“It is impossible to grasp the meaning of the idea of sound money if one does not realize that it was devised as an instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of governments. Ideologically it belongs in the same class with political constitutions and bills of rights. The demand for constitutional guarantees and for bills of rights was a reaction against arbitrary rule and the nonobservance of old customs by kings. The postulate of sound money was first brought up as a response to the princely practice of debasing the coinage.”

Ron Paul interviewed today on Bloomberg: Reporter: “As you are reflecting back on your campaign, are you unhappy with your party?” Ron Paul: “Well, it’s not my party.  I don’t like politics at all...  As far as being pleased I am super pleased with what’s working... I am super-energized and optimistic about what’s happening, because the ideas are changing.

CNBC’s John Carney schools Krugman and other critics of the gold standard on the Austrian rejection of the chimera of price stability (the Monetarist half of the Fed’s “dual mandate”), citing Rothbard, Salerno, and Herbener (emphasis added):

“The concepts of period of production [i.e., time-period AB] and duration of serviceableness [of the consumers’ good, i.e., time-period BC] are present in all human action. There is also a third time-period that enters into action. Each person has a general time-horizon, stretching from the present into the future, for which he plans various types of action.

I know I am spending too much time on these crazy LaRouchian claims — see my post on the argument that Austrian economics benefits the plutocrats, and therefore has been promoted by them.

[Great Wars and Great Leaders: A Libertarian Rebuttal (2010)]

[This article is excerpted from volume 2, chapter 10 of An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought (1995). An MP3 audio file of this chapter, narrated by Jeff Riggenbach, is available for download.]