Money Mischief: Episodes in Monetary History

Front Cover
HMH, Mar 31, 1994 - Business & Economics - 304 pages
The Nobel Prize–winning economist explains how value is created, and how that affects everything from your paycheck to global markets.
 
In this “lively, enlightening introduction to monetary history” (Kirkus Reviews), one of the leading figures of the Chicago school of economics that rejected the theories of John Maynard Keynes offers a journey through history to illustrate the importance of understanding monetary economics, and how monetary theory can ignite or deepen inflation.
 
With anecdotes revealing the far-reaching consequences of seemingly minor events—for example, how two obscure Scottish chemists destroyed the presidential prospects of William Jennings Bryan, and how FDR’s domestic politics helped communism triumph in China—as well as plain-English explanations of what the monetary system in the United States means for your personal finances and for everyone from the small business owner on Main Street to the banker on Wall Street, Money Mischief is an enlightening read from the author of Capitalism and Freedom and Free to Choose, who was called “the most influential economist of the second half of the twentieth century” by the Economist.
 

Contents

1 The Island of Stone Money
3
2 The Mystery of Money
8
3 The Crime of 1873
51
Estimating the Effect of Continuing Bimetallism after 1873
80
5 William Jennings Bryan and the Cyanide Process
104
6 Bimetallism Revisited
126
7 FDR Silver and China
157
8 The Cause and Cure of Inflation
189
Identical Policies Opposite Outcomes
234
10 Monetary Policy in a Fiat World
249
11 An Epilogue
261
Back Matter
266
Back Cover
287
Spine
288
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About the author (1994)

Milton Friedman is a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the Paul Snowden Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Chicago. In 1976 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics. He has written a number of books, including two with his wife, Rose D. Friedman—the bestselling Free to Choose and Two Lucky People: Memoirs, the latter published by the University of Chicago Press.

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