Lawrence H. White Profile Banner
Lawrence H. White Profile
Lawrence H. White

@lawrencehwhite1

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Studying private currencies since before they became cool. Prof of Economics at George Mason U. Latest book = Better Money: Gold, Fiat, or Bitcoin? (2023).

Fairfax, VA
Joined November 2014
Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
4 years
Almost everyone talking about the #coronavirus is displaying strong confirmation bias. Which only goes to prove what I’ve always said.
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
6 years
On the cover of the 22 October New Yorker: an unflattering caricature of rich men in suits. On the inside cover and first page: a two-page spread advertising suits for rich men.
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
2 years
We will cripple the Russian economy by cutting off their access to world markets. They will have to buy Russian. We will strengthen the American economy by cutting off our own access to world markets. Buy American! One of these two does not compute.
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
9 months
Anybody who doesn't understand that the economy's indefinite growth is in the value of output, not in the physical mass of output, is either ignorant, or a TV show host.
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
4 years
I have a joke about Bitcoin, but I’m hodling it.
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
3 years
Paul Krugman is not a historian of economic thought; he only role-plays one in his NYT opinion column. He has never understood the Austrian / Hayekian theory of the business cycle, so he thinks that it couldn't have been a serious rival to Keynes’s theory in the 1930s. But /1
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
3 years
Two years ago in the metaverse.
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
8 months
Milei wins handily! I look forward to @ocampo_emilio and his team systematically withdrawing the Argentine peso and winding down the central bank. It will be the blessed end of a high-Inflation era.
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
3 years
Will he be able to hit his targets?
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
3 years
As valid as any "technical analysis."
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
2 years
Biden approval rating: 42.7%. If you're not with the 57.3% majority who don't approve, then you know, that is extreme. Biden approvers are extremists. QED.
@disclosetv
Disclose.tv
2 years
NOW - White House: "When you are not with what majority of Americans are, then you know, that is extreme. That is an extreme way of thinking."
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
1 year
Why is the cover of a book on "Free Market" ideas adorned with government-issued coins rather than privately issued coins?
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
3 years
In an alternative metaverse:
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
3 years
Roubini refers to "irresponsible behavior"? Going on TV to say that BTC has zero use case, having made no effort to become better informed, THAT is irresponsible behavior.
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
2 years
87 years of capital accumulation.
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
2 years
Having just finished the first draft of a book ms. on fiat vs. gold vs. bitcoin, I am ready to be the guy on the right.
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
3 years
But the US dollar since 1971 *is* a fiat currency in the standard meaning of the term. Should we stop describing the dollar accurately?
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
3 years
New addition to my spring Money and Banking course reading list.
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
2 years
The Austrian business-cycle concept of unsustainable investment projects, illustrated.
@Copernicus2013
Igor Schatz
2 years
China demolishing unfinished buildings.. beautiful Keynesianism at work
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
3 years
Aug 1961 to Aug 1971, the geometric average US inflation rate (CPI-U) was 1.3% per year. Aug 1971 to Aug 1981, the average inflation rate was 8.5% per year. Hmmm. Did something change in August 1971?
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
1 year
Borrow short, lend long. Privatize the resulting profits, socialize the resulting losses. Is that any way to run a sound banking system?
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
2 years
@cafreiman Ricardo and Marx struggled with the "transformation problem" of accounting for the time-value of money in a labor-theory-of-value framework. Existential Comics: "Easy. It's theft."
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
1 year
Today I learned that Elon Musk doesn't understand how bond yields are determined. Not by the Treasury's choice of coupon rate, but by market determination of the bond's price via discounting its coupons and principal. Market discount rates up, bond prices down, bond yields up.
@elonmusk
Elon Musk
1 year
@paulg FDIC needs to change to unlimited coverage to stop bank runs and Treasury needs to stop issuing ridiculously high yield bills, such that it makes no sense to have money in a low interest rate bank “savings” account. Right now.
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Lawrence H. White
11 months
Professor Blanchard needs to update his thinking. Lowering inflation does not require, nor is it even associated with, higher unemployment in the last 40 years of US data. The Phillips Curve is dead. Source: McLeay and Tenreyro, NBER Macro Annual 2019, .
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@ojblanchard1
Olivier Blanchard
11 months
4. Short of a direct effect on inflation expectations, or mind control, or price/wage controls, this requires slowing down the economy, and thus increasing unemployment. To me, the increase in unemployment is causal, and needed to reduce inflation.
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
3 years
Answer: surveillance.
@CatoCMFA
Cato CMFA
3 years
What can public digital currencies accomplish that private digital currencies cannot?
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
1 month
This is the moment at which Milei cited Kirzner on the market as a discovery process.
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
1 year
My copies have arrived!
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
1 year
Forthcoming in March.
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
3 years
Carl Menger's influential Principles of Economics was published in 1871, 150 years ago. That's a lot of years. And yet I have spoken with a man who himself saw Menger at the University of Vienna.
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
7 months
The view that states are responsible for the introduction of money is just as implausible as the view that states are responsible for the introduction of language. Ditto for the view that state actions improve money or language.
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
4 years
In recognition of Hayek's birthday.
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
2 years
"MMTers never said to fight inflation with tax hikes."
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@StephanieKelton
Stephanie Kelton
2 years
MMT has obviously proven correct. It’s big claim was that massive deficits would not lead to runaway interest via bond vigilantes or insolvency. Huge win. MMTers never said to fight inflation with tax hikes. #Fail
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Lawrence H. White
4 years
Kamala Harris: "Equitable treatment means we all end up at the same place." Really? Are there no differences in human talents, tastes, or efforts? F. A. Hayek: "There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal."
@KamalaHarris
Kamala Harris
4 years
There’s a big difference between equality and equity.
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
1 year
Today I learned that Charlie Munger understands neither cryptocurrency nor statistics.
@steve_hanke
Steve Hanke
1 year
"A cryptocurrency is not a currency, not a commodity, and not a security. Instead, it's a gambling contract with a nearly 100 percent edge for the house." – Charlie Munger
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Lawrence H. White
8 months
Useful example for teaching students how it's a mistake to think that a lower rate of inflation (lower *rate of growth* in the price level) means a drop in the *level* of prices.
@JoeBiden
Joe Biden
8 months
Let me be clear to any corporation that hasn’t brought their prices back down even as inflation has come down: It’s time to stop the price gouging. Give American consumers a break.
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Lawrence H. White
4 years
I have a joke about fiat money, but I’m just going to declare that it’s funny.
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
3 years
I feel seen.
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
11 months
@n_cachanosky @vivicanosaok @ocampo_emilio @LANACION Primero te ignoran. Entonces se ríen de ti. Luego te difaman. Entonces ganas.
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
2 years
Given the checkered history of fiat monies, why do so many economists defend fiat standards? Mostly they defend an ideal version of how a fiat standard could perform, not how the typical fiat standard has performed in practice.
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Lawrence H. White
2 years
UK Exchequer: We'll be cutting taxes and borrowing massive sums. Market: We fear that the Bank of England will monetize the debt and amplify inflation. We're dumping £ bonds. Bank of England: To calm the bond market, we're going to monetize the debt.
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
5 years
Roses are red; Central banks are wack. Let monies compete. Bring free banking back.
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Lawrence H. White
3 years
Matt Stoller, a would-be anti-monopolist, seems unaware that crypto remittance services are helping to break up the market dominance of Western Union and MoneyGram, bringing down prices to consumers.
@matthewstoller
Matt Stoller
3 years
Cryptocurrencies should obviously be banned. Let's just stop playing passive aggressive here, crypto is interesting technology used almost entirely by scammers and money launderers. And forcing them to obey the law is the same as banning.
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
3 years
Prices go up when greed goes up. And how do we know when greed goes up? When we see prices go up!
@profwolff
Richard D. Wolff
3 years
Inflation occurs when employers raise prices. Profit drives their decisions. But they dare not publicly admit that reason. Instead they blame gov't or rising wages or "shortages" etc.: anything/anyone but themselves. Dont be fooled.
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Lawrence H. White
3 years
Price controls won’t fix broken supply chains. In fact they will discourage efforts to fix them. (HT to @GeorgeSelgin )
@guardian
The Guardian
3 years
We have a powerful weapon to fight inflation: price controls. It’s time we use it | Isabella Weber
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Lawrence H. White
11 months
30% in the first round for a candidate who wants to abolish the central bank and dollarize. Remarkable and encouraging, whatever disagreements I may have with Milei on other issues.
@MaryAnastasiaOG
MaryAnastasiaO'Grady
11 months
Javier Milei’s showing has sent a message to Buenos Aires—and the world—that the Argentine middle class may no longer accept a status quo that robs them of the fruits of their labor. via @WSJopinion
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
3 years
JR Hicks was there, and wrote in his 1967 essay “The Hayek Story”: /2
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
3 years
The argument should be that Bitcoin is worth it. Not that its costs are benefits.
@gladstein
Alex Gladstein 🌋 ⚡
3 years
Can your Proof-of-Stake coin do this?
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
3 years
You got to admire the boldness of someone who derives his policy advice on x from his failure to understand x.
@ProSyn
Project Syndicate
3 years
I don’t understand the need for cryptocurrencies, says @Harvard 's @JFrankelEcon . "Like many economists, I fail to see what problem they solve."
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
2 years
Bitcoin supply is not like wheat supply. Bitcoin's quantity is on a pre-determined path. Price below the current cost of "production" (mining) reduces mining but does nothing to reduce supply. The current cost of mining therefore gives zero support to the price of Bitcoin.
@APompliano
Anthony Pompliano 🌪
2 years
"Bitcoin’s price sits at the lower bound of its production cost for the first time since the March 2020 liquidity crisis as well. The idea here is that Bitcoin should at minimum be worth the cost of energy to produce it." - @WClementeIII
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
2 years
Hayek advocated social engineering? This is a stunning new achievement in misunderstanding and misrepresentation.
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Lawrence H. White
3 years
Krugman's NYT opinion column is here: For a very helpful account of the Austrian theory incorporating the economy's production possibilities frontier, see Roger Garrison here:
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
3 years
Building a bridge uses labor and capital. What follows? a) It is a waste. b) It is worth doing. c) Neither. Cost > 0 does not imply cost > benefit (waste). Nor is resource use itself a benefit. (Bridge to nowhere is waste.) Correct answer: c. OK? Now try "Bitcoin uses energy."
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
3 years
ON THIS DAY IN BITCOIN HISTORY. On 28 Dec. 2009, New Liberty Standard , the first market maker in Bitcoin, posted these bid and ask prices. To get inventory, NLS had in Oct. bought 5050 BTC from @marttimalmi for $5.02 in the first known BTC/USD trade.
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Lawrence H. White
5 months
Bindsell and Schaaf seem to think, mistakenly, that if BTC is not a common medium of exchange for everyone, it is not a useful medium of exchange for anyone for any purpose. The concept of a successful niche medium of exchange for legitimate purposes has eluded them.
@ecb
European Central Bank
5 months
Bitcoin has failed to become a global decentralised digital currency, instead falling victim to fraud and manipulation. The recent approval of an ETF doesn’t change the fact that Bitcoin is costly, slow and inconvenient, argues #TheECBBlog
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
2 years
Today I learned ...
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
3 years
in cases of slumping velocity. He called for stabilizing nominal income in a closed economy to avoid slumps due to an unsatisfied excess demand for money. See my article here:
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
3 years
@nic__carter My two cents: You are talking sense about hyperinflation and she is not. Monetary expansion dilutes purchasing power, driving both domestic price inflation and falling FX value. Blaming speculators for the collapse of the dollar's peg to gold is what Nixon did to shift blame.
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
3 years
If an asset’s value is zero with less than 100% probability, then it’s expected value is positive.
@steve_hanke
Steve Hanke
3 years
There is no exchange-rate model that is suitable for the determination of the Bitcoin/USD exchange rate. That’s why, although we know Bitcoin's price, it’s value is unknown & is probably ZERO. My latest interview with @YahooNews :
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
2 years
@AgnesCallard Why don’t they just hide the candy from you?
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
1 year
My new book is out, and early sales appear to be brisk.
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
11 months
@DanielRaisbeck Evidence in support of your thesis:
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
2 years
For a critical discussion of the Diamond-Dybvig model, see my The Theory of Monetary Institutions, ch. 6.
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
1 year
I had a rough weekend, feeling less than 100%, but I'm fine now, thanks.
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
4 years
Cryptographic money transmission, 1869.
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
8 months
A "public good," in economics jargon, is non-rival in consumption and non-excludable. Digital payment services are rival and excludable. Not a public good, even when nationalized like paper money. For centuries we used banknotes issued by private commercial banks.
@richardturrin
Richard Turrin
8 months
CBDCs still have not found their raison d'être @B_Eichengreen we have a right to expect digital payment as a public good just as gov't printed paper money. US and EU spend 2.4% & 1.4% of their GDP on payments. #fintech #tech #finserv @efipm @BrettKing
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
2 years
How bad has inflation gotten?
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
4 years
@theotheredmund My grad macro prof: “Either the world is log-linear or God is cruel.”
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
7 months
Why didn't Milei eliminate rather than devalue the official peg to the dollar, and eliminate exchange controls?
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
3 years
@steve_hanke @steve_hanke , do you support complete know-your-customer rules and the Financial Action Task Force? Don't you favor a greater degree of financial privacy?
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
3 years
Some numbers: The CBO projects a US federal budget deficit of $200b/mo. in 2021. The Fed is currently buying >$120b/mo. in securities. Thus the Fed is financing >60% of the deficit by expanding the monetary base ("printing money").
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
4 years
Econ professor here. Let's end the Fed, but let's be clear: it's a government agency. The parts that are nominally private (the Reserve Banks) get their budgets and policy orders from the Board of Governors. The Governors are federal employees and Presidential appointees.
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
3 years
Krugman thinks “This [Austrian] view had logical problems: If transferring resources out of investment goods causes mass unemployment, why didn’t the same thing happen when resources were being transferred in and away from other industries?” PK’s puzzle comes from his /3
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
8 months
Thanks to the generosity of new friends, I will be coming home from @labitconf in Buenos Aires with some typical products of Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina.
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
3 years
neglecting the macro context. The latter transfer is driven by loose monetary policy that drives the economy temporarily outside the LR ppf. By contrast, the collapse of the boom is accompanied by a “secondary contraction” that pulls the economy inside the ppf. /4
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
3 years
Krugman claims that “Hayek and Schumpeter were adamantly against any attempt to fight the Great Depression with monetary and fiscal stimulus.” Hayek thought “fiscal stimulus” a waste, yes. But in the fourth lecture of _Prices and Production_ he favored monetary expansion /5
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
1 year
Senator Warren is absolutely correct to insist that Bitcoin is not the same as a government fiat currency. But she is mistaken to regard that as a case against Bitcoin. Without differences there would be no point to Bitcoin.
@BitcoinNewsCom
Bitcoin News
1 year
Elizabeth Warren: #Bitcoin has no value because it’s not backed by governments, less valuable than art because you can’t “throw darts at it” 🧐
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
3 years
@b_nishanov @gladstein For those who don't remember where Yakutsk is:
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
3 years
Only on paper.
@Excellion
Samson Mow
3 years
The Federal Reserve is privately owned.
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
5 months
Once, in the 1990s, I joked that future historians of economic thought would describe me as a "minor pre-Selginian." The current issue of Reason Magazine comes close: it [] describes me as "Selgin's closest ideological ally in the free banking movement."
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
3 years
@NeerajKA In April 2020 the Fed reclassified trillions in savings accounts and started counting them in M1, so that exaggerates the M1 rise. Stick to M2 for an undistorted measure of recent monetary expansion. It's alarming enough.
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
8 months
I'm always suspicious when a firm (especially the #2 firm) wants its industry (including of course the #1 firm) to be regulated more strictly. What makes Circle think that government regulation would build trust in stablecoins better than capital adequacy and market performance?
@circle
Circle
1 year
The time has come for the United States to lead the development of global rules that will determine how the U.S. dollar moves on the internet. If the dollar is going to remain the world’s reserve currency, then we need to build trust in digital dollars & regulate stablecoins
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
3 years
That (rare) "wildcat banking" problems were due to absence of regulation is a myth: they were due to bad regulations. That less-restricted private monies around the world have been less trustworthy than more-restricted or government-issued monies is untrue. Study the history.
@openmarkets
Open Markets Institute
3 years
@GaryGensler : “I would also note to some thinking of investing in this space: private money often fails. We had a lot of private monies during the wildcat banking era of the mid-19th century.” #AspenSecurityForum #AspenSecurity #crypto #stablecoins
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
8 months
A new t-shirt I got today after speaking at the Latin American Bitcoin Conference ⁦ @labitconf ⁩. Gracias, ⁦ @escuelitabtc ⁩!
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
5 years
Weird. Author Matt Stoller is a fellow of the Open Markets Institute, whose mission is "to expose the dangers of monopolization." But here he says that no private firm should be allowed to challenge the currency and payment system monopoly of the Fed.
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
3 years
@vtg2 Is Deese nuts?
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
2 years
Irony: A BBC correspondent in Russia this morning, observing on NPR that people who get their news and political commentary from state media tend to repeat the government's talking points almost word for word.
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
3 years
What’s happening is higher inflation, not hyperinflation (except in Venezuela). It’s too bad that Twitter doesn’t allow Jack to edit his tweet.
@jack
jack
3 years
Hyperinflation is going to change everything. It’s happening.
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
3 years
Thanks to @WilliamJLuther for unearthing this nugget.
@WilliamJLuther
𝕎𝕚𝕝𝕝𝕚𝕒𝕞 𝕁. 𝕃𝕦𝕥𝕙𝕖𝕣
3 years
OG @lawrencehwhite1 writing about #cryptocurrencies in 1995. (Check out that @halfin reference in the opening!) And yet many on #bitcoin Twitter dismiss economists out of hand—as if none of us have ever thought seriously about these things. 🙄
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
4 years
Leading proposals for a "national digital currency" would have the US government enter the retail payments business. That would be bad for efficiency and privacy, I argue in today's Wall Street Journal.
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
1 year
Well said by Vahan Roth.
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Lawrence H. White
3 years
@jordanbpeterson You shouldn't. Ed Dolan has shown persuasively that ShadowStats far overstates a reasonable measure of US consumer prices.
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
3 years
As a UCLA econ grad student, I took a course on Marxism in the Phil dept from Julius Sensat ("Anti-Samuelson"). The class was me and 6 lefties. They never did the reading, and shouted at Sensat for allowing me to raise Bohm-Bawerk's refutation of Marx's price theory. True story!
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
2 years
I just finished a 75-minute virtual presentation + Q&A with 100+ economists and staff at the International Monetary Fund, talking about private money in general and why we shouldn't restrict stablecoins (although caveat emptor). Good questions. Mostly skeptical, as you'd expect.
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
2 months
I used to vote for the Libertarian presidential candidate to register a clear protest against the other candidates who wanted to enlarge the state. I regret that voting Libertarian won't do that this year.
@beinlibertarian
Being Libertarian
2 months
Vivek Ramaswamy, RFK Jr, and Donald Trump are scheduled to appear at the Libertarian Party National Convention at the end of the month. What are your thoughts?
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
4 years
Paul Krugman fails the ideological Turing test. He can't conceive of any sincere and non-deluded position being held by people whose policy views differ from his.
@nytopinion
New York Times Opinion
4 years
. @PaulKrugman responded to readers commenting on his column "Learn to Stop Worrying and Love Debt." Join the conversation here:
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
3 years
When I buy milk with a credit card, the IOU to my card issuer didn’t previously exist. I created it out of thin air. And yet when the Fed buys milk with new IOU-nothings, diluting the value of existing dollars, people act like it’s different somehow.
@TheStalwart
Joe Weisenthal
3 years
When any entity (a government or a company) sells a bond, the bond didn’t exist until it was sold. The bond was created out of thin air. And yet when the Fed creates reserves out of thin air, somehow that’s seen as some kind of scandalous money printing. But it’s the same thing.
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
3 years
For those who remember the Liberty Dollar project, Troy echoes US Attorney Anne M. Tompkins' absurd and outrageous claim that peacefully offering silver coins as an alternative to fiat dollars was a form of "domestic terrorism.”
@davetroy
Dave Troy
3 years
I can't stress this enough: the crypto attack on the dollar is not strictly a "pump and dump" or a "grift." It's an ideologically-driven attack on the legitimacy of fiat currency, the @federalreserve , and the incumbent financial system. It is the sequel to the January 6th attack.
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
8 months
When the majority votes for a monetary standard beyond the reach of its elected officials, that is democracy at the constitutional level tying the hands of democracy at the day-to-day political level.
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@lawrencehwhite1
Lawrence H. White
3 years
It won't be a 2% annual tax on an individual's stock of wealth, but a 20% tax on each 10% annual increment to the individual's stock of wealth. See? Very different.
@thehill
The Hill
3 years
. @SecYellen on the proposed tax which would pay for the Build Back Better act: "It's not a wealth tax, but a tax on unrealized capital gains of exceptionally wealthy individuals."
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