Tucker Carlson’s interview with Richard Werner:
Some commentary by PFS members:
Alessandro Fusillo:
It’s very interesting and in general I think that it’s a good thing that banking and money creation come to the attention of the general public. However, what I genuinely find astonishing is the following. Tucker Carlson says—and maybe he’s honest about it even if it’s seems incredible—that he was convinced that money creation is limited to central banks and that commercial banks do not create money out of thin air. So, a very important journalist with millions of followers hasn’t a clue about how money works, where it comes from, who controls it. I’m happy that even Werner’s remarks conveyed at least some information to Carlson.
What is even more surprising is that Richard Werner seems to be convinced that he discovered money creation (!) by an empirical research into Japanese banking practice of the late eighties/early nineties. He never mentions, not even in passing, anyone belonging to the Austrian School. As a mainstream economist I can accept that he is not aware of Mises or Rothbard, but Hayek, the controversy between Banking School and Currency School?
As a legal practitioner, for me money creation by commercial banks was an established fact since my first lesson of political economy at a very mainstream Italian university and I understood the inner workings of bank accounting when I first talked about the subject with a good friend who was in charge of accounting for a major Italian Bank. How can Werner claim that money creation by commercial banks is his discovery?
As far as methodology and conclusions are concerned, the interview is interesting as it is a disaster. Werner doesn’t understand the concepts of axioms and apriorism, he thinks that economy is about empirical research, and what is worst, he is genuinely convinced that money creation may be a factor of growth as long as commercial banks limit their lending of newly created money to entrepreneurial ventures: in his opinion inflation comes only from consumer credit and credit for asset purchases. The Austrian business cycle theory is completely lost on him: even Marxist business cycle theory (underconsumption and overproduction), which has some points of contact with the Austrian theory seems to be unknown to him. Further, the doubt that money created out of thin air may be cause of an economic distortion doesn’t even touch him, so it seems. He didn’t even read Hume. This is all consistent with a mainstream attitude towards economic studies but his complete unawareness of a different line of thought is truly surprising if it’s true. One may be opposed to Austrians and to their conclusions but the complete silence is telling. During the interview Werner criticizes Keynes quite harshly and part of his critiques are consistent with Austrian arguments. Can it be possible that doing some research on Keynes he never stumbled even upon Hayek’s critiques?
All in all I tend to exclude ignorance, so what remains is choice. Hence, Werner deliberately decided to present money creation out of thin air as his “discovery” based on empirical research during heroic times in Japan when there was no Internet and you had to wrestle information from the very people engaging in money creation. But this is quite obviously a fairy tale. Hence, there must be an aim that he pursues. His conclusion is that we should go back to a system of many small banks, coordinated by a central bank with money creation performed close to the demand of money by small businesses in line with the traditional German model. He is obviously against CBDCs and in favor of a traditional banking model: the flaw of the system, in Werner’s opinion, is not money creation and central banking as such, but the improper use of the newly created money for asset purchases and consumer credit instead of business credit for productive purposes. The system is safe, it’s just that it is used for the wrong purposes. So, he ends up being as Keynesian as any other mainstream economist. The idea of a daring scientific discovery by an independent researcher and Tucker Carlson’s show of being surprised by the information that Werner gave him during the interview can be useful for the banking lobby. I see this as part of the construction of a plan B: even if the CBDCs fail, there is the possibility to go back to a previous situation where centralization was limited to the central banks directing money creation and where lots of little local banks could satisfy the myth of the elastic money supply. So, we would be exactly back where we started.
Stephan Kinsella: I’m not convinced this is part of a Plan B. Werner is too egocentric to be part of anyone else’s plan. I’m not even sure he is spreading more confusion than prevails anyhow in regard to all matters monetary and financial.
Saifedean Ammous: I have been coming round to the idea that CBDCs are essentially a red herring. Everything that they can supposedly do can already be done with with regular banking. I think the psyop is to get people to focus on opposition to CBDCs while banks and central banks implement all their control mechanisms anyway. I tweeted this before:
Unpopular fact:
The US dollar is a Central Bank Digital Currency. There is no meaningful distinction between the two.
Unless it shuts down the US dollar, anti-CBDC legislation is meaningless.
— Saifedean Ammous (@saifedean) July 19, 2025
Tom DiLorenzo:When Tucker Carlson interviewed Ron Paul only two years ago he said that he was covering the Paul for President campaign in 2008 as a journalist, and when thousands of students at Michigan State University began chanting “End the Fed” he had no idea what was going on. Tucker confessed that he knew nothing at all about the subject that he was supposed to be covering as a journalist. He has also interviewed Dave Smith who spoke of the Austrian School during the interview, but it apparently went in one ear and out the other.
In the summer of 2021, Lordstown Motors held a ceremony.
Alessandro Fusillo
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