Many on the left, such as hack journalist Naomi Klein, blame our current mess on Milton Friedman and his economic policies. Others, such as current Fed chairman, Ben Bernanke claim to be a follower of the Nobel prize winning economist. After admitting the Great Depression was the Federal Reserve’s fault, like Friedman and his colleague Anna Schwartz claimed, Bernanke said, “But thanks to you, we won’t do it again.” Since Friedman believed what caused the depression was rampant deflation, Bernanke presumably believes the Fed’s massive increase in the quantity of money will stabilize the economy. So is he following Friedman’s advice? Well not quite, you see, Friedman kinda thought we should go ahead and abolish the Federal Reserve:

As the Daily Reckoning puts it, “EVERY fiat currency since the Romans first began the practice in the first century has ended in devaluation and eventual collapse.” (4) There are two caveats to their argument, though: 1) if the fiat currency was ended for another reason, say the country was conquered and the currency replaced, then those examples are obviously ignored and 2) if the currency is still around today*, it also doesn’t count, because the currency will presumably fail in the future. The problem with this assessment is simple: What else can happen to a currency?

But if the economy doesn’t turnaround in a meaningful way by the end of President Obama’s first term, what is the next move for central planners? Just when you think they’ve ran out of bullets, they pull out a golden gun. Could the next move be a nudge towards a cashless society? Whispers of such an about-face have turned into legitimate policy debates in Japan. The total shift to electronic money would be designed, and sold to the Japanese people, as a way to fight the deflationary spiral they’ve battled for a decade plus (coined “the lost decade”). Nothing scares the central bankers more than deflation. And nothing works better to push through policy than fear. Americans have learned all about fear mongering through both the Bush and Obama administrations.

There are major advantages to 100% reserve banking. Right off the bat, banking panics are simply impossible. Since every bank has all its money on hand (or its customers aren’t contractually entitled to it at that time), there is no way that a run on the bank will cause a bank to go under. And therefore, large banking crises, such as the one we are seeing today, or saw in the Great Depression, or in the panics of 1819, 1837, 1857, 1871, 1893, 1907, etc. would never happen.

War is horrible… but it’s good for the economy. I cannot, for the life of me, think of a more dangerous myth than that. This facade has become so prevalent in the national conscience that it’s simply taken for granted… Seriously though, why would anyone actually believe this without at least a little skepticism? Wars are enormously destructive and shift resources from human needs, to human destruction.

In the long-run, even the Detroit Lions are a playoff team.