Selgin on the History of 100 Percent Reserve Banking

Steven Horwitz Although, as we have discussed before, Toby Baxendale is skeptical of fractional reserve free banking as might be defended by Selgin, White, and myself, he is seriously engaging both sides of the debate within Austrian Economics and is genuinely interested in finding some common ground.  With that in mind, he has asked me to post the following proposal to see what sort of reaction it gets from our readers.  I believe that it will also be posted on the Mises blog with the same purpose in mind.

|Peter Boettke| Toby Baxendale and the folks at the Cobden Centre have been working on various banking proposals that would demand that banking enterprises operate under the ordinary rules of property, contract and commerce.  Banks, in other words, would have no special privileges provide by law or politics.

Authored by Joseph Salerno, originally posted at The Circle Bastiat blog,

Steven Horwitz Three blogs posts within the last week are worthy of note for CP readers. Over at the Free Banking blog, Larry White has posted his testimony on fractional reserve banking from his appearance at Ron Paul's House subcommitte on monetary policy.  It's perhaps the most concise and thorough (and accurate) discussion of fractional reserve banking out there.

Steven Horwitz

Steven Horwitz Over at the Free Banking blog, George explains why even though he is sympathetic to much of the Market Monetarist theoretical argument, he is actively objecting to their call for more expansionary policy from the Fed.  He offers three reasons, with the third being the most interesting:

Steven Horwitz In his NY Times column Sunday, Paul Krugman tries, in vain, to construct a case for bank regulation in light of the problems at JP Morgan. As usual with Krugman, there’s much to disagree with, but I want to focus on his utterly ham-handed version of the history of US banking, which bears shockingly little resemblance to reality.