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American Institute for Economic Research,
Great Barrington, Mass., Economic Education Bulletin, Vol XXV No 4, April,
1995, 135 pgs, sources
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Reviewer Comment:
This is a 'libertarian' pitch promoting the concept that the only stable money
is and always has been gold. The author also includes lengthy discussion of
'free banking': another basic libertatian policy desire. I disagee with much of
the historical issues, especially the role of barter, the extent to which gold
has been a major currency (money) throughout history, and the actual economic
results of the periods in the U.S. when 'free banking' was active. All these
theorie are controversial. Some authors support one or another of the three
ideas but not all three, while others reject all three. On pages 128 and 129
the author provides two graphs - the first depicts the purchasing power of the
dollar from 1792 to 2000 and the second depicts the purchasing power of gold
over the same period. They show that the increases and decreases of both are
identical until 1933 (obviously because the two were priced in a fixed ratio to
each other), but from then on the dollar as declined drastically while gold
also decreased between 1933 and 1970's because the price of gold was fixed to
that of the dollar, but the purching power of gold has increased dramatically
from the date it was freed from the fixed price in dollars.
But the book does contain a very extensive and useful bibliography related to
these subjects. I add a few references about these issues.
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Introduction
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Chapter I - The Origins of Gold as Money
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Chapter II - Free Banking and Gold
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Chapter III - The Gold Standard in Theory
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Chapter IV - The Classical Gold Standard
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Chapter V - Political and Legal issues
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Chpater VI -Subversion of the Gold Standard
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Chapter VII - Central Banking and Gold
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Chapter VIII - Gold as a Barometer and
Investment
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Chapter IX - The Future of Gold
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Appendix The Rise and Fall of the U.S. Dollar
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Nathan Lewis - Gold the Final Standard
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George Gilder - The Scandal of Money
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Michael Johnston - Going for Gold
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