World History

A century ago, Argentina was one of the world's wealthiest nations and the Argentine peso rivaled the dollar. Today, Argentina is famous for periodic hyperinflation.

The dollar became the dominant global currency not so much because of its own merits, but because of the self-destruction of the pound sterling caused by the British state and central bank.

While the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade have been well documented, people other than slave traders and slaveholders benefitted from it, with some surprising results.

In 1948, Ludwig Erhardt rescued a German economy that was in shambles simply by invoking free markets and currency reform. Our economy needs its Rothbard moment.

While Japan made some technological transfers to these places, prosperity came to them later, with the advent of free-market economies.

A century ago, Argentina was one of the world's wealthiest nations and the Argentine peso rivaled the dollar. Today, Argentina is famous for periodic hyperinflation.

Walter Bagehot, as Jim Grant writes, believed that bankers and central bankers should exhibit financial discipline. He would not recognize today's banking world.

Mises had hoped that democracy would lead to free societies after World War II ended. He did not foresee the illiberal turn in the West in the last decade.

Even when currency is backed by gold, governments have many political reasons to pursue national, territorial currencies. Now there are hundreds of national currencies. It didn't have to be this way. 

Adherents of leftist dogma increasingly push the notion that teachers should be permitted to distract, confuse, or influence their students by discussing their personal beliefs, ideas, and private activities and choices in the classroom.