continue to follow directions from the government on its commercial storage levels, he added.

Tyler Durden Mon, 08/24/2026 - 22:10

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