The political effects of monetary strangulation never fails to show up. That was the case during the 1930s and that is the case today.
The European political news over the weekend: Socialist Francois Hollande won the second round of the French presidential elections on an anti-austerity platform and in Greece the mainstream political parties took a major beating with extremist parties doing extremely well in yesterday’s Greek parliament vote.
The radical-leftist grouping Syriza is now the second largest party in the Greek parliament with 16.7% of the vote. The effectively neo-nazi party Golden Dawn Party won 7% and will now for the first time be represented in the Greek parliament. (I dare you to have a look at Golden Dawn’s logo…scary)
It does not exactly look like the “reform-through-tight-money” policy is working…just have a look at the European markets today…
PS The outcome of the French presidential election reminded me of what happened in France during the Great Depression. If you are interested in that topic you should have a look at Clark Johnson’s classic “Gold, France and the Great Depression”.
The Market Monetarist 
Dustin
/ May 7, 2012As Scott Sumner once said, a little more inflation or a little more socialism.
chirsten
/ May 8, 2012Hi Lars,
First of all I would like to express my appreciation of this great blog of yours . Secondly I would like to ask if you could recommend a basic monetary 101 book? I’m a 1 year at University of Copenhagen where i study economics but I’m looking for something besides the usual curriculum.
– Mads
Lars Christensen
/ May 8, 2012Mads, thank a lot for the kind words. Unfortunately I don’t think that there is a lot of good textbooks out there, but I would recommend Tyler Cowen’s and Alex Tabarrock’s “Modern Principles of Economics”. That is probably the textbook out there which comes closest to my own thinking.
See here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Modern-Principles-Economics-Tyler-Cowen/dp/1429239972/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1336429821&sr=8-1
Also have a look here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRIK4AXlUK4
Lars Christensen
/ May 8, 2012Mads,
This might also inspire you as a young student of economics:
https://marketmonetarist.com/2011/12/23/how-i-would-like-teach-econ-101/
https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/02/26/most-people-do-national-accounting-economics-including-most-austrians/
https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/04/27/daniel-lin-will-be-teaching-intermediate-micro-robert-clower-would-have-told-him-to-be-happy-about-it/
https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/03/31/economics-is-not-an-education-economics-is-a-state-of-the-mind/
chirsten
/ May 8, 2012Thanks a lot for the quick reply, Lars. I will definitely look in to “Modern Principles Of Economics” – it looks great! And thanks for linking to some of your earlier posts, it’s wonderful to have an alternative angle to economics than the some what narrow angle we are being taught at the University