The US has had the highest growth in productivity over the last 200 years that the world has ever seen(And living standards) even though it never had the ideal gold standard and in fact had a fiat standard for about half of that period. Now, maybe you can claim that without 'malinvesment' it would have been higher but thats a pretty darn good track record nonetheless
My point is that people still made very productive investments regardless of the so called 'malinvestment'(I'm not claiming it exists but if it does), it looks like capitalists are smarter than the theorists think
The only reason the US seemed more productive over the last couple of decades is because they burdened future generations with debt. The most productive economy is China or Japan.
I wonder if other countries have utilized the productivity of the computer as well as we have in the US?
Not sure what the point of this thread is. In a relatively free society, human progress marches on despite wars, bad gov't policy, asset bubbles and crashes ... I'm pretty sure you've covered this material in your other thread, so let's just call it resolved that you think Bernanke (and Greenspan before him) is doing a swell job and if he and the other central planners at the Fed can get M2 rising at 5%/year, the world will be a continually swell place. If they can get M2 rising at 10%/year, we will have arrived a Shangri-la.
If the government lies about inflation and has an incentive to debase(either through fiat issuance or 'phony' gold standards) then real rates were probably bellow the 'right level' for a lot of the history of the US. I'm wondering where is the 'mal' part of malinvestment
but China has squeezed 100 years of the industrial revolution into 20 years. Its pace of growth has now surpassed all known human limits.