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Center for Monetary and Financial
Alternatives, CATO Institute, August 11, 2017, 5 pgs.
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Reviewer Comment:
This is a republication in 2017 of Dr. Selgin's critique of David Graeber's
book - Debt - and of Felix Martin's book - Money: The Unauthorized
Biography posted in 2014. For openers Selgin remarks that Graeber's book is
so terrible that he is considering assigning a intern to compile a list of the
economists who have praised it so that he can remember to refrain from taking
them seriously.
Typical Selgin polemics.
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Dr. Selgin describes Martin's writing style
as 'good prose'. His book is full of fun stories about money. But, he writes:
"Mr. Martin ends up exposing, not so much money's mysteries as his own
incomprehensive of it. He goes astray, first of all, in assuming that, because
credit rather than barter came before money, money consists, not of any
physical stuff, but solely of a more-or-less elaborate system of IOUs.
Whether credit came before money or not, there are many writers who define
money as a system of IOU's.
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He faults Martin's concept and writes 'With
the phrase "Adam Smith and his school," he lumps together every
thinker from John Locke and Bernard Mandeville to Fredrich Hayek, throwing some
later mathematical economists in for good measure, and excepting only John Law,
Walter Bagehot, and John Manard Keynes."
This is surely a polemical overstatement.
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He cites the Canadian banking system for its
'good record of financial stability'. For a balanced discussion comparing
Canadian banking system to the US and several other, please read Charles
Calomiris - Fragile by Design
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Apparently Dr. Selgin considered his prior
attacks on Graeber's book sufficient to ignore it in this diatribe.
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Charles W. Calomiris &Stephen Haber -
Fragile by Design: The political Origins of Banking Crises & Scarce
Credit.
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