Michael Foster wrote:
> I find it shocking that these issues are not covered in an elementary > education. They are not difficult to understand, and the average > voter could make up his mind based on information rather than the > general nonsense spewed forth by politicians. If the average person > knew how the banking system works, I doubt there would be a Federal > Reserve, and the authority to issue currency would be returned to the > Congress where it belongs. Why do you think control of the money supply should be directly in the hands of politicians, rather than under the control of a semi autonomous group run by specialists who spend their careers understanding this stuff? What is there about politicians which makes you think they'd do a better job than career economists? The Fed generally provides a certain amount of push-back when politicians want something stupid. The politicians, by definition, don't. Debtors benefit from inflation and the federal government is the world's biggest debtor. Putting the federal government in direct control of the money supply causes the incentives to be all wrong: Lots of incentive to "inflate away" all the world's problems and only indirect incentives to keep the money supply within bounds. Moving control of the money supply away from the people who benefit most strongly from inflation, and into the hands of businessmen, bankers, and economists, who are by and large opposed to inflation, doesn't seem like a bad idea to me.
