Does Rothbard believe in Free banking or does he think the State should apply restrictions on banks, such as banning FRB and/or not repealing the Glass-Steagall Act?
I know he believes the state should not exist, but despite that, I can’t tell whether he believes that FRB should be banned.
I thought I read somewhere that he supported forcing the banks to operate on 100% reserves, but I’m not sure if he means through the market or through the government.
I’m personally an anarcho-capitalist, but I think that as long as government exists, then it should do something good like banning FRB. I tend to think like Rothbard does except on abortion.
Rothbard believed that FRB is a privilege granted by the State that essentially allows banks to engage in a form of legalized embezzlement.
According to Rothbard, current anti-fraudulent and embezzlement laws simply need to be applied to the field of banking, as they already do for any other business on the market, therefore, no special banking restriction or “regulation” needed to be invented. By this reasoning, outlawing FRB is actually an act of deregulation for it requires the removal of privileges granted to the banking industry
This of course does not necessarily mean that Rothbard would have objected to a special banking “restriction” if that is what was politically feasible.