Customer Reviews

Case for Gold: A Minority Report of the United State Gold Commission

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(22)

 

 

This book first written in the early 1980's by the honorable Congressman from Texas and Lewis Lehrman discusses the feasibility of bringing back the gold standard. Moreover, Paul makes the case for the gold standard and the case for abolishing the Federal Reserve, which has to its credit: a Great Depression, bloated government growth, skyrocketing public and private debt, stagnating economic growth, and an inflationary boom in the 1970's.

Amidst, rampant inflation of the 1970's, a skyrocketing deficit... Things didn't look so good and a number of business and political leaders seriously enterained and supported the idea of reverting back to the gold standard. Sooner or later the financial institutions and fiat money cartel will abuse its power of the press and inflate us into another depression. Perhaps then instead of migrating to a world bank and currency structure, we will kill the fiat money machine once and for all.

Lastly consider these words: "Under a gold standard, the amount of credit that an economy can support is determined by the economy's tangible assets, since every credit instrument is ultimately a claim on some tangible asset. But government bonds are not backed by tangible wealth, only by the government's promise to pay out of future tax revenues... A large volume of new government bonds can be sold to the public only at progressively higher interest rates. Thus, government spending under a gold standard is severely limited.... In the absence of a gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation.... This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the hidden confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process..." Moreover, the author also makes it known that the gold standard wouldn't have the prolonged economic distortions and vicious boom-and-bust cycles that fiat money systems have. Who was the author? None other than Alan Greenspan in an essay called Gold and Economic Freedom. When Greenspan, the Federal Reserve Chief, is face-to-face with Ron Paul... in the back of his head, he knows Paul is right and that the central bank is wrong!

This book offers a well documented, detailed account of the history of money and banking in the United States. In it, Congressman Paul outlines why fractional-reserve banking, unenforced property rights and money not backed by hard assets cause inflation, and what the consequences of inflation really are. The concepts are fairly easy to grasp. Sadly, in a noble effort to achieve the greatest amount of integrity, and originally intended for an audience of higher caliber, this scholarly work is unlikely to be read by the average layperson. Albeit comprehensible by many, it combines two subjects - history and economics - that normally force all but the most steadfast inquirers of truth to avoid. I highly recommend this book to anybody interested in monetary policy and reform.

This book offers a well documented, detailed account of the history of money and banking in the United States. In it, Congressman Paul outlines why fractional-reserve banking, unenforced property rights and money not backed by hard assets cause inflation, and what the consequences of inflation really are. The concepts are fairly easy to grasp. Sadly, in a noble effort to achieve the greatest amount of integrity, and originally intended for an audience of higher caliber, this scholarly work is unlikely to be read by the average layperson. Albeit comprehensible by many, it combines two subjects - history and economics - that normally force all but the most steadfast inquirers of truth to avoid. I highly recommend this book to anybody interested in monetary policy and reform.

This book makes an excellent case for a return to a full gold standard. This is an idea that has been spurned by the economics mainstream, due in no small part to the influence of J.M. Keynes, who famously called gold the 'barbarous relic'. Fiat currencies, with their partner, fractional reserve banking, provide 'elasticity' to the money supply -- a sort of code word which means that they give to the government the ability to destroy the value of the currency at wil, inflating prices and causing a credit bubble which will inevitably pop, causing pain to both rich and poor.

This book is intended for the average educated reader, so do not expect a nuanced treatment of economic theory; yet what theory there is here is pretty clearly presented. If you like this book, you should also read Murray Rothbard's "The Case for the 100% Gold Dollar", "What has the government done to our money?"; also Griffin's "The Creature from Jekyll Island", and Bonner and Wiggin's recent work, "Empire of Debt".

Ron Paul is, as always, brilliant. In this book, Dr. Paul gives you the history of currency in our colonies and how they made the most logical decision for the definition of the dollar. It is a must read considering just how much money the Fed prints every year.

This book I gave four stars because it covers a very important subject. It is a bit difficult to read because the print is very small and also because in this book Ron Paul doesn't write in such layman terms as he does his other books. I found his other books much easier to read. And much easier to understand. This book was a bit of a chore to get through but I did learn some things in this book that I didn't learn in his other books. So if you're willing to struggle through a book like this you can learn some new things but if you're fairly new to the subject I would go for other books on the subject written by him or by others. His End the Fed book would be a good place to start or the book by Murray Rothbard The Case Against the Fed. However I'm very impressed with all the work Ron Paul had done way back in 1982 for this book. I'm very impressed with his knowledge of the subject despite not having gone to school for economics. At least I don't think he ever graduated with an economics degree. I think he was self-taught. In any event it's very impressive how much he knows about the history of money and the workings of the system. Take care and God bless.

A committee formed by President Ronald Reagan was formed to investigate the future role of hard money (gold-silver)in the world economy. From day one it was an utter sham. In 1981, Representative Ron Paul wrote the committee's minority report; like most minority reports it was totally ignored. If the many good suggestions authored by Rep. Paul back then had been adopted, we would probably not be in the world-wide economic mess that prevails now -- some 30-years later.

Much of his historical dialogue will be familar to astute readers of Austrian economic thinkers. However, he treated the subject with some fresh insight and offered concrete examples of the steps necessary to return to the pre-Federal Reserve, Centralized Banking world we live in today. A world that, (until then)was almost utterly devoid of government inspired boom-and-bust cycles and constant rampant inflation.

The catastrophic experiment in fiat currency(money)is quickly approaching a demise. Here us a blueprint on how a return to an economy based on real money.

Highly recommended -- even to Keyenesians who might even learn something.

All of the 1-star reviews are sent here from Mark Levin's website and are people that have not read the book. This book is intellectually pure and enlightening.

I suggest Amazon to remove all the 1 star 'reviews' because those 'reviewers' are attacking Ron Paul. They have not read a single word of this book and came up with a conclusion that the book is worth only 1 star. These 'reviewers' should be banned

I'm qualified to give this book a 5-star because I bought and read this book. Although this book was written 30 years ago, it is still a good read. There are few sentences from this book that I think it is worth to point out.

"Money does not make wealth. Only hard work creates wealth."

"... a gold standard holds in check the ability of the government officials to expand their power."

"Economic growth comes from productive efforts which are encouraged by savings, low interest rates, reliable currency, and minimal taxes."

He makes sense for the case for gold. Ron knows that the federal reserve is evil and that it needs to end.