El Opinador Compulsivo

Álvaro Vargas Llosa se pregunta si, dado el bastante calamitoso historial de la Reserva Federal en EEUU, el gobierno debe tener un monopolio sobre el dinero:

While the creation of the Federal Reserve was essentially a response to a series of bank runs, those crises were mild compared to the ones that were to follow. In 1913, the United States was under the gold standard. Although the government issued currency, the fact that currency was tied to gold meant the authorities could not manipulate the money supply easily. The Fed's initial mission was to guarantee the convertibility of deposits into currency on demand. A few decades later, the United States abandoned the gold standard and the Federal Reserve became the country's most powerful economic institution, exercising its monopoly in issuing currency based on the discretionary power of its board of governors.

All in all, financial instability has been far greater since the creation of the Federal Reserve. What did the Great Depression teach us? Essentially that even with the best of intentions, it is impossible for the authorities to manage the supply of money in accordance with the exact needs of the economy. A country's economy is the sum of millions of people making decisions that no single individual is in a position to anticipate. As economist Murray Rothbard showed in his book America's Great Depression, in the 1920s the Federal Reserve pumped up the money supply, expanding credit by more than 60 percent. Because the economy was very productive, this monetary expansion did not show up in the regular inflation figures. But, as is always the case with inflation, many resources went to the wrong kind of investments--until the crisis hit. The late Milton Friedman showed how the Fed made things worse by not providing the system with enough liquidity once the Depression was obvious.

(Visto en Cato at Liberty)