money

  Seventeen thousand years ago, deep inside a cave in what is now the Dordogne, someone lifts a shallow stone lamp filled with melted animal fat and touches a flame to the wick. Light spills across the rock. The painter starts to work, and the bulls and horses of Lascaux begin to appear on the […]

  At its best, the scientific method is one of the most reliable tools humans have devised for generating knowledge. It has earned the authority and trust it commands because it is built to correct itself continuously. A claim, or “hypothesis,” is proposed, then tested. If it survives the initial test, it invites others to […]

A better law is welcome. But if legal text can’t tie a government’s hands, the fix has to be structural, not textual. On August 26, Argentina’s Chamber of Deputies approved a sweeping rewrite of the BCRA’s charter, 144 votes to 102, with 9 abstentions. The bill now moves to the Senate. It would bar the […]

  Argentina has had more IMF programs than almost any country in history. The count depends on how one tallies arrangements, waivers, and extensions, but the number exceeds twenty. The pattern is consistent: a crisis, a program, initial stabilization, eventual collapse, and a return to the Fund. The standard explanations cycle through familiar territory — […]

Milton Friedman is often quoted as having said something to the effect that inflation is taxation without legislation on multiple occasions during his career (cf. for example Friedman and Friedman 1980, Ch. 9). In other words, he pointed out that inflation is a tax without democratic legitimacy. Citizens do not vote on it. Other economists […]