Human Action is available through Amazon, after having been lost in the shuffle of editions out there. This is the only version that is the first edition published in 1949. It is, however, more expensive than buying directly from Mises.org.
While Austrians often trace out the effects that the issuance of unbacked currency has on the structure of production (the so-called Austrian Business Cycle Theory), there is also an effect upon individual households and the social mores surrounding the use of credit.
My favorite personal finance author, Dave Ramsey, writes on his website:
I’ve been struck by what a lost treasure is Essential of Economics by Faustino Ballve. For the person just getting oriented, it makes an excellent 2nd book after Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson. The book came out in the mid 1960s and stayed in print for some years, but then vanished for no good reason. This new edition is very beautiful and the text itself holds up marvelously well. It is organized into ten lessons of economics. The prose is stable, clean, and always interesting. It is not too long either, and none of it seems dated.
Here is a howler from Paul Krugman:
“Even drug dealers have stopped accepting the dollar,” Joseph Salerno said during a speech entitled “The return to the gold standard” last night.
Someone asked for handout on inflation to pass out in front of the Fed. This is quick. See what you think. It’s from 1950.
Taking into account not just rapid domestic expansion, but also the sharp fall in the greenback, broad, dollar-denominated money supply went up on an annualized basis, in the six months to January at rates of:
Is it any wonder prices of things are going ballistic and that stock markets are (just about) refusing to succumb to a darkening economic outlook?
Professor Bernanke is giving his testimony to Congress. Blah...Blah...Blah.
