7+ hour, 2+ min ago  (341+ words) In 2025, a record number of Americans described the US healthcare system as "in crisis." "Well over a majority recognize it as having "major problems." Debates last year over Obamacare subsidies were a major catalyst for shutting down the government, which…...

18+ hour, 53+ min ago  (136+ words) Pandemics offer an alleged challenge to libertarians, as some argue that governments should have the power to order quarantines and impose vaccine requirements. It turns out that statism makes things worse'and that free markets offer the best solutions. Original article:…...

21+ hour, 36+ min ago  (181+ words) Why the nation's big banks grew dissatisfied with the post'Civil War National Banking System: an inflationary but rigid structure that lacked an "elastic currency" and pyramided credit on Wall Street, fueling the search for a central bank to coordinate inflation....

21+ hour, 29+ min ago  (169+ words) With the Democrats ascendant under Wilson, the reformers repackage the Aldrich Plan as the ostensibly decentralized, government-supervised Federal Reserve'essentially the same central bank under a new name, with Morgan-allied interests securing control. The Final Phase: Coping with the Democratic Ascendancy…...

21+ hour, 33+ min ago  (167+ words) Enter Charles A. Conant, theorist of "surplus capital." Rothbard shows how Conant's claim that mature economies must export capital abroad linked banking reform to economic imperialism'a theory that traveled from pro-imperialists to Wilshire, Hobson, and Lenin. Charles A. Conant, Surplus Capital, and…...

21+ hour, 30+ min ago  (156+ words) The Panic of 1907 becomes the catalyst. Rothbard traces the response'the Aldrich-Vreeland Act and the Aldrich-led National Monetary Commission'as elites studied European central banks and mobilized expert and business opinion toward a central bank. The Panic of 1907 and Mobilization for a…...

21+ hour, 34+ min ago  (173+ words) The reformers" first victory'the Gold Standard Act of 1900'and the maneuvering that followed, as Treasury secretaries Lyman Gage and Leslie Shaw used government deposits to aid the banks and inch the country toward central banking. The Gold Standard Act of…...

21+ hour, 35+ min ago  (181+ words) The first organized big-business push for banking reform. Rothbard recounts how the 189697 Indianapolis Monetary Convention, backed by Morgan- and Rockefeller-tied elites, enlisted economists to press for the gold standard and a centralized, more "elastic" banking system. The Beginnings of the…...

21+ hour, 31+ min ago  (168+ words) Around 1906, Jacob Schiff of Kuhn, Loeb and his relative Paul Warburg launch the explicit campaign for a US central bank, rallying the American Bankers Association and its leading commercial bankers behind banking reform. Jacob Schiff Ignites the Drive for a…...

21+ hour, 37+ min ago  (154+ words) Rothbard frames the 1913 Federal Reserve Act as part of the Progressive drive from laissez-faire toward centralized statism. Having failed to cartelize through the free market, big business turned to government to do the job'with intellectuals supplying the ideological cover. The…...