Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 18, no. 4 (Winter 2015): 578–583
Based on his doctoral thesis directed by Jörg Guido Hülsmann (who also wrote the foreword to the book), German economist Eduard Braun’s Finance Behind the Veil of Money aims to show how money affects our financial decisions. The reader will notice that Braun approaches this goal from a different angle of most Austrian-school economists. Instead of looking at how money and credit affect interest rates and propagate an Austrian business cycle, Braun focuses on the “subsistence fund.” Largely jettisoned from modern Austrian business cycle theory, in a way Finance Behind the Veil of Money picks up where Richard Strigl left off with his Capital and Production (1934).
In expounding an updated theory of the definition and role of the subsistence fund, Braun rewards the reader for the time dedicated to reading the book. This time is not insubstantial. At 342 pages, the book is neither concise nor easy reading. It is heavy, dense, technical and littered with citations. The publisher’s exclusive use of endnotes makes the going tougher yet, as the reader constantly finds himself flipping pages to find out to whom Braun is attributing a concept, to what era the idea belongs or, indeed, since Braun uncovers the changing thoughts of several authors over their lifetimes, to what specific work of an author he is referring.
