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Don't Set Growth Limits for the New Economy
By Robert D. McTeer Jr.
Introduction
I used to attend Cato's monetary conferences in the 1980s when I ran the Richmond Fed's Baltimore Branch, just up the road. The persistent criticism was hard to take, especially when it came from one of my former professors, Dick Timberlake, also an adjunct scholar of Cato. I still get Christmas cards from Dick every year. He writes good stuff about family activities. Sometimes he adds that the Fed is doing a pretty good job these days, but, of course, it still should be abolished.
Our original sin, according to Dick, apparently was the circumstances of our conception. We were created by government—by an act of Congress—rather than by nature and the market, like the gold standard. In short, his message was, "You've been doing a pretty good job, you bastards."
I thought of that recently while reading the book How to Think like Leonardo da Vinci. Because his prosperous father was not wed to his peasant mother, Leonardo was excluded from the Guild of Notaries and was unable to follow the profession of his father and grandfather. The world was thus denied what probably would have been the greatest accountant and notary of all time. Like da Vinci, we'll just have to do the best we can with the cards we're dealt.
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