| |
Canyon Maple Publishing, New Berlin, N.Y., 2017, 196 pgs. index,
bibliography, notes, charts and tables.
|
|
| |
Reviewer comments -
This is a 'gold bug' theoretical treatise that attempts to support the advocacy
that the world financial system should be based on gold as a 'standard' of
value on which all financial transactions be based. The historical sections
mostly discuss the history of currency and do not give sufficient attention to
the monetary role of credit. The idea that there should and can be any type of
'final standard' of value is false. Value is not an attribute that can be fixed
to any material or imaterial good or service. Value is purely in the mind of
individuals and collectively in the 'mind' of society. The value of an item is
trasitory, dependent of supply and demand, relative to all other available
items to both seller and buyer. Proponents of using gold (or anything else) as
a fixed 'standard' generally cite as an analogy the international standards for
time, weight, length and other physical properties.
They do not consider that these standards are established by a monopoly power
that forces all individuals to accept them. Such a standard for value would
require (and in the past did require) a governing dictatorship. But even such a
powerful ruler could not maintain such a 'standard'. The physical 'standards'
are possible because BOTH the subjects being measured and the standard by which
they are measured are fixed naturally. The length of a brick is a fixed
characteristic of the brick, and the length of an inch is fixed by the
international organization. Consider, that inches always mainain a fixed
relationship with centmeters. But gold, dollars, yen, Euros continually change
in relation to each other.
In addition, the author's historical narrative in which he claims milenia of
use of gold as a standard of value and medium of exchange is false. Gold has
been used as such relatively rarely in comparison with silver and even more so
in comparison with credit.
|
|
| |
Introduction by George Gilder, another 'gold bug'. Read his own effort
- Scandal of Money. He begins with a story from
Margaret Mead, a long time discredited anthropoligist. But he provides an
excellent, easy, source to some important monetary facts. He notes that the
Bank of International Settlements writes that in 2016 the daily volume of
currency trade - exchange - was $5.1 Trillion per day - 73 times the value of
all exchange of goods and services, 25 times all global GDP. These figures are
reported in other sources as well.
But he adds: "Yet this frothy process arrives at no reliable values to
guide entrepreneurs and producers of real goods and services as they make their
investment decisions across borders."
I disagree, the process itself generates the instatenous, relative spot
relationships between the many kinds of money. If it did not, they would create
another process.
This introduction provides a good service, since Gilder has filled it with so
many of the false beliefs about the history of money, value, and gold. And
these are repeated by Lewis in the following chapters. But he is correct in
pointing out the fradulent expansion of the finance industry and the way that
arbitrageurs and speculators have siphoned off fortunes in paper wealth. But
the excesses of the financial industry have nothing to do with the idea that
gold could be a permanent and unchanging 'standard of value'. The same kind of
financiers used the same methods when silver or gold was used as a medium of
exchange - and credit as well.
|
|
| |
Preface
|
|
| |
Chapter 1 - The Study of Currency History
Right off the author excusses himself from considering the most important
component of the medium of exchange, credit. He is correct to note that history
is by its nature 'complicated'. And indeed, 'finance' is complicated as well.
That is all the more reason that it MUST be included in any any study of
economics, rather than'simplification by deliberately omitting discussion of
finance". He writes correctly: "The world of debt finance not only
includes thousands of loan-making banks,in over 150 countries, plus the usual
bonds, but also all manner of further complications including such things as
money market funds, strutured investments vehicles, and securitized debt
instruments..." It appears he is trying to excuse himself. But exchange of
goods and services throughout history also involved complicated relationships.
He attempts to discount the importance of this for the study of monetary
affairs by noteing thatm, after all, all this is accomplished with use of a
single measure in each country - for instance dollars, Euros. yen, etcetera.
And yes, as he writes, in the19th century the dollar was 'linked' to gold, and
in the1
|
|
| |
Chapter 2 - The Ancient World, 3500 B.C. - 400 A.D.
|
|
| |
Chapter 3 - The Medieval Era, 400 - 1500
|
|
| |
Chapter 4 - The Bimetallic Era, 1500 - 1850
|
|
| |
Chapter 5 - The Classical Gold Standard, 1850 - 1914
|
|
| |
Chapter 6 - The Interwar Period, 1914 - 1944
|
|
| |
Chapter 7 - The Bretton Woods Period, 1944 - 1971
|
|
| |
Chapter 8 - The Floating Currency Era, 1971 -
|
|
| |
Chapter 9 - Conclusions
|
|
 |
Gilder, George - Scandal of Money
|
|
|
Mishkin, Frederic S. - The Economics of Money, Banking
&Financial Markets Ninth Edition
|
|
|
Frederic Mishkin - The Economnics of Money, Banking, and Financial
Masrkets Fifth Edition
|
|
|
Kay, John - Other People's Money
|
|
|
von Mises, Ludwig - The Theory of Money and Credit
|
|
|
Melloan, George - The Great Money Binge
|
|
|
George Selgin - Money Free and Unfree
|
|
|
Podany, Amanda - Ancient Mesopotamia
|
|
|
Graeber, David - Debt The First 5,000 Years
|
|
|
Wetherford, Jack - The History of Money
|
|
|
Wray, L.Randall - Modern Money Theory
|
|
|
Ferguson, Niall - The Assent of Money
|
|
|
Martin, Felix - Money - The Unauthorized Biography
|
|
|
Ingham Geoffrey - The Nature of Money
|
|
|
Davies, Glyn - History of Money
|
|
|
Newman, Patrick - Review of Monetary Regimes and Inflation
|
|
|
Bernholz, Peter - Monetary Regimes and Inflation
|
|
|
Mehrling, Perry - The New Lombard Street: How the Fed Became the
Dealer of Last Resort
|
|
|
Salsman, Richard - Gold and Liberty
|
|
|
Michael Johnston - Going for Gold
|
|
