Lawrence H. White in The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics in 2008 writes that inflation is the ongoing rise in the general level of prices. Thus, the overall purchasing power of the monetary unit, such as the U.S. dollar, falls over time and buys less each year. Economies on gold or silver standards sometimes experienced inflation, […Full Article]
Anna J. Schwartz in The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics in 2008 defined the U.S. money supply as the total of the currency, bills and coins, and various kinds of deposits that are close substitutes of money held at banks, credit unions, etc. The Federal Reserve predominately affects the money supply and does so by affecting […Full Article]
Measuring Worth provides calculations to determine the value of the U.S. dollar in history compared to now: George Washington, the first president of the United State of America, had a salary of $25,000 from 1789 to 1797. As a share of GDP, or Gross Domestic Product, “his salary as a share of GDP would rank […Full Article]
The FDIC stands for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. As of December 2007, it had $52.4 billion in reserves (the insurance fund) (audited) and as of March 2008, it had $52.8 billion. To read the FDIC financial reports, click on FDIC’s annual and financial reports. Alison Vekshin in Bloomberg in August 2008 mentioned the following: […Full Article]
Modern Money Mechanics The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago published Modern Money Mechanics describing bank reserves, deposit expansion, and how the U.S. money system works. The following websites contain digital versions of the workbook: Modern Money Mechanics on Scribd, Modern Money Mechanics on Internet Archive. Two Faces of Debt The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago […Full Article]
“The size of state and local government that maximizes the growth rate in GDP is 11.42 percent.” “In 1993, state and local spending was 15.68 percent of GDP” To read additional information on the federal government and whether it should downsize, click on Should the U.S. Federal Government Downsize to Increase Economic Output? (and Additional […Full Article]
The Joint Economic Committee Study done by the United States Congress in 1998 illustrated the impact of federal government size on the economy. The following chart shows 10-year growth rates in the economy since 1799. The average growth rate of the economy for any 10-year period since 1799 is 49.12%. Therefore, the growth rate of […Full Article]
The Armey Curve was developed by United States Representative Richard Armey. The term describes the concept that in anarchy [when there exists no government], the economic output of a country is low, and in a country where all decisions are made by government, economic output of the country is low. Therefore, a mix of private […Full Article]
WorkforAll had the following illustration showing the connection with the size of the federal government and how fast that country can grow its wealth. To read the entire article, click on EU : Causes of Growth differentials in Europe .
PLA had an article on economic growth: GDP stands for Gross Domestic Product and is the measure for economic production. The higher the GDP, the higher the economic production. For the twenty years for which Republican presidents submitted budgets, the average rate of GDP growth was 2.94%. For the twenty years in which Democratic presidents […Full Article]