The price works so well, so efficiently, that we are not aware of it most of the time.

The lesson for Asia is; if you have a central bank, have a floating exchange rate; if you want to have a fixed exchange rate, abolish your central bank and adopt a currency board instead. Either extreme; a fixed exchange rate through a currency board, but no central bank, or a central bank plus truly floating exchange rates; either of those is a tenable arrangement. But a pegged exchange rate with a central bank is a recipe for trouble.

China's productive system draws upon the other East Asian countries to a great extent. The volume of trade is much larger than the net amount being exported from China. China needs substantial reserves to finance all that.

You could not possibly maintain the current level of government taxation without the taxes being hidden, and they are hidden in two very different ways. They are hidden through withholding, but they are also hidden by being imposed on business, supposedly on business, when really, of course, business can't pay taxes, only people can pay taxes.

The power to determine the quantity of money... is too important, too pervasive, to be exercised by a few people, however public-spirited, if there is any feasible alternative. There is no need for such arbitrary power.

Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest?

The free market is not only a more efficient decision maker than even the wisest central planning body, but even more important, the free market keeps economic power widely dispersed.