"Easy Money" is Neither - Part I
Moneyball Book Review Analysis #7
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 tenth paragraph of the Forbes review:
Right-of-center types who should know better lament at times “easy money” that is allegedly having all sorts of market and economic impacts, all of which speaks to many important aspects of Shupe’s book. He’s not having it. He’s congenitally predisposed to seeing money as it is, not what the simplistic want it to be.
The common wisdom is that the Federal Reserve has great influence over the nation’s money supply and Fed action to increase money supply is the cause of inflated asset prices such as the stock market. That is too simplistic to be true, but it sounds good to nearly every economist, strategist, advisor and trust officer. Simplified but not simplistic, it is the Fed’s influence that is inflated.
To better understand the fallacy, it is best to begin at the beginning. What is the cause of money? What is the cause of prices? What is the cause of credit? Certainly, the author of The Moneyball Method and this Substack article are not the definitive source for any of that, but Ludwig von Mises Theory of Money and Credit would be an excellent place to learn from the best, “No individual and no nation need fear at any time to have less money than it needs.”
And to recognize the stature that money has earned, the first Chapter of my book is titled: A Tribute to Money:
Through its combination of exchange value, time value and accounting purposes, money is the electrical current of thriving civilizations. Not because of some intrinsic value, but because money transmits the virtues of production and trade throughout a culture.
Make no mistake, money is created by the productive minds of individuals - and the State produces nothing. Prices are the integrations of countless managers who trade voluntarily. Credit is created by past and future productive activity.
And to extend Mises’ comment a little further, the only money supply that matters is money in circulation. So, how does the concept of “easy money” take hold? From Chapter One:
The answer to that question was supplied in 1850 by Frederic Bastiat, “When plunder becomes a way of life, men create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.” And in a culture that reverses moral principles, money becomes debased because it is objectively good.
To learn more, please click the link below:
https://www.amazon.com/Moneyball-Method-Middle-Class-Manifesto-Objective/dp/1696009111/