"Easy Money" is Neither - Part III
Moneyball Book Review Analysis #9
On July 26, 2025, Forbes published a book review written by John Tamny of my book, The Moneyball Method. That review was also published on July 18, 2025, at RealClearMarkets.com. This brief essay will focus on a quote from the twelfth paragraph of the Forbes review:
The above is something that Shupe somewhat uniquely grasps. In his words, “money in circulation will always maintain its ideal level.” Again, forget what central banks, mints, and monetary authorities produce based on the phrenological belief of economists and their disciples that creation of so-called “money supply” instigates production, and instead recognizes what is true, that money in circulation is as natural as the production that money facilitates the exchange of.
To break that down in reverse order: 1) Production facilitates the exchange of money which facilitates production. 2) Quantitative Easing (QE) to manipulate money supply must be rationalized by subjective mental constructs. 3) Money in circulation is the concept that respects the virtues of money.
Yet, as Chapter Three states, a State monopoly over the nation’s currency is almost universally accepted:
Conforming to the belief that regulation is needed to protect society from innovation, specialization, low prices, productiveness, employment options and mass prosperity, business leaders accept guilt for being “selfish” and “materialistic.”
And to justify monetary intervention that is largely destructive, economic authorities need to imagine and create villains. Those include market failure, fraud prevention, irrational behavior, the greater good and “robber barons.” While those arguments may be irrational or fraudulent themselves, they sound good to nearly every economist, strategist, advisor and trust officer.
In turn, the finance industry supports them with “externality” theory, consumerism, behavioral economics, “stakeholder capitalism” and the welfare state.
However, markets do not fail. Instead, “money in circulation is as natural as the production that money facilitates,” which brings us to the elegance of markets, which begins with Say’s Law. Formulated in 1803 by Jean-Baptiste Say and introduced in Chapter Three, “People must produce to survive, excess supply can be traded and sold – and that creates demand for other products . . . it validates producers as the first consumers.”
But if supply creates its own demand and producers multiply when freedom is respected and enforced, what are rent-seeking collectivists to do?
Rapidly becoming irrelevant, the learned authorities with no productive skills were compelled to slow down the lifespan and leisure time advancements of mass production – for the “greater good.” Accordingly, the State’s economists dismissed Say’s Law, punitive regulations became the norm and markets were denigrated because they are objectively good.
To learn more, please click the link below:
https://www.amazon.com/Moneyball-Method-Middle-Class-Manifesto-Objective/dp/1696009111/