Consume now save later, get-rich-quick real estate speculation and a ‘Bread and Circuses’ mentality of our Gov’t are to blame as well. The Fed is simply a follower, way behind the curve on this one.
Buy this guy an Econ 101 text.
Agreed. A lot of this has to due with blind, naked greed and ‘irrational exuberance’ or whatever you want to call it. But I think that Dr. Paul is right to point at the Fed as the main ‘enabler’.
If you're talking about Dr. Paul he's read a lot of texts on economics. My guess is the rest of the slate of candidates would have trouble with 'Economics for Dummies'.
He’s got the texts written by Walter E. Williams and Milton Friedman. What do YOU read? John Maynard Keynes?
I think your econ 101 book (even one based on Keynesian ideas) would tell you that when you lower the price of something you see an increased demand of that thing. The fed held the price of borrowing dollars too low for too long and suckered a lot of consumers into borrowing. The Fed will always get rates wrong by definition because they don’t have perfect information on the markets natural supply and demand of dollars at any point in time. Therefore they will always cause “malinvestment” and exacerbate boom/bust cycles. (See Hayek on The Problem of Socialist Calculation.)