The ‘Count Dooku’ Of Austrian Economics Faces ‘Anakin’ Murphy

Mises Institute Jedi Bob “Anakin” Murphy finally faced his nemesis: George Mason University’s David Beckworth, deemed the “Count Dooku” of Austrian Economics by Bob for Beckworth’s apprenticeship under Misesian scholars and subsequent drift into mainstream circles.

They waged battle at last night’s ZeroHedge debate on the question: Should we abolish the Federal Reserve?

Whether this was the first Dooku-Skywalker battle in which Anakin loses his arm or the second where Dooku loses his head — you’ll have to decide. Below were the highlights for those short on time and listen to the full debate on X or Spotify:

“Lender of last resort”

Beckworth believes the lender of last resort function is necessary but advocated for “some kind of federal facility, something that’s approved by Congress… shifting the burden of being the lender of last resort or the bailouts to the federal government as opposed to the Federal Reserve.”

Murphy criticized the Fed’s motives during the GFC, arguing the ‘lender-of-last-resort’ principle was merely a pretext. He noted the irony that “right when they were saying all this stuff and buying the so-called ‘toxic assets’ is when the Fed started paying banks to not make loans to their customers,” referring to the introduction of interest on reserves in October 2008. Pretext aside… Murphy contended an omnipresent lender is not healthy: it “short-circuited” the necessary “cleansing process” of the market and resulted in favoritism rather than democratized crisis response: “Lehman goes down, others get saved.”

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But who will finance the wars?

Murphy: “Making it harder for your government to take your people into war is actually a good thing. It’s not a negative.”

Acknowledging that total elimination the Fed would be difficult, Murphy nonetheless insisted it is more realistic than reforming such a corrupt institution and could be possible with enough public will. “Once it was gone… it wouldn’t be there anymore” and will be a lot harder to reinstate.

Relying on minor reformations and trusting the benevolence of central bankers to self-restrain — Murphy argued — us naive: “Let’s just be practical. These are some of the most powerful people on planet earth that have access to printing presses.”