A History of Money and Banking in the United States: The Colonial Era to World War II by Murray N. Rothbard
Authors: Murray N. Rothbard
Ads: Link
exem-plified in this treatment of the origins of the Fed consistently and dazzlingly throughout this volume to unravel the causes and consequences of events and institutions ranging over the course of U.S. monetary history, from colonial times through the New Deal era. One of the important benefits of Rothbard’s unique approach is that it naturally leads to an account of the development of the U.S. monetary system in terms of a compelling narrative linking human motives and plans that often-times are hidden and devious to outcomes that sometimes are tragic. And one will learn much more about monetary history from reading this exciting story than from poring over reams of statistical analysis.
Although its five parts were written separately, this volume presents a relatively integrated narrative, with very little over-lap, that sweeps across three hundred years of U.S. monetary history. Part 1, “The History of Money and Banking Before the Twentieth Century,” consists of Rothbard’s contribution to the minority report of the U.S. Gold Commission and treats the evolution of the U.S. monetary system from its colonial beginnings to the end of the nineteenth century.69 In this part, Rothbard gives a detailed account of two early and abortive attempts by the financial elites to shackle the young republic with a quasi-central bank. He demonstrates the inflationary consequences of these privileged banks, the First and Second Banks of the United States, during their years of operation, from 1791 to 1811 and from 1816 to 1833, respectively. Rothbard then discusses the libertarian Jeffersonian and Jacksonian ideological movements that succeeded in destroying these statist and inflationist institutions. This is followed by discussions of the era of 69Rep. Ron Paul and Lewis Lehrman, The Case for Gold: A Minority Report of the U.S. Gold Commission (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 1982), pp. 17–118.
42
A History of Money and Banking in the United States: The Colonial Era to World War II
comparatively free and decentralized banking that extended from the 1830s up to the Civil War, and the pernicious impact of the war on the U.S. monetary system. Part 1 concludes with an analysis and critique of the post–Civil War National Banking System. Rothbard describes how this regime—which was aggressively promoted by the investment banking firm that had acquired the monopoly of underwriting government bonds—
centralized banking and destabilized the economy, resulting in a series of financial crises that prepared the way for the imposition of the Federal Reserve System.
Part 2, on the “Origins of the Federal Reserve,” is a paper that lay unpublished for a long time and just appeared in a recent issue of The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics. 70 Its main argument is summarized in the text above.
Part 3 contains a formerly unpublished paper, “From Hoover to Roosevelt: The Federal Reserve and the Financial Elites.” Here, Rothbard identifies the financial interests and ideology that drove the Fed to engineer an almost uninterrupted expansion of the money supply from the moment of its inception in 1914 through 1928. This part also includes an analysis of how concordance and conflict between the Morgan and Rockefeller financial interests shaped the politics and behavior of the Fed during the Hoover administration and the first Roosevelt administration as well as international monetary and domestic banking and financial policies under the latter administration.
Part 4, “The Gold-Exchange Standard in the Interwar Years,” previously was published as a chapter in a collection of papers on money and the State.71 The paper appears here for the first 70Murray N. Rothbard, “The Origins of the Federal Reserve System,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 2, no. 3 (Fall 1999): 3–51.
71A version of this piece appeared as Murray N. Rothbard, “The Gold-Exchange Standard in the Interwar Years,” in Money and the Nation State:
Although its five parts were written separately, this volume presents a relatively integrated narrative, with very little over-lap, that sweeps across three hundred years of U.S. monetary history. Part 1, “The History of Money and Banking Before the Twentieth Century,” consists of Rothbard’s contribution to the minority report of the U.S. Gold Commission and treats the evolution of the U.S. monetary system from its colonial beginnings to the end of the nineteenth century.69 In this part, Rothbard gives a detailed account of two early and abortive attempts by the financial elites to shackle the young republic with a quasi-central bank. He demonstrates the inflationary consequences of these privileged banks, the First and Second Banks of the United States, during their years of operation, from 1791 to 1811 and from 1816 to 1833, respectively. Rothbard then discusses the libertarian Jeffersonian and Jacksonian ideological movements that succeeded in destroying these statist and inflationist institutions. This is followed by discussions of the era of 69Rep. Ron Paul and Lewis Lehrman, The Case for Gold: A Minority Report of the U.S. Gold Commission (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 1982), pp. 17–118.
42
A History of Money and Banking in the United States: The Colonial Era to World War II
comparatively free and decentralized banking that extended from the 1830s up to the Civil War, and the pernicious impact of the war on the U.S. monetary system. Part 1 concludes with an analysis and critique of the post–Civil War National Banking System. Rothbard describes how this regime—which was aggressively promoted by the investment banking firm that had acquired the monopoly of underwriting government bonds—
centralized banking and destabilized the economy, resulting in a series of financial crises that prepared the way for the imposition of the Federal Reserve System.
Part 2, on the “Origins of the Federal Reserve,” is a paper that lay unpublished for a long time and just appeared in a recent issue of The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics. 70 Its main argument is summarized in the text above.
Part 3 contains a formerly unpublished paper, “From Hoover to Roosevelt: The Federal Reserve and the Financial Elites.” Here, Rothbard identifies the financial interests and ideology that drove the Fed to engineer an almost uninterrupted expansion of the money supply from the moment of its inception in 1914 through 1928. This part also includes an analysis of how concordance and conflict between the Morgan and Rockefeller financial interests shaped the politics and behavior of the Fed during the Hoover administration and the first Roosevelt administration as well as international monetary and domestic banking and financial policies under the latter administration.
Part 4, “The Gold-Exchange Standard in the Interwar Years,” previously was published as a chapter in a collection of papers on money and the State.71 The paper appears here for the first 70Murray N. Rothbard, “The Origins of the Federal Reserve System,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 2, no. 3 (Fall 1999): 3–51.
71A version of this piece appeared as Murray N. Rothbard, “The Gold-Exchange Standard in the Interwar Years,” in Money and the Nation State:
Similar Books
