What good does it do to respond to newspaper articles with comments? Absolutely none, probably. But it sometimes makes you feel better. So in response to this article, I responded with the following comment. (Even if it's never published, it certainly felt better to write it! ;-)
Good books for this crack up boom and flight to real values?
“The Theory of Money and Credit”, by Ludwig von Mises
“Human Action”, by Ludwig von Mises
“Man, Economy, and State”, by Murray Rothbard
“The Case Against the Fed”, by Murray Rothbard
“The Dollar Crisis”, by Richard Duncan
“Economics in One Lesson”, by Henry Hazlitt
“What has the Government Done to our Money?”, by Murray Rothbard
All the information is out there, and has been for many years, for example in the remarkable “Theory of Money and Credit”, written by Ludwig von Mises nearly one hundred years ago, in 1912! It’s just that nobody wanted to read this book and its common sense ideas and preferred to follow the self-serving idiocy of Keynes, instead. But the lesson is simple. If a counterfeiter creates fiduciary media out of thin air, everybody knows it is morally wrong, and financially irresponsible. What is even better is that everybody knows why it is such a terrible thing to allow. But for some bizarre reason, when a government carries out exactly the same action, creating fiduciary media out of thin air, it has been seen as being beneficial. To believe this is so, is absolute culpable madness. We are now paying the price for believing that counterfeiting by the state was a good thing. It never was. And it never will be. The solution is to stop the central banks of the world prolonging the agony by doing any more of this. Yes, there will be immediate pain, in the same way that heroin addicts deprived of morphine feel immediate pain. But have you ever seen someone who has been living on heroin for several years? Do you really want to our economies to be like that? It is time to stop the heroin. It is time to prick all of these credit bubbles to let the market find out who the really morally hazardous and most stupid lenders have been. It is either that or the crack up boom of Ludwig von Mises. There is no other option. If we avoid the hard choice, we are looking at a western financial system where Zimbabwe will look fiscally responsible. The choice is ours. The only real solution is to stop central banks and their government masters even being tempted by this madness; we must introduce a 100% reserve gold standard. Will governments contemplate this? Of course they won’t, because they can’t print gold and they would be forced to pay for all of their expenditures out of taxation. And the taxpayers would then realise what fools governments are and then massively decrease their scope and their powers. The 100% gold reserve standard is coming. The only question is how much pain we are prepared to tolerate before it does and how many years and wars we are prepared to let the fools in central banks and government fund with fiat currency before we remove them from power of managing our money. Socialist money is dead. We ought to introduce capitalist money instead. The sooner the better.
“The Theory of Money and Credit”, by Ludwig von Mises
“Human Action”, by Ludwig von Mises
“Man, Economy, and State”, by Murray Rothbard
“The Case Against the Fed”, by Murray Rothbard
“The Dollar Crisis”, by Richard Duncan
“Economics in One Lesson”, by Henry Hazlitt
“What has the Government Done to our Money?”, by Murray Rothbard
All the information is out there, and has been for many years, for example in the remarkable “Theory of Money and Credit”, written by Ludwig von Mises nearly one hundred years ago, in 1912! It’s just that nobody wanted to read this book and its common sense ideas and preferred to follow the self-serving idiocy of Keynes, instead. But the lesson is simple. If a counterfeiter creates fiduciary media out of thin air, everybody knows it is morally wrong, and financially irresponsible. What is even better is that everybody knows why it is such a terrible thing to allow. But for some bizarre reason, when a government carries out exactly the same action, creating fiduciary media out of thin air, it has been seen as being beneficial. To believe this is so, is absolute culpable madness. We are now paying the price for believing that counterfeiting by the state was a good thing. It never was. And it never will be. The solution is to stop the central banks of the world prolonging the agony by doing any more of this. Yes, there will be immediate pain, in the same way that heroin addicts deprived of morphine feel immediate pain. But have you ever seen someone who has been living on heroin for several years? Do you really want to our economies to be like that? It is time to stop the heroin. It is time to prick all of these credit bubbles to let the market find out who the really morally hazardous and most stupid lenders have been. It is either that or the crack up boom of Ludwig von Mises. There is no other option. If we avoid the hard choice, we are looking at a western financial system where Zimbabwe will look fiscally responsible. The choice is ours. The only real solution is to stop central banks and their government masters even being tempted by this madness; we must introduce a 100% reserve gold standard. Will governments contemplate this? Of course they won’t, because they can’t print gold and they would be forced to pay for all of their expenditures out of taxation. And the taxpayers would then realise what fools governments are and then massively decrease their scope and their powers. The 100% gold reserve standard is coming. The only question is how much pain we are prepared to tolerate before it does and how many years and wars we are prepared to let the fools in central banks and government fund with fiat currency before we remove them from power of managing our money. Socialist money is dead. We ought to introduce capitalist money instead. The sooner the better.
2 comments:
Well, sir, I for one have read your comments in Telegraph and can tell you that that link you left, to Von Mises' book, has opened up new vistas for this non-economist but economically active unit of humanity. I'm reading it right now - and enjoying every bit. It reads like a philosophical treatise, (philosophy is my 'area', according to my degree certificate) but is easier to grasp than, say, an enquiry on ethics or epistemology, possibly because it is so beautifully written. I'm going to enjoy all of it. I've passed it on to two mates who I know will be even more fascinated because they are much cleverer than I am, which is not saying much, probably.
Many thanks for your enriching post.
Jon
Hi Jon,
If you go to http://www.mises.org, you should be able to find most of the other books mentioned as freely available PDF files. A much more modern book (2005) which I'm afraid you'll have to buy with paper money, is "The Dollar Crisis" by Richard Duncan. You can read my review of that excellent book, here:
http://angloaustria.blogspot.com/2008/03/dollar-crisis.html
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