2019 March Lara-Murphy Report
I like to be precise with my terminology, and so for example I draw a distinction between being smart (knowing a lot of facts) versus intelligent (having a powerful mind). In the same vein, I do not throw around the term genius lightly.
Someone could be very smart and very intelligent, but to be a genius you have to be a creative inventor. You have to produce new ideas and frameworks, which others will then argue over and refine.
The recently deceased R. Nelson Nash was smart and intelligent, but he was also a creative genius. He looked at dividend-paying whole life policies, and in particular their standard feature of policy loans, and realized, “That’s not merely an asset that provides a death benefit. It’s also a cashflow-management device that allows you to free yourself from bondage to commercial bankers.”
Where others saw merely protection, Nelson saw a way to become your own banker.
2019 February Lara-Murphy Report
HOW TO SECEDE FROM OUR CURRENT MONETARY REGIME ONE HOUSEHOLD AT A TIME: BY L. Carlos Lara Lara’s address to the IBC Think Tank, explaining the 3-fold purpose behind our goal of Building the 10%.
2018 November Lara-Murphy Report
THE FED HAS PAINTED ITSELF INTO A CORNER: BY Robert P. Murphy
With official unemployment low and CPI inflation on the rise, the Fed is under pressure to keep hiking rates, even though we predict this will crash the economy.
October 2018 Lara-Murphy Report
THE WEALTH EFFECT: BY L. Carlos Lara
The height of the stock market and even the strength of the dollar itself ultimately rest on public confidence in our financial system. And right now there’s not much to be confident about.
September 2018 Lara-Murphy Report
Bernie Sanders introduced a bill to tax Amazon and other large employers based on how much assistance their employees get from the feds. This is a terrible idea that would hurt workers.
August 2018 Lara-Murphy Report
THE RISE (AND FALL?) OF THE FED’S FLOOR SYSTEM – BY Robert P. Murphy
The Fed instituted a very important new policy in October 2008, which casts doubt upon the rationale for the bailouts. But this new approach may be unraveling.
April 2018 Lara-Murphy Report
FRACTIONAL RESERVE BANKING CAUSES THE BUSINESS CYCLE: by Robert P. Murphy
On April 16, I debated the Cato Institute’s George Selgin on the resolution, “Fractional Reserve Banking poses a threat to the stability of market economies.” I was arguing for the resolution, while George was against. This is an area where even self described Austro-libertarian economists are hotly divided, and moreover fractional reserve banking plays a key role in the book I co-authored with Carlos Lara (How Privatized Banking Really Works). For these reasons, it’s worth summarizing my case in the present article.