Customer Reviews

What Has Government Done to Our Money? and The Case for a 100 Percent Gold Dollar

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Murray N. Rothbard is now recognised as one of the foremost economists of the last century, and rightly so. Not only does he write in a clear concise manner, but he takes what could be an unintelligible subject and explains it in terms everyone can grasp.

In this beautiful hardbound book Rothbard gives us an exceptionally clear, detailed description of what money is and how it has come to be manipulated by governments and central bankers into almost worthless inflationary fiat paper currency.
He explains how gold became the most respected and trustworthy currency of choice, how this developed into the gold standard when our paper money was actually backed by a real asset; gold, and then how our governments and particularly their central bankers then manipulated the situation until all we were left with was no gold standard and only fiat paper currency of no "real" value because it no longer had the backing of gold. He then explains very clearly how this situation has led us to where we are now; inflation and the rapidly diminishing purchasing power of the paper money we hold (over the last 30 years the real value of $1 has dropped to around 4 cents!!!!!), unnecessary asset bubbles and the prospect of either hyperinflation or the greatest depression the world has ever seen arriving in the very near future!

Mr. Rothbard then rightly argues for a return to the gold standard because of it's inherent automatic adjustment mechanisms due to the scarcity of gold in the ground and the finite quantity already above ground. More importantly he advocates a 100% reserves gold standard which would put an end to fractional reserve banking and thus the ruinous credit creation/oversupply of money by our central bankers and thus an end to rampant inflation as we know it! This would also force our governments to be more accountable to their electorate in that any government allowing an unbalanced economy would face long recessions as the gold standard auto adjustment mechanisms brought it back into equilibrium; henceforth governments would be wise to provide an environment that favoured slow steady growth for their country with minimal boom bust cycles.

Furthermore Mr. Rothbard adequately counters the criticisms of his conclusions & recommendations in detail.

I think most of us that bother to look further than our noses and not live with our head in the sand now realise the United States financial position(in particular) is untenable in the long term and there is going to be a very painful outcome either slowly creeping through the financial world in a dollar crisis OR precipitated by a large financial event, like the probable implosion of huge OTC derivatives positions. Either way this will herald the end of the world's latest foray into fiat paper currency; it will fail as it must and as fiat currencies always have in the past.
When that happens, HOPEFULLY we will return to a 100% gold standard where our paper money, gold grams or whatever are 100% backed by gold; the only true currency, and sanity can once again return to the finances of our world!

I wholeheartedly recommend this book to EVERYONE in the hope that more of the populations of the world can become educated to what we have been "sold" by our governments with these worthless paper currencies we now all hold in the hope that there can be a groundswell of opinion and an overwhelming chorus to return to sanity and a 100% gold standard! We deserve it!!!

Rothbard writes this book in a style not often found in todays politically charged books. Rather than ranting and throwing shots at opposition, Rothbard cafefully walks the reader through economic history and theory, and very cafefully dissects those with opposing viewpoints.

This books will leave you wanting more, as its a quick read (if your like me it will be done in a day or two). For further reading, I suggest "The case against the Fed" also by Rothbard.

For a complete book on Rothbard's view of economics, see "Man, Economy, and State"

We have in fact a dual money system, Coins, Gold and Silver, are still minted according to the demands of our constitution. And it well proves the point of how dangerous is, and of how little worth today are the Fiat Dollars of the Federal Reserve. A $50 face value US gold coin can be gotten from the Treasury for just over $800 Federal reserve dollars, and rising by the day.
And recently a few people that still use the real money were hauled into court by the IRS for using those coins at face value to pay wages and purchase things. You see the problem was that in real [gold] money no one earned enough to have to share with the IRS and that greatly upset the IRS. So the IRS filed charges on a few people, a total of 176 counts and the jury failed to convict on even one because we do in fact have a dual money system in this country and the accused had done nothing illegal. It's simply not their fault the Federal Reserve [Fiat money] system is failing to hold its supposed value and has caused inflation at a current level of over 16 to 1, and still rising. Look it up, the court case, if you want a good insight into the current and very real story of the huge differences in our two monetary systems, both of which are doing exactly what people have been writing about for years..

Monetary theory is one of those subjects that (1) appeals to no one, (2) must be understood by everyone, and (3) is in fact roundly misunderstood by most of the so-called monetary experts.

What is the basis for my claim?

(1) Try talking to your friends about fiat money, commodity money, and fractional serve banking sometime. If they don't tune you out right away it's only because they're your friends. (2) Money, in an advanced society, is involved on at least one side of almost every transaction. Liberty, prosperity, and peace will not be around long if our ideas about money are flawed. (3) That industrialized societies have been subject to economic crises since the inception of the Industrial Revolution suggests that the most influential minds are influencing us in wrong ways.

What can you do? Get Rothbard's book and devour it.

You'll learn what money is, how it emerged, and how it's been corrupted by government and banking. You'll also understand why central banking is a polite name for central counterfeiting and why an autonomous gold standard is the only monetary system compatible with civilization.

Rothbard's book is an easy read and a must-read. Give copies to your friends. Send copies to the Fed. But read it yourself first. He wrote it for you.

George Ford Smith
author, "The Flight of the Barbarous Relic"

Other reviewers have already said all that needs to be said, so it is hard to add to the observations that the man had insight into what works in economics - not just theory but fact - and writes in a style that does not intimidate or overwhelm those who are novices.

There is probably nothing in this book that will be new to those who are already familiar with the issues of paper currency versus hard currency, but even those persons will be rewarded with an easy to read overview of the subject and will be have an excellent tool for introducing the subject to friends and relatives.

This is the great Murray Rothbard's popular and eminently readable introduction to money and the government destruction thereof. He presents the subject simply and in a way that makes for very interesting reading, in a field that is not known for producing page-turners. The book is short, and provides a solid understanding of money and how it works, even for someone with no background in economics. I don't know why I didn't read this when I was in high school; it should be required reading for every high school student. If thousands of years of history have shown anything at all, they have shown conclusively that one thing we can be absolutely certain of is the addiction of government to the plunder of its own people by debasing its money. Murray Rothbard has shown precisely how this is accomplished, as well as pointing out some of the moral implications of a fraudulent monetary system.

It seems to me that when almost everyone spends most of their lives focusing on acquiring, accumulating, and increasing money, they should pay at least minimal attention to the basics of what money fundamentally is, and how readily it can (and inevitably will) be destroyed by a government that has granted itself absolute control over the money mechanism. This book will explain all of that, and it is sure to get your attention.

I recommend this book to everyone I know. Rothbard has a way of making the whole concept of money so simple, from how money comes about, to the creation of banks, to the Federal Reserve. I read this book online a few years ago and have just ordered my own copy, because this is one of those books that you have to share with friends and family.

If more poeple knew of, and understood what this book is about; there would be no need for it to exist. This book should be a text book in every High School. This is the best explanation of what money is that I have ever read.

Although the subject of this book is highly controversial, and many readers may not accept the author's tenets, it is a must read.

Initially, the author postulates a fictional country with a monetary system based strictly on the gold standard and, to some extent, silver. He then explains, in layman's terms, how such a system would function and shows that it would be completely stable, self-correcting and inflation-free. He then introduces paper as "warehouse receipts," and demonstrates that their introduction wouldn't damage the system unless, by some means, more warehouse receipts were printed than there was money in the warehouses (banks) to back them up. He goes on to describe how such an expansion of the currency might be accomplished through central banks and explains how it might be done in such a way that the general public would no longer even make the connection between the warehouse receipts, now termed "money," and the supposed gold reserves. Finally, he analyses and assesses the economic impacts of such an inflation of the paper money supply on the society itself and on its interactions with other nations.

Following that, the author walks the reader through the various international agreements which have been consummated by governments down through the years in their efforts to allow government sponsored inflation while still maintaining some semblance of a stable international monetary system. Each agreement is evaluated and the reasons for its ultimate failure are identified.

Finally, the author offers his insight into the future if the nations of the world continue going in the economic direction they have chosen.

Thoughtful readers will likely see that Rothschild was right in the early 1800s, when he observed that there are very few people who "really understand the true value of gold." And he or she might easily conclude that there have been far too many economists since that time who didn't understand its value in a monetary system either; but that, sadly, too many politicians did. For it is obvious, from this reading, that the determined efforts of these men over the years to dissociate paper script (Dollars, Francs, Pounds, et. al) from money (gold and silver) have time-after-time led the nations of the world to the brink of economic disaster.

In any event, even if one can't recall the past, doesn't believe the author's analyses, and can't accept his forewarning; this book certainly provides food for thought and sheds a great deal of light on the mechanisms by which the U.S. government, in particular, and other governments, in general, manipulate their money supplies. For those reasons alone, it is well worth reading and, quite possibly, re-reading.

Murray Rothbard excels in What Has Government Done To Our Money. It is concise and easy to read yet powerful in its comprehensive coverage of money from its origins until modern times. Rothbard makes a compelling case for the gold standard by presenting the economic issues in terms that we can all understand.