Monetary Theory

Presented by Rothbard at New York Polytechnic University in 1972.

Congress decreed that gold and silver dollars should be interchangeable and put upon the Treasury a mandate to keep them equal in value. How?

"Naïve trust in the power of words to command reality is found in all mass delusions."

John Calvin’s main contribution to the usury question was in having the courage to dump the prohibition altogether.

In areas of normative economics, this event [Becker receiving Prize]will give a sharp boost to many of the free-market views held by Austrians. But, as far as positive economic analysis is concerned, there is no help here for the praxeological school.

What we need is something else: the establishment of a different kind of monetary system, one that uses competitive markets in the area of money and banking, and that eliminates the currency monopoly of the state.

"Any individual who would live beyond his means, voting himself into a home that he cannot afford, is not a desirable neighbor for those who adhere to the concepts of private ownership and control of property."

"The future of the euro is dark because there are such strong incentives for reckless fiscal behavior, not only for Greece but also for other countries."

Economics is about the most important and interesting drama of all — human action.

"The fact that credit booms are encouraged by derivative instruments has substantially increased the destabilizing effects of an artificial credit-expansion policy carried out by keeping the market interest rates below natural interest rates."