history

Little did Hoover know that it was jut the opposite – poverty would skyrocket as the Great Depression hit America with full force.

“Taxes drive money”—these “money things” are accepted because there are taxes “backing them up”, not because they have embodied gold. As promised, this week I will begin try to dispel the view that coins used to be commodity monies.

History has a message for us: No fiat currency has lasted forever. Eventually, they all fail. Morgan Stanley reported in 2009 that there’s “no historical precedent” for an economy that exceeds a 250% debt-to-GDP ratio without experiencing…

A comprehensive outline of the Irish situation and with a retrospective on the steps leading us to the brink.

By William K. Black cross-posted from New Economic Perspectives In the Savings and Loan (S&L) debacle Speaker Wright became enraged at the Federal Home Loan Bank Board and the Department of Justice when he learned that the FBI was…

From Wikipedia (section to discuss underlined and bolded): Though the Company was becoming increasingly bold and ambitious in putting down resisting states, it was getting clearer that the Company was incapable of governing the vast…

World War II was the last war the United States fought with a formal declaration of war. The wars fought since have had congressional approval, both in the sense that resolutions were passed and that Congress appropriated funds, but the…

Here is an earthquake risk map of the U.S. from the Daily Mail.

By Rick Bookstaber In the Ming Dynasty, (1368 – 1644), China established an examination system as a merit-based approach for appointments to government office. There were three levels to the exams, with the final cut then coming through an…

Here is a good video from Bill Black on the origins of the Savings & Loan crisis in the U.S. The roots of the crisis go back to the stagflation of the 1970s when interest rates spiked under Paul Volcker. As S&L's borrowed short and…