Money: Free and Unfree

by George Selgin

Overview

The United States has endured crippling financial crises, together with many other sorts of monetary disorder, throughout its history. Why? The popular answer has long been that U.S. banks have been under-regulated, that increased regulation and centralization over the years have helped, and that still more regulation and centralization is needed. In Money: Free and Unfree, George Selgin turns this conventional wisdom on its head. Through a series of painstakingly researched essays covering U.S. monetary history since before the Civil War, he traces U.S. financial disorders to their source in misguided government regulations. State governments were early culprits—but in taking advantage of the Civil War to dramatically increase its own involvement in the banking and currency system, the federal government set the stage for even worse problems to come. Instead of addressing the root causes of these crises, the Federal Reserve Act reinforced some of them, while dramatically increasing the potential for politically-motivated abuse of monetary policy. Selgin’s revisionist thesis may shock and anger champions of monetary orthodoxy, but they’ll be hard-pressed to refute the solid scholarship upon which that thesis rests.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781944424299
Publisher:	Cato Institute
Publication date:	06/16/2017
Pages:	382
Sales rank:	323,098
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

George Selgin is a senior fellow and director of the Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives at the Cato Institute and Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Georgia. His research covers a broad range of topics within the field of monetary economics, including monetary history, macroeconomic theory, and the history of monetary thought. He is the author of The Theory of Free Banking (Rowman & Littlefield, 1988); Bank Deregulation and Monetary Order (Routledge, 1996); Less Than Zero: The Case for a Falling Price Level in a Growing Economy (The Institute of Economic Affairs, 1997); and Good Money: Birmingham Button Makers, the Royal Mint, and the Beginnings of Modern Coinage (University of Michigan Press, 2008).

Table of Contents

Foreword Introduction Part I: Regulatory Sources of Financial Instability 1. “Central Banks as Sources of Financial Instability.” The Independent Review, Spring 2010. 2. “Legal Restrictions, Financial Weakening, and the Lender of Last Resort.” Cato Journal, Fall 1989. 3. “A Fiscal Theory of Government’s Role in Money” (with Lawrence H. White). Economic Inquiry, January 1999. Part II: Before the Fed 4. “The Suppression Of State Banknotes: A Reconsideration.” Economic Inquiry, October 2000. 5. “Monetary Reform and the Redemption of National Bank Notes, 1863–1913” (with Lawrence H. White). Business History Review, Summer 1994. 6. “New York’s Bank: The National Monetary Commission and the Founding of the Fed.” Cato Institute Policy Analysis, May 2016. Part III: The Federal Reserve Era 7. “The Rise and Fall of the Gold Standard in the United States.” Cato Institute Policy Analysis, June 2013. 8. “Has the Fed Been a Failure?” (with William D. Lastrapes and Lawrence H. White). Journal of Macroeconomics, September 2012. 9. “Operation Twist-The-Truth: How the Federal Reserve Misrepresents its History and Performance.” Cato Journal, Spring/Summer 2014. 10. “Liberty Street: Bagehotian Prescriptions for a 21st Century Money Market.” Cato Journal, Spring/Summer 2012.