Good read: The Mystery of Banking

mts · Nov 2, 2011

Occasionally we see some talk about fiat currencies on this forum. I just finally finished reading an interesting free eBook called "The Mystery of Banking" by Murray Rothbard. Keep in mind that he is for the gold standard so the information presented is slanted toward that opinion. It was also written back in the 80's so it is a little dated. But most of the information is still pertinent to today. I don't remember seeing this book mentioned out here so forgive me if someone else has already posted about it.

It's a long and sometimes complex read. But the history of the US and European banking systems is worth the price you pay for the book. I was amazed at just how screwed up our banking system is and was even before the Federal Reserve came along. We have a very long history of pure banking failure based on corruption and greed that I was simply not aware of. And things weren't any better in Europe (especially England).

You can find it on mises.org. Just google for "the mystery of banking rothbard" and the PDF file will be the first hit. Happy reading.

jim4silver · Nov 2, 2011

It looks like our friend MTS is slowly coming to the gold standard side of the debate. J/K

Rothbard has an audio book on youtube called history of banking, it is a 4 part set of videos where someone reads the book for those of us too lazy to read and like things read to us. I never listened to the whole thing, but from what I have heard there is a lot of interesting info in there like MTS says.

Jim

mts · Nov 3, 2011

jim4silver said:
It looks like our friend MTS is slowly coming to the gold standard side of the debate. J/K

I wouldn't quite say that. :wink:

I personally prefer the idea of a currency backed by a basket of commodities like lumber, gold, silver, oil, pork bellies, technology, and others. This is something that you have proposed in the past and I agree with it. I don't think a pure gold standard would work for many reasons.

However, I have also come to some other conclusions about fiat currencies by reading this book. I had always been a proponent of forcing the Fed to only inflate the money supply by a given amount per year. But the problem with that is that no one really knows what the "money supply" truly is. I've learned a lot from the book. But mostly what I've learned is that I actually know very little about how the Fed and banking really works. :icon_thumleft: