This book provides the intelligent layperson with a concise yet comprehensive overview of the theory, history, and practice of money and banking, with a focus on the United States. Although the author considers himself an Austrian school economist, most of the material in this book is a neutral presentation of historical facts and an objective description of the mechanics of money creation in today’s world.
The book is intended to be a reference for all readers, whether “Austrian” or not, and to bridge the gap by providing a crash course in the necessary theory and history while keeping the discussion tethered to current events.
— From the Introduction
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Robert P. Murphy is a Senior Fellow with the Mises Institute. He is the author of numerous books: Contra Krugman: Smashing the Errors of America’s Most Famous Keynesian; Chaos Theory; Lessons for the Young Economist; Choice: Cooperation, Enterprise, and Human Action; The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism; Understanding Bitcoin (with Silas Barta), among others. He is also host of The Human Action Podcast and The Bob Murphy Show.
Bob responds to James Rickards’ recent tweet on record U.S. gold exports driving an improved trade balance, walking through the official data on non-monetary gold, Trump-era tariff uncertainty, and the broader question of what chronic trade deficits really mean in a post-gold-standard world.
Bob revisits Böhm-Bawerk’s critique of the exploitation theory of interest to answer modern claims that billionaires like Elon Musk must have “stolen” their wealth from workers who supposedly create 100 percent of a firm’s value.
Bob talks with Dr. Peter Klein about the recent U.S. operation in Venezuela and the social-media backlash against “international law,” using it as a springboard to clarify what law is, how it can exist without a world government, and why Austrians care about polycentric legal orders.
Robert P. Murphy
Published 2021 by the Mises Institute.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Mises Institute
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ISBN: 978-1-61016-740-6
