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Ralph Raico

2026-07-23T19:13:25Z

DickClarkMises: past tense, because of Raico's passing

{{Wikipedia text}}
[[Image:Ralph raico.gif|frame|right|Ralph Raico delivering a lecture at the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, AL]]

'''Ralph Raico''' was an [[United States of America|American]] [[history|historian]], [[libertarianism|libertarian]], and specialist in European [[classical liberalism]] and [[Austrian Economics]]. He was a professor of history at [[Buffalo State College]] and a senior faculty member of the [[Ludwig von Mises Institute]]. Raico was a student of [[Ludwig von Mises]] and learned [[German language|German]] at Mises' suggestion. Raico translated Mises' ''[[Liberalismus]]'' into English.

Raico was the editor of the [[New Individualist Review]], along with [[Ronald Hamowy]], a journal initially sponsored by the [[University of Chicago]] chapter of the [[Intercollegiate Society of Individualists]]. It declared itself "founded in a commitment to liberty." The first article of the first edition was titled "Capitalism and Freedom." [[Milton Friedman]], [[F. A. Hayek]], and [[Richard M. Weaver]] were the first faculty advisors, later to be joined by [[George Stigler]] and [[Benjamin Rogge]]. Between 1961 and 1968, seventeen issues were published including articles by [[Russell Kirk]], [[William F. Buckley, Jr.]], [[Ludwig von Mises]], and [[Murray N. Rothbard]].

The complete run of the magazine is available from [[Liberty Fund]]. In his introduction to this reprint edition, Milton Friedman—one of the magazine's faculty advisors—writes that the Review set "an intellectual standard that has not yet, I believe, been matched by any of the more recent publications in the same philosophical tradition."

Raico was also a founding member of the [[Circle Bastiat]], and was considered its poet laureate.

In 1999, Raico wrote ''Die Partei der Freiheit: Studien zur Geschichte des deutschen Liberalismus'', a German-language book discussing the [[classical liberalism|liberal]] tradition in [[Germany]].

In 2000, Raico was awarded the "Gary G. Schlarbaum Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Cause of Liberty" by the Mises Institute.[http://www.mises.org/schlarbaum/raico.asp]

In 2006, Raico became one of the charter members of the Property and Freedom Society, which was founded at the instigation of [[Hans-Hermann Hoppe]] as a more radical counterpart to the [[Mont Pelerin Society]].

==Links==
*[http://www.mises.org/Raico Homepage] on [[Mises Institute|Mises.org]]
* [http://www.lewrockwell.com/raico/raico-arch.html Raico's archives at LewRockwell.com]
* [http://mises.org/articles.aspx?AuthorId=344 Raico's article archives at Mises.org]
* [http://mises.org/media.aspx?action=author&ID=344 Raico audio/video lectures at Mises.org]
* [http://www.fff.org/aboutUs/bios/rxr.asp Bio] at [[Future of Freedom Foundation]]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Raico, Ralph}}
[[Category:Historians]]

Lew Rockwell

2012-01-07T20:10:33Z

DickClarkMises: /* Early career in publishing */ rm claim about Tufts for which I can't find a source

{{Wikipedia text}}
[[File:Lew Rockwell.jpg|thumb|right]]
'''Llewellyn Harrison Rockwell, Jr.''' (born July 1, 1944, [[Boston]]), widely known as '''Lew Rockwell''', is an [[United States|American]] [[libertarian]] [[political commentator]], [[activist]], proponent of the [[Austrian School]] of economics, and chairman of the [[Ludwig von Mises Institute]].

==Life and work==
Rockwell was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1944. His father was a "[[Robert Taft|Taft Republican]]", and Rockwell was exposed at a young age to military [[non-interventionism]].<ref name="auto">Doherty, Brian. "Libertarianism and the Old Right." ''LewRockwell.com''. 1999. Orig. published by ''SpintechMag.org''. 12 May 1999. [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/oldright.html]</ref> He was introduced to the [[laissez faire]] thought of the [[French Liberal School|French Liberal]] and [[Austrian School|Austrian]] schools of economics when he received [[Henry Hazlitt]]'s ''[[Economics in One Lesson]]'' as a gift from a family friend on his twelfth birthday.<ref name="auto" /> Later in his youth, Rockwell describes feeling alienated from mainstream conservatism,
<blockquote>"Over time, I became aware that I was not only dissenting from the left but also from the conservative establishment, which was embroiled in the Cold War as a first principle. I grew increasingly skeptical of the official right, especially during the war on Vietnam.... I had been a reluctant Goldwaterite in 1964, but by 1968 I worked briefly for Gene McCarthy."<ref name="auto" /></blockquote>

===Early career in publishing===
After college, Rockwell went to work for Neil McCaffrey's [[Arlington House]] publishing company which had been founded in 1965. At Arlington House, Rockwell worked as an editor on books by authors including Bill Rickenbacker, [[Harry Browne]], [[George Roche III|George Roche]], and Henry Hazlitt.<ref name="auto" /> It was at Arlington House that Rockwell became acquainted with the works of Ludwig von Mises.<ref name="auto" />

By the time that Arlington House was disbanded in the mid-1970s, Rockwell had gone to work at [[Hillsdale College]]. George Roche, whom Rockwell met while at Arlington House,<ref name="auto" /> had become president of the college in 1971.<ref>Michaelson, Mark G. "Remembering George Roche." ''The American Spectator''. 12 May 2006. [http://spectator.org/archives/2006/05/12/remembering-george-roche]</ref> In his time at Hillsdale College, Rockwell started the Hillsdale College Press, founded the school's monthly publication, ''[[Imprimis]]'', and worked in fundraising and public relations.<ref name="auto" /> [[Gary North]] praises Rockwell for successfully borrowing [[Leonard Read]]'s methods in creating ''Imprimis'':

<blockquote>"He applied Read's strategy when he launched ''Imprimis'' for Hillsdale College. The president of Hillsdale, George Roche, had worked for Read until he became president at Hillsdale in 1971. (I replaced Roche at [[Foundation for Economic Education|FEE]].) He wanted ''The Freeman'' for Hillsdale, but of course could not get it. So, he hired Rockwell to start ''Imprimis''. Hillsdale gives the newsletter away. As with ''The Freeman'', the letter is based on ideas, not appeals for donations. This became the most financially successful fund-raising newsletter in history, raising several hundred million dollars for Hillsdale. It now has over 1.7 million subscribers. It is the college's lifeline." <ref>[[Gary North|North, Gary]]. "How Lew Rockwell Copied Leonard E. Read and Took Over the Libertarian Movement." ''GaryNorth.com''. 26 May 2009. [http://www.garynorth.com/public/4997.cfm]</ref></blockquote>

Rockwell met [[Murray Rothbard]] for the first time in 1975, while working for Hillsdale. Rockwell credits Rothbard with convincing him to wholly reject [[statism]]:

<blockquote>"It was clear to me at the time that Murray Rothbard was Mises's successor, and I followed his writings carefully. I first met him in 1975, and knew immediately that he was a kindred spirit.... I cannot remember the day that I finally came around to the position that the state is unnecessary and destructive by its nature – that it cannot improve on, and indeed only destroys, the social and economic system that grows out of property rights, exchange, and natural social authority – but I do know that it was Rothbard who finally convinced me to take this last step." <ref name="auto" /></blockquote>

===Working for Ron Paul===
Rockwell served as [[Ron Paul]]'s congressional chief of staff from 1978 to 1982.<ref>[[John Berlau|Berlau, John]]. ''[http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1571/is_n5_v13/ai_19092301 Now playing right field - Rep. Ron Paul - Interview]'' [[Insight on the News]]. 10 February 1997.</ref><ref>[[Christopher Hayes (journalist)|Hayes, Christopher]], [[The Nation]], ''[http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071224/hayes Ron Paul's Roots]'', 6 December 2007, retrieved 14 January 2008</ref> He has maintained a working relationship with Paul over the years, as a contributing editor to "The Ron Paul Investment Letter";<ref>"The Ron Paul Investment Letter," Volume 3, Number 3, March 1987</ref> as a consultant to Paul's 1988 [[Libertarian Party (United States)|Libertarian Party]] campaign for [[President of the United States]];<ref>"Campaign staffs announced", [http://lp.org LPNEWS], May/June 1987, 10</ref> and as vice-chair of the [[exploratory committee]] for Paul's spirited run for the 1992 Republican Party nomination for president.<ref>[[Burton Blumert]], "Ron Paul for President Exploratory Committee" fundraising letter, October 1, 1991.</ref>

===Ludwig von Mises Institute===
In 1982, Rockwell founded the Mises Institute in [[Auburn, Alabama]] and was its president until the summer of 2009, when he transitioned to the position of Chairman of the Board.<ref>[http://www.mises.org/about.aspx About the Mises Institute page] at [http://mises.org Ludwig von Mises Institute] website.</ref> He also is Vice President of the [[Center for Libertarian Studies]] in [[Burlingame, California]] and publisher of the political [[weblog]] [[LewRockwell.com]]. Rockwell was closely associated with his teacher and colleague [[Murray Rothbard]] until Rothbard's death in 1995. Rockwell's political ideology, like Rothbard's in his later years, combines a form of [[anarcho-capitalism]] with [[cultural conservatism]] and the [[Austrian School]] of economics. He also advocates [[federalist]] concepts as a means of promoting freedom from central government, and also advocates secession for the same political [[decentralization|decentralist]] reasons. Rockwell has called environmentalism "[a]n ideology as pitiless and Messianic as Marxism."<ref>Rockwell, L. H., Jr. (1990). "An anti-environmentalist manifesto." ''From The Right'', Quarterly II, 1(6), 1. (newsletter of Patrick J. Buchanan), p. 1; Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/anti-enviro.html Rockwell's Anti-Environmentalist Manifesto], May 1, 2000 version published by [[Lewrockwell.com]]</ref>

The Mises Institute published Rockwell's ''Speaking of Liberty'', an anthology of editorials which were originally published on his website, along with transcripts from some of his speaking engagements. Rockwell and the [[Ludwig von Mises Institute]] together publish the ''[[Journal of Libertarian Studies]]''.

[[File:Blumert_Rockwell_Gordon_Rothbard.jpg|thumb|left|300px|[[Burton Blumert]], Rockwell, economist and philosopher [[David Gordon (economist born 1948)|David Gordon]], and [[Murray Rothbard]].]]

===Paleolibertarianism===
In 1985, he was named a contributing editor to ''Conservative Digest''.<ref>Berlet, Chip. ''The Write Stuff: U. S. Serial Print Culture from Conservatives out to Neonazis,'' ''Library Trends'' - Volume 56, Number 3, Winter 2008, pp. 570-600.</ref> During the 1990s Rothbard, Rockwell and others described their views as [[paleolibertarian]],<ref>Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. "The Case for Paleo-libertarianism" in ''[[Liberty (1987)|Liberty]]'' magazine, January, 1990, 34-38.</ref> but Rockwell no longer uses the term to describe his ideas.<ref>[http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/liberal-post-interview.html Do You Consider Yourself a Libertarian?], Kenny Johnsson interviews Lew Rockwell for [http://liberalpost.wordpress.com/ The Liberal Post], as posted on [http://lewrockwell.com LewRockwell.Com], May 25, 2007.</ref> Jean Hardisty, founder of [[Political Research Associates]], wrote in 1999 that Rockwell was one of the most influential proponents of the paleoconservative faction of "right-wing libertarianism."<ref>Hardisty, Jean V. 1999. Mobilizing Resentment: Conservative Resurgence from the John Birch Society to the Promise Keepers. Boston: Beacon, pp. 170-178.</ref>

===LewRockwell.com===
[[LewRockwell.com|Lew Rockwell's web site]] features a selection of articles, including opposition to war and [[imperialism]] along with occasional articles criticizing the presidency of [[Abraham Lincoln]].<ref>''[[LewRockwell.com]]'' Lincoln archive [http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig2/lincoln-arch.html]</ref> The site also carries essays which argue against the participation of the United States in the [[Second World War]], speculation about an end of the United States as a cohesive union and assertions the Western world is threatened by an intersection of [[fascism]] and socialism alike as politicians and states centralize their power.<ref>Rogers, Mike. "Dying For the Emperor? No Way." ''LewRockwell.com''. 12 October 2005. [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rogers/rogers178.html]</ref><ref>Gonella, Jason. "The Decline and Fall of the United States Empire." ''LewRockwell.com''. 9 December 2004 [http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/gonella4.html]</ref><ref>DiLorenzo, Thomas J. "Economic Fascism" ''LewRockwell.com''. 23 November 2004. [http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo85.html]</ref> These writings are sometimes controversial and have brought harsh criticism from some on the political right.<ref name="Laksin">Laksin, Jacob. "The Right's Left Turn." ''[[FrontPageMag]]''. 5 October 2005. [http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=19727]</ref><ref>Goldberg, Jonah. "Farewell, Lew Rockwell: The final word." ''National Review Online''. 7 March 2001. [http://www.nationalreview.com/nr_comment/nr_comment030701b.shtml]</ref>
His web site also provides podcasts featuring Rockwell's interviews of various scholars and writers, including many affiliated with the [[Mises Institute]].

== Books ==
===Author===
*''Speaking of Liberty'' (2003; online [http://www.mises.org/etexts/sol.pdf e-book]) ISBN 0-945466-38-2
*''The Left, The Right, and The State'' (2008; online [http://www.mises.org/books/leftright.pdf e-book]) ISBN 978-1-933550-20-6

===Editor===
*''Man, Economy, and Liberty: Essays in Honor of Murray N. Rothbard'' (with [[Walter Block]]) (1986; online [http://www.mises.org/books/maneconomyliberty.pdf e-book]) ISBN 99911-786-2-7
*''The Free Market Reader'' (1988; online [http://www.mises.org/books/freemarketreader.pdf e-book])ISBN 0-945466-02-1
*''The Economics of Liberty'' (1990; online [http://www.mises.org/books/economicsofliberty.pdf e-book]) ISBN 0-945466-08-0
*''The Gold Standard: Perspectives in the Austrian School'' (1992; online [http://mises.org/books/goldstandard.pdf e-book]), ISBN 0-945466-11-0
*''Murray N. Rothbard: In Memoriam'' (1995; online [http://mises.org/books/memoriam.pdf e-book]) ISBN 0-945466-19-6
*''The Irrepressible Rothbard'' (2000; online [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/ir/Contents.html e-book] - Rockwell's [http://students.uis.edu/araut01s/ir-intro.html introduction]) ISBN 1-883959-02-0

== Notes ==
{{reflist|2}}

== Links ==
{{Contact staff|rockwell@mises.com}}
*[http://www.lewrockwell.com/ LewRockwell.com]
*[http://www.mises.org/ Ludwig von Mises Institute]

*[http://mises.org/fellow.aspx?id=19 Lew Rockwell] at [[Mises Institute|Mises.org]]
*[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lew_Rockwell Lew Rockwell] at [[Wikipedia]]
*[http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/speech-antiwar.html "My Speech at the Antiwar Rally," LewRockwell.com, 25 September 2005]
*"[http://mises.org/media/1588 My Visit to DC: An Interview with Lew Rockwell]." Mises.org Podcast. 9 December 2005.
*Lew Rockwell's Articles: at [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/rockwell-arch.html LewRockwell.com], on [http://www.mises.org/articles.asp?mode=a&author=Rockwell%2C+Jr%2E Mises.org's "Daily Articles"], [http://www.mises.org/freemarket.asp?sortorder=authorlast&order=Asc The Free Market] & [http://www.lewrockwell.com/archives/fm/ more here], and [http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/archives.asp?AUTHOR_ID=25 WorldNetDaily].

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rockwell, Lew}}
[[Category:Anarcho-capitalists]]
[[Category:Political theorists]]
[[Category:Mises Institute]]

User talk:Earth

2011-01-28T17:00:32Z

DickClarkMises: Welcome!

'''Welcome!'''

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User talk:Edgarsoyyo

2011-01-28T17:00:27Z

DickClarkMises: Welcome!

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2011-01-28T17:00:22Z

DickClarkMises: Welcome!

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2011-01-28T17:00:15Z

DickClarkMises: Welcome!

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User talk:BajaBlastBeat

2011-01-28T16:47:52Z

DickClarkMises: Welcome!

'''Welcome!'''

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Community discussion takes place at the [[MisesWiki:Commons|MisesWiki Commons]], so feel free to post any questions you might have there or on my talk page. Please sign your messages on talk and discussion pages using four tildes (<nowiki>~~~~</nowiki>); this will automatically insert your username and the date. Again, welcome! [[User:DickClarkMises|DickClarkMises]] 10:47, 28 January 2011 (CST)

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2011-01-28T16:47:46Z

DickClarkMises: Welcome!

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User talk:Jtropeano

2011-01-28T16:47:32Z

DickClarkMises: Welcome!

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Murray N. Rothbard

2011-01-27T16:41:34Z

DickClarkMises: lede: middle initial > middle name

{{Quote|On the free market, everyone earns according to his productive value in satisfying consumer desires. Under statist distribution, everyone earns in proportion to the amount he can plunder from the producers.|Murray N. Rothbard|''[[Power and Market]]''}}

'''Murray Newton Rothbard''', a scholar of extraordinary range who made major contributions to [[economics]], political philosophy ([[libertarianism]] in particular), economic history and legal theory. He developed and extended the Austrian economics of [[Ludwig von Mises]], in whose seminar he was a main participant for many years. He established himself as the principal Austrian theorist in the latter half of the twentieth century and applied Austrian analysis to historical topics such as the [[Great Depression]] of 1929 and the history of American banking.

Rothbard combined Austrian economics with a fervent commitment to individual liberty. He developed a unique synthesis that combined themes from nineteenth-century American individualist-anarchists such as [[Wikipedia:Lysander Spooner|Lysander Spooner]]<ref name="Rothbard_Spooner">Murray N. Rothbard. [http://mises.org/rothbardintros/spooner.asp "Introduction by Murray N. Rothbard"], ''[[Mises Institute]]'', referenced 2009-05-27.</ref> and [[Wikipedia:Benjamin Tucker|Benjamin Tucker]] with Austrian economics. A new political philosophy was the result, and Rothbard devoted his remarkable intellectual energy, over a period of some forty-five years, to developing and promoting his style of libertarianism. In doing so, he became a major American public intellectual.

Building on the Austrian School's concept of [[spontaneous order]], support for a [[free market]] in [[money creation|money production]] and condemnation of [[central planning]],<ref>[http://www.mises.org/store/Free-Market-Monetary-System-A-P553.aspx?AFID=14 ''Free Market Money System''] by F.A. Hayek</ref> Rothbard advocated abolition of [[coercion|coercive]] government control of the economy. He considered the [[monopoly]] force of government the greatest danger to liberty and the long-term well-being of the populace, labeling [[State (polity)|the State]] as nothing but a "a bandit gang writ large"—the locus of the most immoral, grasping and unscrupulous individuals in any society.<ref>[http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics/twentytwo.asp The Ethics of Liberty], Murray Rothbard</ref><ref name="Hans-Hermann Hoppe">{{cite web|url=http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics/hoppeintro.asp|title=The Ethics of Liberty|author=[[Hans-Hermann Hoppe]]|publisher=[[Ludwig von Mises Institute]]}}</ref><ref>[http://mises.org/article.aspx?Id=1423 Repudiating the National Debt], Murray Rothbard</ref><ref>[http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard200.html To Save Our Economy From Destruction], Murray Rothbard</ref>

Rothbard concluded that all services provided by [[monopoly]] [[government]]s could be provided more efficiently by the private sector. He viewed many regulations and laws ostensibly promulgated for the "public interest" as self-interested power grabs by scheming government bureaucrats engaging in dangerously unfettered self-aggrandizement, as they were not subject to [[price mechanism|market disciplines]]. Rothbard held that there were inefficiencies involved with government services and asserted that [[price mechanism|market disciplines]] would eliminate them, if the services could be provided by competition in the private sector.<ref>[http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard40.html The Great Society: A Libertarian Critique], Murray Rothbard</ref><ref>[http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard53.html The Noble Task of Revisionism], Murray Rothbard</ref><ref>[http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard37.html The Fallacy of the 'Public Sector'], Murray Rothbard</ref>

Rothbard was equally condemning of state [[Corporatocracy|corporatism]]. He criticized many instances where business elites co-opted government's monopoly power so as to influence laws and regulatory policy in a manner benefiting them at the expense of their competitive rivals.<ref>''For a New Liberty'', Chapter 3</ref>

He argued that [[taxation]] represents coercive theft on a grand scale, and "a compulsory [[monopoly]] of force" prohibiting the more efficient voluntary procurement of defense and judicial services from competing suppliers.<ref name="Hans-Hermann Hoppe"/><ref>[http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard24.html Tax Day], Murray Rothbard</ref> He also considered [[central bank]]ing and [[fractional reserve banking]] under a monopoly [[fiat money]] system a form of state-sponsored, legalized financial [[embezzlement|fraud]], antithetical to [[Libertarianism|libertarian]] principles and ethics.<ref>Rothbard, Murray. [http://www.mises.org/Books/mysteryofbanking.pdf ''The Mystery of Banking''] Ludwig von Mises Institute. 2008. p. 111</ref><ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-2737288_ITM |title=Has fractional-reserve banking really passed the market test? (Controversy). |date=January 2003 |format= |work= Independent Review|accessdate=}}</ref><ref>[http://www.fff.org/freedom/0999c.asp The Case for the 100% Gold Dollar], Murray Rothbard</ref><ref>See also Murray Rothbard articles: [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard191.html Private Coinage]; [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard190.html Repudiate the National Debt]; and [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard181.html Taking Money Back]</ref> Rothbard opposed military, political, and [[economic interventionism]] in the affairs of other nations.<ref name="Rothbard on War">[http://www.antiwar.com/orig/rothbard_on_war.html Rothbard on War], excerpts from a 1973 [[Reason (magazine)|Reason Magazine]] article and other materials, published at [[Antiwar.com]], undated.</ref><ref name="For a New Liberty">Murray N. Rothbard ''[http://mises.org/rothbard/newlibertywhole.asp#p263 For a New Liberty]'', p. 265.</ref>

==Life and career==
Murray Rothbard was born March 2, 1926, the son of David and Rae Rothbard. He was a brilliant student even as a young child; and his academic record at Columbia University, where he majored in mathematics and economics, was stellar. In the Columbia economics department, Rothbard did not receive any instruction in Austrian economics, and Mises was no more than a name to him. In a course on price theory given by [[Wikipedia:George Stigler|George Stigler]], however, he encountered arguments against such then popular measures as price and rent control. These arguments greatly appealed to him; and he wrote to the publisher of a pamphlet that Stigler and [[Milton Friedman]] had written on rent control.

===Economist===
The publisher in question was the [[Wikipedia:Foundation for Economic Education|Foundation for Economic Education]]; and visits to this group’s headquarters led Rothbard to a meeting with Ludwig von Mises. Rothbard was at once attracted to Mises’s laissez-faire economics, and when Mises’s masterwork [[Human Action]] appeared in 1949, it made a great impression on him. He was henceforward a praxeologist: here in Mises’s treatise was the consistent and rigorous defense of a free economy for which he had long been in search. He soon became an active member of Mises’s seminar at [[Wikipedia:New York University|New York University]]. Meanwhile, he continued his graduate studies at Columbia, working toward his Ph.D. His mentor was the eminent economic historian Joseph Dorfman, and Rothbard received the degree in 1956, with a thesis on The Panic of 1819 that remains a standard work ([http://mises.org/books/panic1819.pdf ''The Panic of 1819: Reactions and Policies''], pdf, is based on it).

As he deepened his understanding of laissez-faire economics, he confronted a dilemma. The arguments for market provision of goods and services applied across the board. If so, should not even protection and defense be offered on the market rather than supplied by a coercive monopoly? Rothbard realized that he would either have to abandon laissez-faire or embrace individualist anarchy. The choice, arrived at in the winter of 1949, was not difficult.

Rothbard soon attracted the attention of the [[Wikipedia:William Volker Fund|William Volker Fund]], the main group that supported classical liberal scholars in the 1950s and early 1960s. He began a project to write a textbook to explain Human Action in a fashion suitable for college students; a sample chapter he wrote on money and credit won Mises’s approval. As Rothbard continued his work, he transformed the project. The result, [[Man, Economy, and State]] (1962), was a central work of Austrian economics.

Rothbard was entirely in accord with Mises’s endeavor to deduce the whole of economics from the axiom of action, combined with a few subsidiary postulates. In much more detail than Mises had done, he carried out the deduction; and in the process, he contributed major theoretical innovations to [[praxeology]]. He showed that the socialist [[Economic calculation|calculation]] argument applies, not only to a governmentally controlled economy, but to a single private firm owning the entire economy as well. It too could not calculate. He also integrated [[Wikipedia:Frank Fetter|Frank Fetter]]’s<ref name="Herbener_Fetter">Jeffrey Herbener. [http://mises.org/about/3231 "Frank A. Fetter (1863-1949): A Forgotten Giant"], ''[[Mises Institute]]'', referenced 2009-05-27.</ref> theory of rent with Austrian capital theory; and argued that a [[monopoly]] price could not exist on the free market. Further, he offered a brilliant criticism of Keynesian economics, and he anticipated much of the "rational expectations" revolution for which [[Wikipedia:Robert Lucas, Jr.|Robert Lucas]] later won a Nobel Prize.

As Rothbard originally planned [[Man, Economy, and State]], it was to include a final part that presented a comprehensive classification and analysis of types of government intervention. The section also subjected to withering criticism the standard canons of justice in taxation; a brief but brilliant passage refuted in advance the anti-market arguments based on "luck" that were to prove so influential in the later work of [[Wikipedia:John Rawls|John Rawls]] and his many successors. Unfortunately, the part appeared in the original edition only in a severely truncated form. Its full publication came only in 1972, under the title ''Power and Market''. The complete version of [[Man, Economy, and State]], as Rothbard originally intended it to appear, is now available from the [[Mises Institute]].

This masterly work was far from exhausting Rothbard’s contributions to economic theory. In a major paper, "Toward a Reconstruction of Utility and Welfare Economics" (1956, [http://mises.org/rothbard/toward.pdf pdf]), he showed that if one takes seriously the fact that utility is ordinal and not cardinal, then the anti-market views of most modern welfare economists must be abandoned. Strict application of demonstrated preference allows one to say that the participants to a voluntary exchange expect ex ante to benefit. Further than this, the economist, so long as he remains value-free, cannot go. His main papers on economic theory are available in the posthumously published two-volume collection ''The Logic of Action'' (1997).

Rothbard devoted close attention to monetary theory. Here he emphasized the virtues of the classical [[gold standard]] and supported 100% reserve banking. This system, he held, would prevent the credit expansion that, according to the Austrian theory of the business cycle developed by Mises and [[Friedrich Hayek]], led to inevitable depression. He summarized his views for the general public in the often-reprinted pamphlet [[Wikipedia:What Has Government Done to Our Money?|What Has Government Done to Our Money?]] (1964; [http://mises.org/money.asp text], [http://www.mises.org/books/whathasgovernmentdone.pdf pdf]) and also wrote a textbook, [[Wikipedia:The Mystery of Banking|The Mystery of Banking]] (1983; [http://mises.org/mysteryofbanking/mysteryofbanking.pdf pdf]).

Rothbard showed the illumination that Austrian theory could bring to economic history in [[Wikipedia:America's Great Depression|America’s Great Depression]] (1963; [http://mises.org/books/agd.epub text], [http://mises.org/rothbard/agd.pdf pdf]). Far from being a proof of the failures of unregulated capitalism, the 1929 Depression illustrates rather the dangers of government interference with the economy. The economic collapse came as a necessary correction to the artificial boom induced by the [[Federal Reserve System]]’s monetary expansion during the 1920s. The attempts by the government to "cure" the downturn served only to make matters worse.

In making this argument, Rothbard became a pioneer in "Hoover revisionism". Contrary to the myths promoted by [[Wikipedia:Herbert Hoover|Hoover]] himself and his acolytes, Hoover was not an opponent of big government. Quite the contrary, the economic policies of the "Engineer in Politics" prefigured the [[Wikipedia:New Deal|New Deal]]. Rothbard’s view of Hoover is now widely accepted.

For Rothbard, banking policy was a key to American economic history. Like [[Wikipedia:Jules Michelet|Michelet]], he believed that history is a resurrection of the flesh; and his discussions are no dry-as-dust presentations of statistics. He was always concerned to identify the particular actors and interests behind historical decisions. The struggle between the competing [[Wikipedia:J. P. Morgan|Morgan]] and [[Wikipedia:Rockefeller family|Rockefeller]] banking circles figures again and again in his articles in this field, collected in his [[Wikipedia:A History of Money and Banking in the United States (book)|A History of Money and Banking in the United States]] (1999; [http://mises.org/books/historyofmoney.pdf pdf]).

== Austrian School writings ==

The [[Austrian School]] attempts to discover axioms of human action (called "[[praxeology]]" in the Austrian tradition). It supports [[free market economics]] and criticizes [[command economy|command economies]]. Influential advocates were [[Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk]], [[Friedrich Hayek]], and [[Ludwig von Mises]]. Rothbard argued that the entire Austrian economic theory is the working out of the logical implications of the fact that humans engage in purposeful action.<ref>Grimm, Curtis M.; Hunn, Lee; Smith, Ken G. Strategy as Action: Competitive Dynamics and Competitive Advantage. New York Oxford University Press (US). 2006. p. 43</ref> In working out these axioms he came to the position that a monopoly price could not exist on the free market. He also anticipated much of the “[[rational expectations]]” viewpoint in economics.

In accordance with his free market views Rothbard argued that individual protection and national defense also should be offered on the market, rather than supplied by government’s [[coercive monopoly]]. Rothbard was an ardent critic of [[Keynesian]] economic thought<ref>See Robthbard's essay [http://www.mises.org/etexts/keynestheman.pdf Keynes the Man], originally published in ''Dissent on Keynes: A Critical Appraisal of Keynesian Economics'', Edited by Mark Skousen. New York: Praeger, 1992, 171–198; Online edition at The [[Ludwig von Mises Institute]].</ref> as well as the [[utilitarian]] theory of [[philosopher]] [[Jeremy Bentham]].<ref>See Rothbard's essay, "Jeremy Bentham: The Utilitarian as Big Brother" published in his work, ''Classical Economics''.</ref>

In ''Man, Economy, and State'' Rothbard divides the various kinds of state intervention in three categories: "autistic intervention", which is interference with private non-exchange activities; "binary intervention", which is forced exchange between individuals and the state; and "triangular intervention", which is state-mandated exchange between individuals. According to [[Sanford Ikeda]], Rothbard's typology "eliminates the gaps and inconsistencies that appear in Mises's original formulation."<ref>Ikeda, Sanford, ''Dyamics of the Mixed Economy: Toward a Theory of Interventionism'', Routledge UK, 1997, 245.</ref><ref>Murray Rothbard, [http://mises.org/rothbard/mes/chap14.asp Chapter 2 "Fundamentals of Intervention"] from ''Man, Economy and State'', [[Ludwig von Mises Institute]].</ref>

Rothbard also was knowledgeable in history and political philosophy. Rothbard's books, such as ''Man, Economy, and State'', ''[[Power and Market]]'', ''[[The Ethics of Liberty]]'', and ''[[For a New Liberty]]'', are considered by some to be classics of [[natural law]] and [[libertarian]] thought, combining [[libertarian]] [[natural rights]] philosophy, anti-government [[anarchism]] and a [[free market]] perspective in analyzing a range of contemporary social and economic issues. He also possessed extensive knowledge of the history of economic thought, studying the pre-[[Adam Smith]] free market economic schools, such as the [[Scholastics]] and the [[Physiocrats]] and discussed them in his unfinished, multi-volume work, ''[[An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought]]''.

Rothbard writes in ''[[Power and Market]]'' that the role of the economist in a free market is limited, but the role and power of the economist in a government which continually intervenes in the market expands, as the interventions trigger problems which require further diagnosis and the need for further policy recommendations. Rothbard argues that this simple self-interest prejudices the views of many economists in favor of increased government intervention.<ref>Peter G. Klein, [http://www.mises.org/story/2318 Why Intellectuals Still Support Socialism], [[Ludwig von Mises Institute]], November 15, 2006</ref><ref>[http://www.mises.org/rothbard/mes/chap19.asp Man, Economy, and State, Chapter 7-Conclusion: Economics and Public Policy], [[Ludwig Von Mises Institute]].</ref>

Rothbard also created "Rothbard's law" that "people tend to specialize in what they are worst at. [[Henry George]], for example, is great on everything but land, so therefore he writes about land 90% of the time. [[Milton Friedman|Friedman]] is great except on money, so he concentrates on money."<ref>[http://mises.org/journals/aen/aen11_2_1.asp Interview with Murray N. Rothbard], [[Ludwig von Mises Institute]], Summer 1990.</ref>

===Self-ownership===
In ''The Ethics of Liberty'', Rothbard asserts the right of total [[self-ownership]], as the only principle compatible with a moral code that applies to every person—a "universal ethic"—and that it is a [[natural law]] by being what is naturally best for man.<ref>Rothbard, Murray Newton. The Ethics of Liberty. NYU Press. 2003. pp. 45 - 45</ref> He believed that, as a result, individuals owned the fruits of their labor. Accordingly, each person had the right to exchange his property with others. He believed that if an individual mixes his labor with unowned land then he is the proper owner, and from that point on it is private property that may only exchange hands by trade or gift. He also argued that such land would tend not to remain unused unless it makes economic sense to not put it to use.<ref>Kyriazi, Harold. Reckoning With Rothbard (2004). ''American Journal of Economics and Sociology'' 63 (2), 451</ref>

===Egalitarianism===
The title essay of Murray Rothbard’s 1974 book ''[[Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays]]'' held that “Equality is not in the natural order of things, and the crusade to make everyone equal in every respect (except before the law) is certain to have disastrous consequences.” In it Rothbard wrote, “At the heart of the egalitarian left is the pathological belief that there is no structure of reality; that all the world is a [[tabula rasa]] that can be changed at any moment in any desired direction by the mere exercise of human will.”<ref>George C. Leef, [http://www.thefreemanonline.org/departments/book-review-egalitarianism-as-a-revolt-against-nature-and-other-essays-by-murray-rothbard-edited-by-david-gordon/# Book Review of Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays by Murray Rothbard, edited by David Gordon (2000 edition)], [[The Freeman]], July 2001.</ref><ref>Murray Rothbard, [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard31.html Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays], essay published in full at [[Lewrockwell.com]], 2003. See also Rothbard’s essay [http://mises.org/daily/3007 The Struggle Over Egalitarianism Continues], the 1991 introduction to republication of "Freedom, Inequality, Primitivism, and the Division of Labor", [[Ludwig Von Mises Institute]], 2008.</ref> Rothbard also expressed his views that statists suppressed academic research on race in order to support their goal of using the state to enforce egalitarian goals.<ref>Murary Rothbard, [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/ir/Ch75.html Race! That Murray Book], [[LewRockwell.com]], December 1994.</ref>

In a 1963 article called the “Negro revolution” Rothbard wrote that “the Negro Revolution has some elements that a libertarian must favor, others that he must oppose. Thus, the libertarian opposes compulsory segregation and police brutality, but also opposes compulsory integration and such absurdities as ethnic quota systems in jobs.”<ref>Murray N. Rothbard, [http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=2136&chapter=195367&layout=html&Itemid=27 The Negro Revolution], New Individualist Review, Volume 3, Number 1, Summer 1963.</ref> According to Rothbard biographer [[Justin Raimondo]], Rothbard considered [[Malcolm X]] to be a “great black leader” and [[Martin Luther King]] to be favored by whites because he “was the major restraining force on the developing Negro revolution.” Rothbard also compared [[Lyndon Baines Johnson|U.S. President Lyndon Baines Johnson]]’s use of troops to crush urban rioters in 1968 after King’s assassination to Johnson’s use of American troops against the [[Vietnam War|Vietnamese]].<ref>[[Justin Raimondo]], ''An Enemy of the State'', p. 167-168, Prometheus Books, 2000.</ref>

===Anarcho-capitalism===
Rothbard began to consider himself a private property anarchist in the 1950s and later began to use "[[anarcho-capitalism|anarcho-capitalist]]".<ref name="Crocetta">Roberta Modugno Crocetta, [http://mises.org/journals/scholar/roberta.pdf Murray Rothbard's anarcho-capitalism in the contemporary debate. A critical defense], [[Ludwig Von Mises Institute]].</ref><ref>Michael Oliver, [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard103.html 'Exclusive Interview With Murray Rothbard], originally published in "The New Banner: A Fortnightly Libertarian Journal", February 25, 1972.</ref> He wrote: "Capitalism is the fullest expression of anarchism, and anarchism is the fullest expression of capitalism."<ref>[http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard103.html "Exclusive Interview With Murray Rothbard"] ''The New Banner: A Fortnightly Libertarian Journal'' (February 25, 1972)</ref> In his anarcho-capitalist model, a system of protection agencies compete in a free market and are voluntarily supported by consumers who choose to use their protective and judicial services. Anarcho-capitalism would mean the end of the state [[monopoly on force]].<ref name="Crocetta"/>

Rothbard was equally condemning of relationships he perceived between big business and big government. He cited many instances where business elites co-opted government's monopoly power so as to influence laws and regulatory policy in a manner benefiting them at the expense of their competitive rivals. He wrote in criticism of Ayn Rand's "misty devotion to the Big Businessman" that she: "is too committed emotionally to worship of the Big Businessman-as-Hero to concede that it is precisely Big Business that is largely responsible for the twentieth-century march into aggressive statism..."<ref>''For A New Liberty'' (1973), p. 17</ref> According to Rothbard, one example of such cronyism included grants of monopolistic privilege the railroads derived from sponsoring so-called conservation laws.<ref>''For A New Liberty'' (1973), Power and Market ch. 3</ref>

===Free market money===
:''See also [[Free banking]] and [[Gold standard]]''
Rothbard believed the [[monopoly power]] of government over the issuance and distribution of [[money]] was inherently destructive and unethical. The belief derived from [[Ludwig von Mises]] and [[Friedrich Hayek]]'s [[Austrian Business Cycle Theory|Austrian theory]] of the [[business cycle]], which holds that undue [[credit expansion]] inevitably leads to a gross misallocation of capital resources, triggering unsustainable [[credit bubble]]s and, eventually, [[economic depression]]s. He therefore strongly opposed [[central banking]] and [[fractional reserve banking]] under a [[fiat money]] system, labeling it as "legalized counterfeiting"<ref>[http://www.fff.org/freedom/0999c.asp The Case for a 100% Gold Dollar], Murray Rothbard</ref> or a form of institutionalized [[embezzlement]] and therefore inherently [[fraud]]ulent.<ref>"It should be clear that modern [[fractional reserve banking]] is a [[shell game]], a [[Ponzi scheme]], a [[fraud]] in which fake warehouse receipts are issued and circulate as equivalent to the cash supposedly represented by the receipt." Rothbard, Murray. [http://www.mises.org/Books/mysteryofbanking.pdf ''The Mystery of Banking''], pp. 96-97, 89-94</ref><ref name="What is Money">[http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north769.html What is Money?], [[Gary North]]</ref> He characterized the government-enforced prohibition on citizens using [[gold as money|commodity currencies]] as legal tender a compulsory [[Ponzi scheme]], a [[Ponzi scheme]] from which no citizen could escape.<ref name="What is Money"/><ref>Rothbard, Murray. [http://www.mises.org/Books/mysteryofbanking.pdf ''The Mystery of Banking''], pp. 96-97, 89-94</ref>

He strongly advocated [[full reserve banking]] ("100 percent banking")<ref>[http://mises.org/story/3480 The Case Against the Fed], Murray Rothbard: 'A [[gold standard|gold-coin standard]], coupled with instant liquidation for any bank that fails to meet its contractual obligations, would bring about a [[free banking]] system so “[[hard currency|hard]]” and sound, that any problem of [[monetary inflation|inflationary]] credit or [[counterfeit money|counterfeiting]] would be minimal. It is perhaps a “second-best” solution to the ideal of treating [[fractional-reserve banking|fractional-reserve bankers]] as [[embezzlement|embezzlers]], but it would suffice at least as an excellent solution for the time being, that is, until people are ready to press on to [[full reserve banking|full 100 percent banking]].'</ref> and a voluntary, nongovernmental [[gold standard]]<ref>See also these Rothbard articles: [http://www.mises.org/money.asp What Has Government Done to Our Money?], [http://www.mises.org/story/1829 The Case for the 100% Gold Dollar]; [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/cartelization.pdf The Fed as Cartel], [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard191.html Private Coinage], [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard190.html Repudiate the National Debt]; [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard181.html Taking Money Back], [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard163.html Anatomy of the Bank Run], [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard128.html Money and the Individual]</ref> or, as a second best solution, [[free banking]] (which he also called "free market money").<ref>Rothbard, Murray. [http://www.mises.org/Books/mysteryofbanking.pdf ''The Mystery of Banking''], Ludwig von Mises Institute. 2008. p. 111, 278</ref>

In relation to the current [[central bank]]-managed [[fractional reserve banking|fractional reserve]] [[fiat currency]] [[debt-based monetary system|system]], he stated the following:<ref>Rothbard, Murray. [http://www.mises.org/Books/mysteryofbanking.pdf ''The Mystery of Banking''], p. 261</ref>

{{quote|Given this dismal monetary and banking situation, given a 39:1 pyramiding of checkable deposits and currency on top of gold, given a Fed unchecked and out of control, given a world of fiat moneys, how can we possibly return to a sound noninflationary market money? The objectives, after the discussion in this work, should be clear: (a) to return to a gold standard, a commodity standard unhampered by government intervention; (b) to abolish the Federal Reserve System and return to a system of free and competitive banking; (c) to separate the government from money; and (d) either to enforce 100 percent reserve banking on the commercial banks, or at least to arrive at a system where any bank, at the slightest hint of nonpayment of its demand liabilities, is forced quickly into bankruptcy and liquidation. While the outlawing of fractional reserve as fraud would be preferable if it could be enforced, the problems of enforcement, especially where banks can continually innovate in forms of credit, make free banking an attractive alternative.}}

==Other pursuits==
Rothbard ranged far beyond economics in his historical work. In a four-volume series, [[Wikipedia:Conceived in Liberty|Conceived in Liberty]] (1975-1979; volumes [http://www.mises.org/books/conceived1.pdf I.], [http://www.mises.org/books/conceived2.pdf II.], [http://www.mises.org/books/conceived3.pdf III.], [http://www.mises.org/books/conceived4.pdf IV.] in pdf), he presented a detailed account of American colonial history that stressed the libertarian antecedents of the [[Wikipedia:American Revolution|American Revolution]]. As usual, he challenged mainstream opinion. He had little use for [[Wikipedia:New England#New England and political thought|New England Puritanism]], and the virtues and military leadership of [[Wikipedia:George Washington|George Washington]] did not impress him. For Rothbard, the [[Wikipedia:Articles of Confederation|Articles of Confederation]] were not an overly weak arrangement that needed to be replaced by the more centrally focused [[Wikipedia:United States Constitution|Constitution]]. Quite the contrary, the Articles themselves allowed too much central control.

Although Rothbard usually found himself in close agreement with Mises, in one area he maintained that Mises was mistaken. Mises contended that ethical judgments were subjective: ultimate ends are not subject to rational assessment. Rothbard dissented, maintaining that an objective ethics could be founded on the requirements of human nature. His approach, based on his study of [[Wikipedia:Aristotelianism|Aristotelian]] and [[Wikipedia:Thomism|Thomist philosophy]], is presented in his major work [[Wikipedia:The Ethics of Liberty|The Ethics of Liberty]] (1982; [http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics/ethics.asp text]), his major study of political philosophy.

In his system of political ethics, [[Wikipedia:Self-ownership|self-ownership]] is the basic principle. Given a robust conception of self-ownership, a compulsory government monopoly of protective services is illegitimate; and Rothbard endeavors to refute the arguments to the contrary of supporters of a minimal state, [[Wikipedia:Robert Nozick|Robert Nozick]] chief among them. He contributes important clarifications to problems of libertarian legal theory, such as the nature of contracts and the appropriate standard of punishment. He explains why Mises’s instrumental argument for the market does not fully succeed, though he finds much of value in it; and he criticizes in careful detail Hayek’s view of the rule of law.

===Noninterventionism===
Believing like [[Randolph Bourne]] that "war is the health of the state" Rothbard opposed aggressive foreign policy. He criticized imperialism and the rise of the American empire which needed war to sustain itself and to expand its global control. His dislike of U.S. imperialism even led him to eulogize and lament the [[CIA]]-assisted execution of [[Marxist]] revolutionary [[Che Guevara]] in 1967, proclaiming that "his enemy was our enemy".<ref>[http://mises.org/journals/lar/pdfs/3_3/3_3_1.pdf ''Ernesto Che Guevara R.I.P.''] by Murray Rothbard, Left and Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought, Volume 3, Number 3 (Spring-Autumn 1967)</ref> Rothbard believed that stopping new wars was necessary and knowledge of how government had seduced citizens into earlier wars was important. Two essays expanded on these views "War, Peace, and the State" and "The Anatomy of the State". Rothbard used insights of the [[elitism]] theorists [[Vilfredo Pareto]], [[Gaetano Mosca]], and [[Robert Michels]] to build a model of state personnel, goals, and ideology.<ref>Joseph R. Stromberg, [http://antiwar.com/stromberg/?articleid=4296 Murray Rothbard on States, War, and Peace: Part I] (also see [http://www.antiwar.com/stromberg/?articleid=4420 Part II]), [[Antiwar.com]], originally published June 2000.</ref><ref>See both essays, Murray N. Rothbard, [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard26.html War, Peace, and the State], first published 1963; [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard62.html Anatomy of the State], first published 1974, both at [[LewRockwell.com]].</ref> In an obituary for historian [[Harry Elmer Barnes]] Rothbard explained why historical knowledge is important:<ref>Murray N. Rothbard, [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard165.html Harry Elmer Barnes, RIP], from "Left and Right" final issue, 1968, republished at [[LewRockwell.com]].</ref>

{{quote|Our entry into World War II was the crucial act in foisting a permanent militarization upon the economy and society, in bringing to the country a permanent garrison state, an overweening military-industrial complex, a permanent system of conscription. It was the crucial act in creating a mixed economy run by Big Government, a system of state-monopoly capitalism run by the central government in collaboration with Big Business and Big Unionism.}}

Rothbard discussed his views on the principles of a libertarian foreign policy in a 1973 interview: "minimize State power as much as possible, down to zero, and [[isolationism]] is the full expression in foreign affairs of the domestic objective of whittling down State power." He further called for "abstinence from any kind of American military intervention and political and economic intervention."<ref name="Rothbard on War"/> In ''For a New Liberty'' he writes: "In a purely libertarian world, therefore, there would be no 'foreign policy' because there would be no States, no governments with a monopoly of coercion over particular territorial areas."<ref name="For a New Liberty"/>

In "War Guilt in the Middle East" Rothbard details Israel's "aggression against Middle East Arabs," confiscatory policies and its "refusal to let these refugees return and reclaim the property taken from them."<ref>Murray Rothbard, [http://mises.org/journals/lar/pdfs/3_3/3_3_4.pdf War Guilt in the Middle East], "Left and Right", Vol. 3 No. 3 (Autumn 1967) ([http://mises.org/rothbard/1967-1969.asp cited here].)</ref> Rothbard also criticized the “organized Anti-Anti-Semitism” that critics of the state of Israel have to suffer.<ref>Murray N. Rothbard, [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/ir/Ch6.html Pat Buchanan and the Menace of Anti-anti-semitism], December 1990, from ''The Irrepressible Rothbard'', published at [[LewRockwell.com]].</ref> Rothbard criticized as [[state terrorism|terrorism]] the actions of the United States, Israel, and any nation that "retaliates" against innocents because they cannot pinpoint actual perpetrators. He held that no retaliation that injures or kills innocent people is justified, writing "Anything else is an apologia for unremitting and unending mass murder."<ref>Murray N. Rothbard, [http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard110.html Who Are the Terrorists?], first published in the ''[[Libertarian Party (United States)|Libertarian Party]] News'', March/April 1986, reproduced at [[LewRockwell.com]].</ref>

===Political views===
Rothbard modified the famous dictum of [[Wikipedia:Karl Marx|Marx]]: he wished both to understand and change the world. He endeavored to apply the ideas he had developed in his theoretical work to current politics and to bring libertarian views to the attention of the general public. One issue for him stood foremost. Like [[Wikipedia:Randolph Bourne|Randolph Bourne]], he maintained that "war is the health of the state"; he accordingly opposed an aggressive foreign policy.

His support for nonintervention in foreign policy led him to champion the [[Wikipedia:Old Right (United States)|Old Right]]. [[Wikipedia:John T. Flynn|John T. Flynn]]<ref name="Raimondo_Flynn">Justin Raimondo. [http://mises.org/story/2890 "Who is John T. Flynn?"], ''[[Mises Institute]]'', referenced 2009-05-27.</ref>, [[Wikipedia:Garet Garrett|Garet Garrett]]<ref name="Tucker_Garett">Jeffrey A. Tucker. [http://mises.org/story/2751 "Who Is Garet Garrett?"], ''[[Mises Institute]]'', referenced 2009-05-27.</ref> and other pre-World War II "isolationists" shared Rothbard’s belief in the close connection between state power and bellicose foreign policy.

The situation was quite otherwise with postwar conservatism. Although Rothbard was an early contributor to [[Wikipedia:William F. Buckley, Jr.|William Buckley]]’s [[Wikipedia:National Review|National Review]], he rejected the aggressive pursuit of the [[Wikipedia:Cold War]] advocated by Buckley and such members of his editorial staff as [[Wikipedia:James Burnham|James Burnham]] and [[Wikipedia:Frank S. Meyer|Frank S. Meyer]]. He broke with these self-styled conservatives and thereafter became one of their strongest opponents. For similar reasons, he condemned their [[Wikipedia:Neoconservatism|neoconservative]] successors. He followed a pragmatic policy of temporary alliances with whatever groups were, at a given time, opposed to militarism and foreign adventures. He set forward the basis for his political stance in a key essay, "Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty" ([http://mises.org/story/910 text]). This appeared in an important scholarly journal, [[Wikipedia:Left and Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought|Left and Right]] ([http://mises.org/journals/left-right.asp main page]), which he established. This contained major essays on revisionist history and foreign policy, but unfortunately lasted only from 1965-1968.

In an effort to widen the influence of libertarian thought in the academic world, Rothbard founded the [[Wikipedia:Journal of Libertarian Studies|Journal of Libertarian Studies]] ([http://mises.org/periodical.aspx?Id=3 main page]) in 1977. The journal began auspiciously with a symposium on Robert Nozick’s [[Wikipedia:Anarchy, State, and Utopia|Anarchy, State, and Utopia]]. Down to the present, it has remained the most important journal hospitable to libertarian ideas.

Rothbard established in 1987 another journal, the Review of Austrian Economics ([http://mises.org/periodical.aspx?Id=5 main page]), to provide a scholarly venue for economists and others interested in Austrian theory. It too is the key journal in its area of specialty. It has continued to the present, after 1997 under the new name [[Wikipedia:Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics|Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics]] ([http://mises.org/periodical.aspx?Id=4 main page]).

In his comments on current events, Rothbard displayed an ability to digest vast quantities of information on whatever subject interested him. Whether, e.g., the question was competing factions in [[Wikipedia:Afghanistan|Afghanistan]] or the sources of investment in oil in the [[Wikipedia:Middle East|Middle East]], he would always have the relevant data at his command. A sample of his columns, taken from the Rockwell Rothbard Report, is available in The Irrepressible Rothbard (2000; [http://mises.org/misesreview_detail.aspx?control=174 review]). Another journal that he founded, [[Wikipedia:The Libertarian Forum|The Libertarian Forum]] ([http://mises.org/journals/libertarianforum.asp main page]), provides his topical comments for the period 1969-1984. He presented a comprehensive popular account of libertarianism in [[Wikipedia:For A New Liberty|For A New Liberty]] (1973; [http://mises.org/rothbard/newlibertywhole.asp text], [http://mises.org/books/newliberty.pdf pdf]).

One last academic triumph remained for Rothbard, though sadly it appeared only after his death. In two massive volumes, [[Wikipedia:An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought|Economic Thought Before Adam Smith and Classical Economics]] (1995; volume [http://mises.org/books/histofthought1.pdf I.] and [http://mises.org/books/histofthought2.pdf II.] pdf), he presented a minutely detailed and erudite account of the history of economic theory. [[Adam Smith]]<ref name="Rothbard_Smith">Murray N. Rothbard. [http://mises.org/story/2012 "The Adam Smith Myth"], ''[[Mises Institute]]'', referenced 2009-05-27.</ref>, contrary to general belief, was not the founder of modern economics. His defense of a labor theory of value, modified and continued by his Ricardian successors, shunted economics onto the wrong path. The heroes of Rothbard’s study were the [[Wikipedia:School of Salamanca|Spanish scholastics]], who long before Smith had developed a subjective theory of value, and such later figures as [[Richard Cantillon|Cantillon]], [[Anne Robert Jacques Turgot|Turgot]], and [[Jean-Baptiste Say|Say]]. He dissects the heretical religious thought that prefigured Marxism and gives a mordant portrayal of the personality and thought of [[Wikipedia:John Stuart Mill|John Stuart Mill]].

Rothbard was closely associated with the [[Mises Institute|Ludwig von Mises Institute]] from its founding in 1982 by [[Wikipedia:Lew Rockwell|Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr]]. This organization became the main vehicle for the promotion of his ideas, and he served as its Academic Vice-President.

He taught at [[Wikipedia:Polytechnic Institute of New York University|Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute]] from the mid 1960s to the mid 1980s; from 1986 to his death on January 7, 1995, he was S.J. Hall Distinguished Professor of Economics at the [[Wikipedia:University of Nevada, Las Vegas|University of Nevada, Las Vegas]].

The "indispensable framework" for the life and work of this creative genius and polymath was his beloved wife, JoAnn Rothbard. His combination of scholarly achievement and engaged advocacy on behalf of freedom is unmatched.

<small>[http://mises.org/about/3249 Original text] written by David Gordon, used with generous permission of the [[Mises Institute]].</small>

==Curriculum Vitae==

=====Academic Degrees=====
*B.A. Mathematics, Columbia University (1945)
*M.A. Economics, Columbia University (1946)
*Ph.D. Economics, Columbia University (1956)

=====Academic Appointments=====
*Instructor, City College of New York (1948-1949)
*Professor of Economics, Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn (1963-1985)
*Vice President for Academic Affairs, Ludwig von Mises Institute (1982-1995)
*S.J. Hall Distinguished Professor of Economics, University of Nevada, Las Vegas (1986-1995)

=====Other Positions=====
*Senior Analyst, William Volker Fund (1951-1962)
*Editor, Left and Right (1965-1968)
*Founder, Center for Libertarian Studies (1976)
*Resident Scholar, The Cato Institute (1977)
*Founder, Journal of Libertarian Studies (1977)
*Editor, Journal of Libertarian Studies (1977-1995)
*Consultant, U.S. Commission on Gold (1981-1982)
*Founder, The Review of Austrian Economics (1987)
*Editor, The Review of Austrian Economics (1987-1995)

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
* [http://mises.org/content/mnrbib.asp The complete Rohbard bibliography]
* [http://mises.org/literature.aspx?action=author&Id=299 Books and Essays by Rothbard]
* [http://mises.org/content/mnrasidof.asp A Scholar in Defense of Freedom], a bibliographic essay
* Tributes and Essays to Rothbard by [http://mises.org/content/blockonmnr.asp Walter Block], [http://mises.org/etexts/hhhonmnr.asp Hans Hoppe], [http://mises.org/web/2013 Lew Rockwell] and [http://mises.org/article.aspx?Id=1708 Jeffrey A. Tucker]
* Media: Rothbard's [http://mises.org/media.aspx?action=showname&ID=299 Audio Economics Course] and [http://mises.org/rothspeak/murray.asp Short Clips]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rothbard, Murray N.}}
[[Category:Anarcho-capitalists]]
[[Category:Economists]]
[[Category:Historians]]
[[Category:Political theorists]]

User talk:Swede

2011-01-27T15:15:13Z

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User:DickClarkMises

2011-01-27T15:05:43Z

DickClarkMises: update location

My name is Dick Clark, and I am an attorney currently working in Nebraska. I worked at the Mises Institute from mid-2004 to January 2007, and I've been working on wikis--mostly the English Wikipedia--since March 2005. You can view my wiki-en userpage [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DickClarkMises here].

Georgist

2011-01-27T15:04:49Z

DickClarkMises: point Georgist at Henry George (preemptive redirect; target article not yet created)

#REDIRECT[[Henry George]]

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History of money and banking

2010-12-06T19:31:54Z

DickClarkMises: rm stub tag; article is 54kb long

[[Trade]] is as old as humanity itself. Long-distance commerce is according to some sources at least 150,000 years old.{{Fact|Quoted from the Wikipedia page on [[Wikipedia:Trade|Trade]], could not check this personally: Watson, Peter (2005). ''"Ideas : A History of Thought and Invention from Fire to Freud."'' HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-621064-X. Introduction.}} It is ten times older than [[Wikipedia:Agriculture|farming]].<ref name="Ridley_trade">Matt Ridley. [http://www.ted.com/talks/matt_ridley_when_ideas_have_sex.html "Matt Ridley: When ideas have sex"] (video), 11:00-11:30, filmed in July 2010. Referenced 2010-07-23.</ref> Most types of food and perishables could be only traded locally, preferred were durable goods with large value for a small weight. Some of them have begun to be used as [[money]], examples as diverse as cattle, seashells, beads, nails, tobacco, cotton, and so on; but since the 17th century the most common forms have been metal coins, paper notes, and bookkeeping entries.<ref name="Britannica_money">Encyclopedia Britannica. [http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/389170/money "Money"], referenced 2009-08-09.</ref> The wide use of cattle as money in primitive times survives in the words like pecuniary (coming from the Latin ''pecus'', meaning cattle) and fee (Old English ''feoh'', ‘cattle owned’, still used as livestock in German ''Vieh'').<ref name="Cow_Words">[http://www.billcasselman.com/unpublished_works/cow_words_one.htm "Cow Words & financial Origin of Words like Fee, Cattle, Pecuniary]" from Bill Casselman's Canadian Word of the Day, referenced 2009-08-09.</ref>

==Ancient History==
Ancient times record the rise of great civilizations, growth of trade and development of new technologies. They also show many experiments with [[price controls]], inflation, and even attempts at total control over the market.

===First Coins===
The use of metal for [[money]] can be traced back to [[Wikipedia:Babylon|Babylon]] more than 2000 years BC, but standardization and certification in the form of ''[[Coin|coinage]]'' did not occur except perhaps in isolated instances until the 7th century BC.<ref name="Britannica_money" />

One of the precursors were metal ingots. On [[Wikipedia:Minoan civilization|Crete]] were found [[Wikipedia:Oxhide ingot|copper ingots]] from 17th century BC, in the shape of oxskins, with writings about their purity and full weight. <ref name="Gaettens_Money">Richard Gaettens. ''Geschichte der Inflationen Von Altertum bis zum Gegenwart'' (German: History of Inflations from Old Ages to the Present), Einleitung (Introduction) p. 15-21. ISBN: ISBN 3-87045-211-0. Referenced 2010-01-16.</ref> Historians generally ascribe the first use of coined money to [[Wikipedia:Croesus|Croesus]], king of [[Wikipedia:Lydia|Lydia]], a state in [[Wikipedia:Anatolia|Anatolia]]. The earliest coins were made of [[Wikipedia:Electrum|electrum]], a natural mixture of [[gold]] and [[silver]], and were crude, bean-shaped ingots bearing a primitive punch mark certifying to either weight or fineness or both.<ref name="Britannica_money" /> Some theorize, that the first stamped coins were issued by priests, and that the first mints were in temples.<ref name="Percy_coins">Gardner, Percy. [http://www.archive.org/details/typesgreekcoins00gardgoog "The types of Greek coins; an archaeological essay (1883)"], Chapter 1. Publisher: Cambridge [Eng.] University Press, 1883. Digitized book at the ''Internet Archive''. Referenced 2010-08-06.</ref>

[[Coin]]s made payment by "tale", or count possible, rather than weight, greatly facilitating commerce. But this in turn encouraged "[[Wikipedia:Coin clipping|clipping]]" (shaving off tiny slivers from the sides or edges of coins) and "sweating" (shaking a bunch of coins together in a leather bag and collecting the dust that was so knocked off). The result is described by [[Gresham's Law]] ("bad money drives out good" when there is a fixed rate of exchange between them): good, heavy coins were held for their metallic value, while light coins were passed on to others. In time the coins became lighter and lighter and prices higher and higher. To correct this problem, the coins were weighed for large transactions, and there was pressure for recoinage. The problem was largely ended by the "[[Wikipedia:Milled coinage|milling]]" of coins (serrations around the circumference of a coin), which began in the late 17th century. A more serious problem was, that the sovereigns often attempted to benefit from the [[monopoly]] of coinage.<ref name="Britannica_money" />

{{See also|Coin}}

===Banking in Ancient Times===
The first precursors of [[bank]]s can be traced as far back as ancient [[Wikipedia:Mesopotamia|Mesopotamia]], where temples, royal palaces, and some private houses served to store valuable commodities like grain, the ownership of which could be transferred via written receipts. There are records of loans by the temples of [[Wikipedia:Babylon|Babylon]] as early as 2000 BC; temples were considered safe, because they were sacred places watched over by gods, and should be protected from theft. Companies of traders in ancient times provided banking services connected to the buying and selling of goods. Many of these early "protobanks" dealt primarily in coin and bullion, money changing and supplied foreign and domestic coins of the correct weight and fineness.<ref name="Britannica_money" /> Around the year 3300 B.C. the temple of Uruk owned the land it exploited, received offerings and deposits and granted loans to farmers and merchants of livestock and grain, probably the first bank in history.<ref name="De_Soto_Banking">Jesús Huerta de Soto. [http://mises.org/books/desoto.pdf "Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles"] (pdf). 2. Historical Violations of the Legal Principles Governing the Monetary Irregular-Deposit Contract, p. 40-41, referenced 2009-10-29.</ref>

===Sumer===
One of the first recorded reforms to remove corruption comes from [[Wikipedia:Sumer|Sumer]]. King [[Wikipedia:Urukagina|Urukagina]], reigning from about 2350 BC, removed excessive regulations and bureaucracy. What little remains of the records from that time contains possibly the first reference to a word for 'freedom'<ref name="Schuettinger_Price_controls">Robert L. Schuettinger and Eamonn F. Butler. "[[Forty Centuries of Wage and Price Controls]]", Chapter 1 - Ancient World, p. 9-18, referenced 2009-08-09.</ref>, ''[[Wikipedia:Ama-gi|amargi]]'' (some sources interpret it as an exemption of taxes or cancellation of debt<ref name="Hudson_Debt">Dr. Michael Hudson, ISLET. [http://michael-hudson.com/articles/debt/ArchaeologyDebt.html "The New Economic Archaeology of Debt"], CDL Press, Baltimore, 2002, referenced 2009-08-09.</ref>).

===Babylon===
In [[Wikipedia:Babylon|Babylon]], the [[Wikipedia:Code of Hammurabi|Code]] of [[Wikipedia:Hammurabi|Hammurabi]], "the protecting king", explicitly quoted many wages and prices. The decline of the number of merchants and an increase in bureaucracy was followed by an overall economical decline.<ref name="Schuettinger_Price_controls" /> It strictly regulated the rights associated with it, as well as commercial activity, limiting interest rates and even establishing public loans at 12.5 percent. Partnership agreements were also regulated, as was the keeping of accounts of operations.<ref name="De_Soto_Banking" />

===Ancient Egypt===
The rulers of [[Wikipedia:Ancient Egypt|Egypt]] regulated the grain crops, then directed it, until finally land become the property of the monarch to be rented out. "There was a real omnipresence of the state... all prices were fixed by fiat at all levels. There was a whole army of inspectors. There was nothing but inventories, censuses of men and animals. In villages, where disgusted farmers ran away, those, who remained, were responsible for the absentees' production." Egypt collapsed economically and politically at the end of the third century BC.<ref name="Schuettinger_Price_controls" />

Few people were wealthy, but banking was widespread and used by many villagers, farmers, merchants and craftsmen, doing business through banks and making payments out of their deposits and bank accounts. The [[Wikipedia:Ptolemaic dynasty|Ptolemies]] realized how profitable private banks were, and started the first government-run bank which would conduct business with the "prestige" of the state, hold custody of tax revenues and invest in its benefit. The main innovation of Egyptian banking was centralization: the government bank in [[Wikipedia:Alexandria|Alexandria]] had branches in the most important towns and cities. It has outlived its founding dynasty and was preserved during Roman rule.<ref name="De_Soto_Egypt">Jesús Huerta de Soto. [http://mises.org/books/desoto.pdf "Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles"] (pdf). 2. Historical Violations of the Legal Principles Governing the Monetary Irregular-Deposit Contract, p. 51-53, referenced 2009-10-29.</ref>

===Ancient Greece===
[[Wikipedia:Solon|Solon]], on taking office in [[Wikipedia:Classical Athens|Athens]] in 594 BC, instituted a partial debasement of the currency (there is some disagreement on this matter{{Fact|reason="Taken from Wikipedia, could not check this personally: Stanton G.R. Athenian Politics c800-500BC: A Sourcebook, Routledge, London (1990), page 61 note 4."}}). For the next four centuries the [[Wikipedia:Greek drachma|drachma]] had an almost constant silver content (67 grains of fine silver until [[Wikipedia:Alexander the Great|Alexander]], 65 grains after) and became the standard coin of trade in Greece and in much of Asia and Europe. Even after the Roman conquest of Greece in roughly the 2nd century BC, the drachma continued to be minted and widely used.<ref name="Britannica_money" /> The Greek city-states were largely independent, though there was an awareness of Hellenic identity. Each city-state had its own coinage. There was an active trade in these currencies, and probably few laws limiting citizens of a given city-state to the use of their own money.<ref name="Edwards_Greece">James Rolph Edwards. [http://mises.org/journals/jls/4_1/4_1_7.pdf "Monopoly and Competition in Money"] (pdf), The Journal of Libertarian Studies Vol.IV, No.1, Winter 1980. Referenced 2010-06-26.</ref> Debasement of the currency either for state profit or for the accommodation of changes in the ratio was rare in Greek history (with the notable exception of [[Wikipedia:Dionysius I of Syracuse|Dionysius]] of Syracuse<ref name="Chodorov_Dionysius">Frank Chodorov. [http://mises.org/daily/3936 "Tyranny and Finance"], from ''Mises Daily'', December 30, 2009; excerpted from chapter 9 of [http://mises.org/resources/3091 The Rise and Fall of Society]. Referenced 2010-09-19.</ref><ref name="Bullock_Dionysios">Jesse Bullock Charles. [http://www.archive.org/details/economicessays029061mbp "Economic Essays (1936)"], p. 502-519. "''Having borrowed money from citizens of Syracuse and being pressed for repayment, he ordered all the coin in the city to be brought to him, under penalty of death. After taking up the collection, he restamped the coins, giving to each drachma the value of two drachmae, so that he was enabled to pay back both the original loan and the money he had ordered brought to the mint.''" Referenced 2010-09-19.</ref>). On the contrary, there are cases of actually raising the standard of the coinage for the greater prestige which a coinage of high intrinsic value seemed to offer. In the sixth century B.C., the Euboean unit was increased in a number of cities by about five grains, in emulation of an increase introduced by [[Wikipedia:Peisistratos|Pisistratus]] in Athens.<ref name="Groseclose_Greece">Elgin Groseclose. [http://mises.org/books/money.pdf "Money And Man - A Survey of Monetary Experience"] (pdf), Bimetallism and the Rise of the Gold Standard, p.146-147. Referenced 2010-06-25.</ref>

Banking, bank fraud and even banking crises were very well known. After the revolt against [[Wikipedia:Mithridates VI of Pontus|Mithridates]], a serious banking crisis in [[Wikipedia:Ephesus|Ephesus]] followed. The banking industry received here its first express, historically-documented privilege, which established a ten-year deferment on the return of deposits.<ref name="De_Soto_Greece">Jesús Huerta de Soto. [http://mises.org/books/desoto.pdf "Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles"] (pdf). 2. Historical Violations of the Legal Principles Governing the Monetary Irregular-Deposit Contract, p. 41-51, referenced 2009-10-29.</ref>

===Ancient Rome===
{{Main|Money and banking in Ancient Rome}}
From at least the 4th century B.C.. the Roman government bought grain in times of shortage and resold it at a lower price. At 58 B.C. was the law changed: every citizen should become free wheat. To the surprise of the government, most farmers left the country to live in Rome without working. To deal with the increasing economical problems, the emperors gradually began to devalue their currency.<ref name="Schuettinger_Rome">Robert L. Schuettinger and Eamonn F. Butler. "[[Forty Centuries of Wage and Price Controls]]", Chapter 2 - The Roman Republic and Empire, p. 19-27, referenced 2009-08-09.</ref>

The silver [[Wikipedia:Denarius|denarius]], patterned after the Greek drachma, was introduced about 212 BC. Soon after, the prior copper coin (''[[Wikipedia:As (Roman coin)|aes]]'', or libra) began to be debased until, by the onset of the empire, its weight had been reduced from 1 pound (12 Roman ounces) to half an ounce. By contrast the silver denarius and the gold [[Wikipedia:Aureus|aureus]] (introduced about 87 BC) suffered only minor debasement until the time of [[Wikipedia:Nero|Nero]] (AD 54), when almost continuous tampering with the coinage began. The metal content of the gold and silver coins was reduced, while the proportion of alloy was increased to three-fourths or more of its weight. <ref name="Britannica_money" />

The prices have risen in response and reached unprecedented heights under Emperor [[Wikipedia:Diocletian|Diocletian]]. The once silver denarius was by then a tin plated copper coin, silver and gold coins were no longer in circulation. Diocletian issued a new denarius from pure copper and instituted further reforms, to fix still rising prices and the wages of many workers. Death was the punishment for dealing at higher prices or hoarding, and much blood was shed before the law was finally ignored. A tax reform has bound the lower classes to the soil and made them effective serfs.<ref name="Schuettinger_Rome" />

The silver currency was basically abandoned, so much that the government started to demand payment of taxes in kind and in services instead of coin. [[Wikipedia:Constantine I|Constantine]] issued the golden [[Wikipedia:Solidus (coin)|solidus]] in large numbers (but taxes had to be paid in gold [[Wikipedia:Precious metal#Bullion|bullion]], as the government had trouble knowing how debased its coinage was). But the inflation of lesser coins continued, even cities were free to make their own token coins. Most people had to buy gold coins to pay taxes with, those who couldn't afford it lost their lands or became delinquents. So there was a relatively stable 'gold standard' used by the growing number of soldiers and civil servants, and an increasingly worthless currency for the rest of the citizenry. A rapid decline of their fortunes and personal freedoms followed.<ref "Peden_Inflation_Fall_of_Rome">Joseph R. Peden. [http://mises.org/story/3663 "Inflation and the Fall of the Roman Empire"], posted on 2009-09-07 in Mises Daily, referenced 2009-09-11.</ref>

And so has debasement contributed to the collapse of the empire.

Banking was highly developed and subject to [[Wikipedia:Roman Law|Roman Law]], money deposits were to be safeguarded and not lent out. A specialty were banker associations or ''societates argentariae'', where members supplied capital to form them, but they had unlimited liability to prevent fraud. Most banks failed during the economic crises of the third and fourth centuries A.D.<ref name="De_Soto_Rome">Jesús Huerta de Soto. [http://mises.org/books/desoto.pdf "Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles"] (pdf). 2. Historical Violations of the Legal Principles Governing the Monetary Irregular-Deposit Contract, p. 53-58, referenced 2009-10-29.</ref>

===Ancient China===
In China, the economic doctrines of [[Wikipedia:Confucius|Confucius]] held that "government interference is necessary for economic life and competition should be reduced to a minimum." A large bureaucracy was formed to regulate in detail commercial life and prices. In natural calamities, like famines, the merchants were not allowed to raise prices. The collection and raising of crops was regulated similarly.

But the results were not very favorable and the officials learned the lesson: "...whenever the government adopted any minute measure, it failed, with few exceptions.... since the Ch'in dynasty (221-206 B.C.), the government of modern China has not controlled the economic life of the people as did the government of ancient China. "

Even in those times, there were economic thinkers pointing out the rising prices were caused by inflation. [[Wikipedia:Ye Shi|Yeh Shih]] (A.D. 1150-1223), for instance, anticipated by several centuries the principle known as [[Gresham's Law]]: "The men who do not inquire into the fundamental cause," he wrote, "simply think that paper should be used when money is scarce. But as soon as paper is employed, money becomes still less. Therefore, it is not only that the sufficiency of goods cannot be seen, but also that the sufficiency of money cannot be seen."<ref name="Schuettinger_Price_controls" />

==Middle Ages==
The Middle Ages saw widespread use and standardization of coins, and their extensive debasement, in almost every country in Europe.<ref name="Rothbard_livre">[[Murray N. Rothbard]]. [http://mises.org/books/mysteryofbanking.pdf "The Mystery of Banking"] (pdf), online version, Chapter I. Money: its Importance and Origins, p.12, referenced 2009-08-20.</ref> But there were also clear ideas about what constitutes good money. [[Charlemagne]] made his son Louis swear to never make the coinage worse. [[Louis the Pious]] kept his word and the following kings of this line kept the same coin. But the later Frankish emperors began to devalue their coins, and did so frequently. The dean of the church of Prague, [[Cosmas of Prague|Cosmas]] (~1045-1125), reports of changes in coinage 3 to 4 times a year, their effect worse than pestilence, looting armies and arson.<ref name="Kosmas_Letopis">Kosmas. [http://www.archive.org/details/kosmwletopisesk00tomegoog "Kosmůw Letopis český s pokračowáními kanowníka Wyšehradského a mnicha Sázawského (1882)"] (in ''Czech''), p.37-38; [http://ia700302.us.archive.org/16/items/kosmwletopisesk00tomegoog/kosmwletopisesk00tomegoog.pdf pdf], on ''The Internet Archive''. [http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/bsb00000683/images/index.html?seite=2 "Cosmas <Pragensis> / Bretholz, Berthold: Die Chronik der Böhmen des Cosmas von Prag, Berlin, 1923"] ''(in Latin)'', on ''Monumenta Germaniae Historic'', p.59. Referenced 2010-12-02.</ref> Thomas Aquinas, the great sage of the 13th century. stressed the importance of an unchanging coin and demanded from the rulers to hold to the true inner worth of things. [[Nicholas Oresme]], one of the first economic theoreticians, demonstrated the effects of currency depreciation. And according to the philosopher [[Gabriel Biel]], to withdraw a good coin and issue a less worthy one with the same nominal value is clearly fraud.<ref name="Gaettens_Closing">Richard Gaettens. ''Geschichte der Inflationen Von Altertum bis zum Gegenwart'' (German: History of Inflations from Old Ages to the Present), ''Schlusswort'' (Closing words) p. 302. ISBN: ISBN 3-87045-211-0. Referenced 2010-11-01.</ref>

The devaluations were certainly not rare. For example, in 1200, the French ''[[Wikipedia:Livre tournois|livre tournois]]'' was defined as 98 grams of fine silver; by 1600 it equaled only 11 grams. When the [[Wikipedia:Gold Dinar|dinar]], the coin of the [[Wikipedia:Saracen|Saracens]] in [[Wikipedia:Al-Andalus|Spain]] was first coined at the end of the seventh century, it consisted of 65 gold [[Wikipedia:Grain (mass)|grains]]. The Saracens kept the dinar’s weight relatively constant, and as late as the middle of the twelfth century, it still equaled 60 grains. At that point, the Christian kings [[Wikipedia:Reconquista|conquered]] Spain, and by the early thirteenth century, the dinar, called [[Wikipedia:Spanish maravedí|maravedi]], had been reduced to 14 grains of gold. The [[gold]] coin was soon too lightweight to circulate, and was converted into a [[silver]] coin weighing 26 grains of silver. But by the mid-fifteenth century, the maravedi consisted of only 1½ silver grains, and was again too small to circulate.<ref name="Rothbard_livre" />

The modern banking industry was born and discovered the profits and bankruptcies associated with [[fractional reserve banking]].
{{See also|Inflations}}

===China===
[[Wikipedia:History of China|China]] was a pioneer of banking practices. Deposit banking ''per se'' began in the eighth century A.D., when shops would accept valuables, in return for warehouse receipts, and receive a fee for keeping them safe. After a while, the deposit receipts of these shops began to circulate as money. Finally, after two centuries, the shops began to issue and lend out more receipts than they had on deposit; they had caught on to fractional reserve banking.<ref name="Rothbard_History" />

Printing was first invented in ancient China and paper money began there as well. The government sought a way to avoid physically transporting gold collected in taxes from the provinces to the capital at Peking. In the mid-eighth century, provincial governments began to set up offices in the capital selling paper drafts which could be collected in gold in the provincial capitals. In 811–812, the central government outlawed private firms involved in this business and established its own system of drafts on provincial governments (called "[[Wikipedia:Chinese currency#Imperial China|flying money]]").<ref name="Rothbard_paper">[[Murray N. Rothbard]]. [http://mises.org/books/mysteryofbanking.pdf "The Mystery of Banking"] (pdf), online version, Chapter IV. The Supply of Money, p.56-57, referenced 2009-08-20.</ref>

The governments have tried to keep their issues constant at first, and to redeem them at predefined times. But they soon turned to solving their fiscal troubles with printing money. In the province of [[Wikipedia:Sichuan|Szechuan]], the first 'extra issues' were made in 1072. The expansion continued until around 1200 was the currency started to be abandoned. In [[Wikipedia:Song Dynasty|Southern Sung]], from the beginning of inflation in 1176 it took to the thirteenth century for a serious decline in value. In northern [[Wikipedia:Jin Dynasty (1115–1234)|Chin]] was the amount of paper money held stable from 1153 until 1190. Following various experiments, attempts to pay for military expenditures have completely destroyed its value by the second decade of 13th century.

After the [[Wikipedia:Mongol Empire|Mongols]] entered China, in 1260 were the various regional currencies replaced with a national currency fixed to silver. The issues started to multiply and even the growth of the area, where they were legal tender, didn't prevent their fall in value. Several reforms later, by 1356 was the paper money practically worthless and the dynasty ended in 1368. The [[Wikipedia:Ming Dynasty|Ming]] were similarly reckless in their monetary policy and by 1500 were the notes becoming collector's items. After some 500 years experience, the Chinese abandoned the use of state-sponsored paper money and returned to a combination of hard currency and private bank notes.<ref name="Tullock_paper">Gordon Tullock. [http://www.terry.uga.edu/~last/classes/4100/readings/tullock_ehr.pdf "Paper money - a cycle in Cathay"] (pdf), The Economic History Review, Second series, Vol. IX, No. 3, 1957, referenced 2009-09-14.</ref> The government superseded the paper money by a metallic currency, and for ever abolished paper money issued by the State.<ref name="Vissering_Chinese">Vissering, Willem. [http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924023306875 "On Chinese currency. Coin and paper money"], Chapter VI, p.218. Publisher: Leiden, E. J. Brill 1877, digitized book at the Internet Archive. Referenced 2010-08-09.</ref>

===Banking in Europe===
The fall of the Roman Empire meant the feudalization of economic and social relationships. The reduction in trade and division of labor dealt a heavy blow to financial activities, especially banking, the effects lasting for centuries, the revival started by the end of 11th century and beginning of 12th (from this period stems also the practice of [[Wikipedia:Double-entry bookkeeping system|double-entry bookkeeping]].) Only monasteries were secure enough to guard economic resources. Particularly important were the [[Wikipedia:Knights Templar|Templars]], an internationally active military and religious order, they kept deposits in safe custody, transferred funds and made loans of their own resources. Their growing prosperity aroused the fear and envy of many, until [[Wikipedia:Philip IV of France|Philip the Fair]], the King of France, disbanded the order to get their riches.

The bankers preserved their deposits fully at first, but later began to use them for their own purposes, creating deposits and granting credits out of nowhere. Since the canonical law banned the charging of [[interest]] on loans, bankers would instead pay "penalties" for "delays" in payment and in effect pay interest on a disguised loan, and justified any misappropriations on this basis. [[Fractional reserve banking]] has created periods of growth, followed by an economical crisis and failure of banks.

The authorities failed to enforce sound banking practices, and often granted banks a government license to operate with a fractional reserve, while taking advantage of easy loans to finance governments and public officials. Some rulers created government banks to reap the profits. But banks were still required to guarantee deposits.<ref name="De_Soto_Medieval">Jesús Huerta de Soto. [http://mises.org/books/desoto.pdf "Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles"] (pdf). 3. Bankers in the Late Middle Ages, p. 59-69, referenced 2009-11-05.</ref>

===Medieval Italy===
In western Europe, the use of private bank notes and deposits, redeemable in specie, had begun in fourteenth century [[Wikipedia:History of the Republic of Venice|Venice]]. Firms granting credit to consumers and businesses existed in the ancient world and in medieval Europe, but these were "money lenders" who loaned out their own savings. "Banking" in the sense of lending out the savings of others only began in England with the "scriveners" of the early seventeenth century. (The scriveners were clerks who wrote contracts and bonds and so were in a position to learn of mercantile transactions and engage in money lending and borrowing.)<ref name="Rothbard_History">Murray N. Rothbard. [http://mises.org/books/historyofmoney.pdf "History of Money"] (pdf), Private Bank Notes, p. 56-57, referenced 2009-08-18.</ref> The term banker originated in Florence, where bankers were called either ''banchieri'' or ''tavolieri'', because they worked sitting behind a bench (''banco'') or table (''tavola'').<ref name="De_Soto_Banking" />

And it was in [[Wikipedia:History of Florence|Florence]], where the growing banking industry gained great importance by the fourteenth century. From that time have the bankers begun to misuse a portion of their deposits, inevitably causing a boom and a recession. This recession was triggered not only by Neapolitan princes’ massive withdrawal of funds, but also by England’s inability to repay its loans and the drastic fall in the price of Florentine government bond. The public debt was financed by these speculative new loans created. A general crisis of confidence occurred, causing the most important banks to fail between 1341 and 1346. The recovery did not come until after the [[Wikipedia:Black Death|plague]].

The powerful [[Wikipedia:Medici bank|Medici bank]] initially didn't accept demand deposits. Later on, their reserve ratio gradually worsened, and by its end dropped even below 10 percent. The bank was ruined by the end of the 14th century like its competitors, and all of its assets fell into the hands of creditors.<ref name="De_Soto_Italy">Jesús Huerta de Soto. [http://mises.org/books/desoto.pdf "Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles"] (pdf). 2. Historical Violations of the Legal Principles Governing the Monetary Irregular-Deposit Contract, p. 70-75, referenced 2009-11-07.</ref>

==Modern History==
The modern times were witness to the rise of central banks. Experiments with using multiple metals for coinage and bimetallism have led to the domination of the Gold Standard. Fractional reserve banknotes have been widespread by the end of 18th century and the trend continued. They have turned into paper money in most countries by the beginning of World War I.<ref name="Hulsmann_Modern_Banking">Jörg Guido Hülsmann. [http://www.mises.org/books/moneyproduction.pdf "The Ethics of Money Production"] (pdf), online version, Chapter 15. Fiat Monetary Systems in the Realm of the Nation-State p.199-203, referenced 2009-08-20.</ref>

But coins still freely circulated for a long time. For example, the [[Wikipedia:Spanish dollar|Spanish silver dollar]] was from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century the relatively most stable and least debased coin in the Western world, and thus the world's outstanding coin.<ref name="Rothbard_Spanish">[[Murray N. Rothbard]]. [http://mises.org/books/historyofmoney.pdf "History of Money and Banking in the United States: The Colonial Era to World War II"] (pdf), A history of money and banking in the United States before the twentieth century, p. 49, referenced 2009-09-14.</ref>

Europe was also impacted by the inflow of precious metals from the [[Wikipedia:New World|New World]], but it was not a dramatic [[Wikipedia:Price revolution|price revolution]]. The money stock (gold and silver) increased depending on various estimates by 50 to 500% from the year 1500 over a period of 150 years (an average growth rate of the money supply somewhere between 0.3 and 3.3 percent per annum).<ref name="Hulsmann_New_World">Jörg Guido Hülsmann. [http://www.mises.org/books/moneyproduction.pdf "The Ethics of Money Production"] (pdf), online version, Chapter 4. Utilitarian Considerations on the Production of Money, p.73-74, referenced 2010-03-04.</ref> Where many complained about rising prices, some have recognized (often ascribed to [[Wikipedia:Jean Bodin|J. Bodin]] in 1568, but first recognized by Azpilcueta Navarro from the [[Wikipedia:School of Salamanca|School of Salamanca]] in 1556<ref name="Hutchinson_Navarro">Marjorie Grice-Hutchinson. [http://mises.org/books/salamanca_grice-hutchinson.pdf "The School of Salamanca"] (pdf), p.52, referenced 2010-03-11.</ref>), that the goods have not risen in value, but silver has fallen; from 1500 to 1700 it was estimated to be 1/20 of its former value.<ref name="Gaettens_Law_France">Richard Gaettens. ''Geschichte der Inflationen Von Altertum bis zum Gegenwart'' (German: History of Inflations from Old Ages to the Present), ''John Law und die französischen Finanzprobleme nach dem Tode Ludwigs XIV.'' (John Law and the French financial troubles after the death of Louis XIV.) p. 100-126. ISBN: ISBN 3-87045-211-0. Referenced 2010-02-27.</ref>

The [[Wikipedia:Industrial Revolution|Industrial Revolution]], that accelerated in the second half of the 18th century, opened an age of mass production for the needs of the masses.<ref name="Mises_Industrial">Ludwig von Mises. [http://mises.org/daily/4604 The Popular Interpretation of the "Industrial Revolution"], Mises Daily, August 2010, excerpted from chapter 21 of [[Human Action]]. Referenced 2010-08-09.</ref>

===Netherlands===
{{See also|Inflations#Vellon inflation in Spain}}
At the beginning of the 16th century, the currency reforms of [[Wikipedia:Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor|Charles V]] proved unpopular, although he was able to suppress any upheaval. Under his son [[Wikipedia:Philip II of Spain|Philip II.]] and his lack of religious tolerance, the revolution broke out in full. One of the first measures of the revolutionary government was "free" or "individual" coinage, where the state would coin any metal delivered to it at no or very small cost. Free coinage was an immediate success. As the seventeenth century began, the Dutch were the driving force behind European commerce. The coins, that had legal tender status were often worn and damaged, so it was not easy to exchange them. To do so, the [[Wikipedia:Bank of Amsterdam|Bank of Amsterdam]] was founded in 1609. Coins were taken in as deposits based not on the face value, but on the real value of their metal weight, with credits, known as bank money, issued against them. And so was created a perfectly uniform currency. This, along with the convenience and security of the new money - and the guarantee of the city of [[Wikipedia:Amsterdam|Amsterdam]], caused the bank money to trade at an [[Wikipedia:Agio (commerce)|agio]], or premium over coins.

The Bank was at first a strictly deposit bank with 100 percent backing, but secretly allowed some depositors to overdraw their accounts as early as 1657 and later provided large loans to the [[Wikipedia:Dutch East India Company|Dutch East India Company]] and the Municipality of Amsterdam. By 1790 these loans became public and the premium on the bank money disappeared, by the end of that year the Bank virtually admitted insolvency by issuing a notice that silver would be sold to holders of bank money at a 10 percent discount. The City of Amsterdam took the Bank over, and eventually closed it for good in 1819.

But throughout 17th century, precious metals from the New World, Japan and other locales have been channeled into Europe, with corresponding price increases. Thanks to the free coinage, the Bank of Amsterdam, and the heightened trade and commerce, Netherlands attracted even more coin and bullion. One of the results of the boom was the [[Wikipedia:Tulip mania|Tulip mania]] (1634-37). The popular flower became a status symbol, the rare bulbs were hard to reproduce and in great demand. A large futures market formed for the seasonal flower and the speculation escalated. At its peak, the prices rose twenty-six times in January 1637, only to fall to one-twentieth of its peak price a week later. Finally, the Court of Holland judged the tulip sales to be bets under Roman law and basically cancelled all contracts. The growers of the bulbs absorbed the most of the damage and the number of bankruptcies increased.

Ironically, as kings throughout Europe debased their currencies, the Dutch provided a sound money policy with money backed one hundred per cent by specie. Free coinage laws (later limited) created more money from the increased supply of coin and bullion, than what the market demanded. The acute increase in the supply of money fostered an atmosphere, that was ripe for speculation and malinvestment, and led to one of the first recorded panics or speculative bubbles.<ref name="French_Tulip_mania">Doug French. [http://mises.org/journals/qjae/pdf/qjae9_1_1.pdf "The Dutch Monetary Environment During Tulipmania"] (pdf), Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, Vol. 9 Num. 1. 2006, referenced 2009-10-18.</ref>

===England===
In England there were no banks of deposit until the [[Wikipedia:English Civil War|civil war]] in the mid-seventeenth century. Merchants used to store their surplus gold in the king’s mint for safekeeping. But when [[Wikipedia:Charles I of England|Charles I]] needed money in 1638, shortly before the outbreak of the civil war, he confiscated a huge sum of £200,000 of gold, calling it a "loan" from the owners. Although the merchants later got their gold back, instead of the mint they chose to deposit their gold in the coffers of private goldsmiths. The warehouse receipts of the goldsmiths were soon used as a substitute for the gold itself. By the end of the civil war, in the 1660s, the goldsmiths fell prey to the temptation to print pseudo-warehouse receipts not covered by gold and lend them out; in this way [[fractional reserve banking]] came to England.<ref name="Rothbard_History" /> When they refused to grant the king even more loans, he has stopped paying interest, to resume it later at a lowered rate. The new government of William and Mary, ushered in by the "[[Wikipedia:Glorious Revolution|Glorious Revolution]]" after 1688, has simply refused to pay the debt. Finally, the [[Wikipedia:House of Commons of England|House of Commons]] settled the affair in 1701. Half of the capital sum of the debt should be simply wiped out; and the interest on the other half be paid at the remarkable rate of 3 per cent. Even that low rate was later cut to two-and-a-half. Most of the leading goldsmith-creditors went bankrupt by the 1680s, and many ended their lives in debtors' prison.<ref name="Rothbard_goldmiths">Murray N. Rothbard. [http://mises.org/books/histofthought1.pdf "Economic Thought Before Adam Smith: An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, Volume I"] (pdf), 7.6 Mercantilism and inflation, p. 228-229. Referenced 2010-06-04.</ref>

Paper money, as we know it today, originates from the European fractional reserve banks of the 17th century, while the search for more money by governments was the main driving force.

The drive for more money for the crown led to the creation and special privileges of the Bank of England. It and the English banking system has become a model for many other countries.

{{See also|Bank of England}}

In 1720s has the Prime Minister [[Wikipedia:Robert Walpole|Sir Robert Walpole]] introduced the [[Wikipedia:Sinking fund|sinking fund]], a funding system designed to pay down England's [[public debt]]. Taxes, which had before been laid on for limited periods, were rendered perpetual, and the fund should not be used for any other purpose. The government obtained a reduction on the interest of the public debt. The savings were added to the fund and it was for some time regularly applied to the discharge of debt. But soon, the principle of an inviolable sinking fund was abandoned. During the wars which were waged while it subsisted, the whole of its produce was applied to the expense of the war; and even in time of peace, large sums were abstracted from it for current services. The sinking fund has greatly increased debt instead of diminishing it.<ref name="Ricardo_debt">David Ricardo. [http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=205&chapter=38605&layout=html&Itemid=27 "Funding System An Article in the Supplement to the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica 1820], Part of: The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, Vol. 4 Pamphlets and Papers 1815-1823; 11 vols (Sraffa ed.). Referenced 2010-06-24.</ref>

From then on, government debt never needed be repaid. It was enough to create a regular and dependable source of revenue and use it to pay the annual interest and the principal of maturing bonds. Then for every retired bond would be sold a new one. In this way, a national debt could be made perpetual. Walpole's system proved its worth in financing British overseas expansion and imperial wars in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The government could now maintain a huge peacetime naval and military establishment, readily fund new wars, and need not retrench afterward. The British Empire was built on more than the blood of its soldiers and sailors; it was built on debt. The ever-growing debt had the ancillary benefit of attaching the interests of wealthy creditors to the government. This example was not lost on some leaders of the infant American Republic, [[Wikipedia:Alexander Hamilton|Alexander Hamilton]] for one.<ref name="Trask_debt">H.A. Scott Trask. [http://mises.org/article.aspx?control=1419 "Perpetual Debt: From the British Empire to the American Hegemon"], Mises Daily, January 2004. Referenced 2010-06-24.</ref>

In the first decades of the Industrial Revolution, Great Britain was confronted by a very serious small change shortage. The bimetallic legislation then in effect undervalued silver, so that few if any silver coins were minted, while those already in circulation tended either to be melted into bullion or to be very badly impaired. The [[Wikipedia:Royal Mint|Royal Mint]] suspended copper coinage altogether for a generation beginning in 1775, leaving British factory owners and retailers more desperate than ever for small change.

British businessmen, starting in 1787 with [[Wikipedia:Thomas Williams of Llanidan|Thomas Williams]] (who owned what was then the world’s biggest copper mine, in Wales), took to minting and issuing their own token coins. Between 1787 and 1797, when the government finally attempted to reform its own token coinage, a score of private mints had supplied several hundred private coin issuers with some 600 tons of custom made copper pennies and halfpennies, which was more copper coin than the Royal Mint had issued over the course of the previous half century. By 1811 change was again in very short supply, the government’s reform efforts having proven inadequate. Consequently, another round of private coinage took place, this time involving silver as well as copper tokens. That round ended several years later, when the government decided to outlaw private coins.<ref name="Selgin_English coins">George Selgin. [http://mises.org/journals/qjae/pdf/qjae12_1_1.pdf "100 Percent Reserve Money: The Small Change Challenge] (pdf), The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 12, No. 1 (2009): 3–16. See also the book [http://blog.mises.org/8464/good-money-reviewed-by-tabarrok/ Good Money]. Referenced 2010-08-02.</ref>

===United States===
In the British colonies of North America, the local governments pushed for paper notes with [[legal tender]] privileges. The first to do so was the province of [[Wikipedia:Massachusetts|Massachusetts]] in 1690, after a failed raid against [[Wikipedia:Quebec|French Quebec]]. It paid off its soldiers with paper notes and pledged to redeem them out of taxes soon and that no more notes would be ever printed. Both promises were quickly broken.<ref name="Rothbard_paper" />

This practice was replicated in five other colonies before 1711, and eventually spread to all British colonies. The merchants forced to accept the rapidly depreciating paper notes complained to the [[Wikipedia:Parliament of the United Kingdom|British Parliament]], which first limited and in 1764 prohibited the issue of any legal-tender paper in all colonies. To some, this might have been one of the roots of the American revolution.<ref name="Hulsmann_Modern_Banking" />

After winning independence, the opponents of inflation have been for long successful. The "founding fathers" strove to avoid paper money, and using anything but gold and silver as legal tender was even [[Wikipedia:Article One of the United States Constitution#Section 10: Limits on the States|forbidden]] in the constitution. The power to [[Wikipedia:Article One of the United States Constitution#Section 8: Powers of Congress|coin money]] was given to the federal government, not the states.

The [[Wikipedia:First Bank of the United States|first central bank]] lasted from 1792 to 1812. To finance the war of [[Wikipedia:War of 1812|1812–14]], the federal government issued legal-tender treasury notes and a second bank was founded. In the 1830s, President [[Wikipedia:Andrew Jackson|Jackson]] refused to extend the charter of the [[Wikipedia:Second Bank of the United States|Second Bank of the United States]] (1816-1836<ref name="Lilburne_Second_bank">Lilburne. [http://mises.org/story/3632 "The 19th-Century Bernanke"], Mises Daily posted on 2009-09-01, referenced 2009-09-01.</ref>), withdrew all public funds from private or state (fractional-reserve) banks, and cut down the public debt from some $60 million at the beginning of his administration to a mere $33,733.05<ref name="Treasury_Debt">Treasury Direct. [http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt_histo1.htm "Historical Debt Outstanding - Annual 1791 - 1849"], Public Debt Reports, referenced 2009-08-21</ref> on January 1, 1835. His successors neutralized these reforms to some extent, especially by bringing the public debt back to more than $60 million within fifteen years of the end of the second Jackson administration.

For a long time, foreign coins of gold and silver circulated freely, in general use were Spanish, English, and Austrian gold and silver pieces. Finally, Congress outlawed the use of foreign coins within the U.S. by the [[Wikipedia:Coinage Act of 1857|Coinage Act of 1857]], forcing all foreign coinholders to go to the U.S. Mint and obtain American gold coins.<ref name="Rothbard_foreign_coins">[[Murray N. Rothbard]]. [http://mises.org/books/mysteryofbanking.pdf "The Mystery of Banking"] (pdf), p.10, referenced 2009-08-24.</ref>

The breakthrough for the inflation party came with [[Wikipedia:Abraham Lincoln|Abraham Lincoln]] and the [[Wikipedia:American Civil War|War Between the States]]. To finance it, the federal government issued a legal tender paper money in 1862, the so-called [[Wikipedia:United States Note|greenbacks]]. This experiment ended in [[Wikipedia:Specie Payment Resumption Act|1875]], when the government turned the greenbacks into credit money, by announcing that as from 1879 they would be redeemed into gold. Meanwhile, in [[Wikipedia:National Banking Act|1863–65]], the Lincoln administration had created a new system of privileged "national banks" that were authorized to issue notes backed by federal government debt, while the notes of all other banks were penalized by a 10 percent federal tax. As a consequence was American banking centralized around the privileged national banks.

In 1913, the American banking system received a [[Federal Reserve System|central bank]] on the European model. The U.S. was the last great nation to introduce central banking.<ref name="Hulsmann_US">Jörg Guido Hülsmann. [http://www.mises.org/books/moneyproduction.pdf "The Ethics of Money Production"] (pdf), online version, Chapter 15. Fiat Monetary Systems in the Realm of the Nation-State p.203-206, referenced 2009-08-20.</ref>

{{Main|History of money and banking in the US}}

===Gold Standard===
In the "classical" '''gold standard''' was a [[central bank]] of each country expected to hold enough gold in its reserves, while the commercial [[bank]]s would rely mainly on its banknotes. The advantage were greater possibilities of inflation for the banks and more power for the central bank.

Gold was legal tender in Great Britain since 1821 (when the [[Bank of England]] resumed redemption of its notes<ref name="Bank_Gold">Bank of England. [http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/education/museum/walkthrough/1821.htm "1821: End of the Restriction Period"], Bank of England Museum, referenced 2009-08-27.</ref>) and the ''de facto'' currency in the US since the [[Wikipedia:Coinage Act of 1834|1834]]. Australia and Canada followed 20 years later. The breakthrough for gold and the era of the classic gold standard began after the war between [[Wikipedia:Franco-Prussian War|France and Germany]] (1870-1871). The German government received war damages of 5 billion francs in gold and made it fiat currency instead of silver, that was losing popularity at the time. The Prussian Bank ('Preusische Bank') was turned into a central bank ('[[Wikipedia:Reichsbank|Reichsbank]]'). Its notes became legal tender in 1909, following the example of the British system.

There were several reasons for using gold. Great Britain, with the largest capital market in the world, was using it. Several major lands using silver (Russia, Austria) have suspended payments by the time. Finally, silver has less purchasing power than gold, making its weight for large transfers rather problematic. Practically all western lands and many of their colonies have followed suit.

The gold standard has eliminated the fluctuations between gold and silver (though they were less than between today's paper currencies{{Fact|would be nice to have it somewhere}}). It also caused a significant forced [[deflation]]. But the gold standard was still coupled with the practice of [[fractional reserve banking]], and hence unstable. The coming of World War I. ended it before it could collapse.

The '''Gold Exchange Standard''' enhanced the already existing international cooperation between banks. The American [[Fed]] and the [[Bank of England]] would be the central banks for the whole world (with a few exceptions, notably France). Inflating slowly, others would rely on the pound and the dollar for backing, and could inflate much more. This unstable system lasted only from 1925 to 1931, the '''[[Great Depression]]''' of 1929 caused a rise of protectionist policies and foreign exchange controls, that choked the international currency trade. The Bank of England could not renew its gold reserves and suspended its payments, followed by other banks. From then on currencies fluctuated freely, which lasted until the end of [[Wikipedia:World War II|World War II.]]<ref name="Hulsmann_Gold_Standard">Jörg Guido Hülsmann. [http://www.mises.org/books/moneyproduction.pdf "The Ethics of Money Production"] (pdf), online version, Chapter 16. International Banking Systems, 1871–1971, p.209-222, referenced 2009-08-27.</ref> But the actual gold standard was abandoned, instead of coins could be notes converted only to gold bullion, suitable only for large international transactions. The people were ''de facto'' prohibited from using gold as their medium of exchange.<ref name="Rothbard_exchange_standard">[[Murray N. Rothbard]]. [http://mises.org/rothbard/agd.pdf "America's Great Depression"] (pdf), Chapter 5: The Development of Inflation, p.148-149, referenced 2009-10-03.</ref>

{{Main|Gold standard}}

==Recent history==
The history from the gold standard into the present.

===Bretton Woods system===
A new system was designed in 1944 in [[Wikipedia:Bretton Woods, New Hampshire|Bretton Woods]] (New Hampshire US), to make the production of banknotes even more 'flexible'. The gold reserves of the whole world should be concentrated in a single pool, the [[Fed]] would redeem its notes while all others would keep the US dollar as reserve. It was a logical choice, as the United States have attracted much gold and after WWII [[Wikipedia:United States Bullion Depository|Fort Knox]] became the largest gold storage in the world. (England, represented by [[Wikipedia:John Maynard Keynes|Lord Keynes]], tried to push for a pure paper money, but it didn't come to be.)

To reduce the resulting dependency on the Fed, and to make it politically acceptable, two organizations were created: the [[Wikipedia:International Monetary Fund|International Monetary Fund]] (IMF) and the [[Wikipedia:World Bank Group|World Bank]], both to influence the distribution of new banknotes. They would supply short-term (IMF) and long-term (WB) credit to member states in trouble, primarily the board members. They survived the collapse of Bretton Woods.

The growth of inflation, the main purpose of the Bretton Woods, was so successful, that the Fed eventually ran out of gold and had to suspend its payments in [[Wikipedia:Nixon Shock|1971]]. That was the end of the so-called gold standard and its variants.<ref name="Hulsmann_Gold_Standard" />

The system was criticized from the outset by [[Henry Hazlitt]] and he predicted its eventual fall.<ref name="Rockwell_Hazlitt">Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr. [http://mises.org/daily/4511 "Hazlitt's Battle with Bretton Woods"], Mises Daily, June 2010, referenced 2010-06-19.</ref>

===The Paper Standard===
After the last link to gold was broken, a large number of paper currencies was created. Every country could set its monetary policies as it desired and their exchange rates fluctuated wildly. But attracting foreign investment is much easier in stable conditions. Many states float bonds in other currencies than their own, like in the Euro or the U.S. dollar. Some give public or implicit guarantees that the exchange rate to important currencies will be maintained. It is claimed, that the [[Fed]] gave such guarantees to several countries in the 90s, and after they were ended, financial crises in these countries followed (Mexico 1994, Asia 1997). Some states have created [[Wikipedia:Currency board|currency boards]], issuing notes, that backed by and mere substitutes for foreign paper money. It is used by e.g. Hong Kong, Bulgaria, Estonia, Lithuania, Bosnia and Brunei. Lastly, some abandon their national currency completely and use the currency of their lenders. This is called "dollarization" (does not have to be U.S. dollars). Recent examples include Ecuador, El Salvador, Kosovo and Montenegro.

And so have the international paper currencies - the [[Wikipedia:Yen|Yen]], [[Wikipedia:United States dollar|Dollar]] and newly the [[Wikipedia:Euro|Euro]] - dominated the scene.<ref name="Hulsmann_Paper_Money">Jörg Guido Hülsmann. [http://www.mises.org/books/moneyproduction.pdf "The Ethics of Money Production"] (pdf), online version, Chapter 17. International Paper-Money Systems, 1971-?, p.223-236, referenced 2009-08-29.</ref>

===The Eurozone===
After the fall of the Bretton Woods system began the governments of Wester Europe to amass public debt to grow their welfare states. But it was soon recognized their wildly fluctuating currencies hindered international trade and could so undermine their income.

The first attempt was the European Monetary System ([[Wikipedia:European Monetary System|EMS]], founded 1978). It was a [[cartel]] of paper money producers, who agreed to stabilize the exchange rates between their currencies at certain levels, or parities. In practice, those inflating the least would determine the inflation rates of all others. If someone were to inflate more, they would have to persuade others to do the same, or risk a change of parity. The [[Wikipedia:Deutsche Bundesbank|German Bundesbank]] was the most conservative of the central banks. A few years after the rejoining of East and West Germany were the paper money producers united in the [[European Central Bank]] (ECB, started operation in 1999 and issued Euro notes and coins by 2002.<ref name="Hulsmann_Paper_Money" />

{{Main|Eurozone}}

===The Great Recession===
The [[Wikipedia:Late-2000s recession|economical crisis]], that began in 2007, has been named the '''Great Recession''' due to its impact on the American and worldwide economy.<ref name="Zuckerman_recession">Zuckerman, Mortimer. [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703837004575013592466508822.html "Mortimer Zuckerman: The Great Recession Continues - WSJ.com"], ''The Wall Street Journal'', referenced 2010-07-23.</ref><ref name="Evans-Pritchard_recession">Evans-Pritchard, Ambrose. [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/7871421/With-the-US-trapped-in-depression-this-really-is-starting-to-feel-like-1932.html "With the US trapped in depression, this really is starting to feel like 1932"]. ''The Daily Telegraph'' (London). Referenced 2010-07-27.</ref>

{{Main|The Great Recession}}

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
* Wikipedia on [[Wikipedia:Trade|trade]], history of [[Wikipedia:History of money|money]] and [[Wikipedia:History of banking|banking]].

[[Category:Banking|*]]
[[Category:History|Money and Banking, History of]]
[[Category:Money|*]]

Bureau of Engraving and Printing

2010-11-29T17:23:58Z

DickClarkMises: rm redundant category, add Category:Money

{{Wikipedia text|Bureau_of_Engraving|398255239}}
'''The Bureau of Engraving and Printing''' (BEP) is a [[government agency]] within the [[United States Department of the Treasury]] that designs and produces a variety of security products for the [[Federal Government of the United States|United States Government]], most notable of which is [[FRN|paper currency]] for the [[Federal Reserve System|Federal Reserve]]. The Federal Reserve itself is the [[central bank]] of the [[United States|United States of America]]. In addition to paper currency, the BEP produces Treasury securities; military commissions and award certificates; invitations and admission cards; and many different types of identification cards, forms, and other special security documents for a variety of government agencies. The BEP does not produce [[United States coinage|coins]]; all coinage is produced by the [[United States Mint]]. With production facilities in [[Washington DC|Washington, DC]], and [[Fort Worth, Texas]], the Bureau of Engraving and Printing is the largest producer of Government security documents in the United States.

[[Category:United States]]
[[Category:Government agency]]
[[Category:Money]]
{{stub}}

Talk:Bureau of Engraving and Printing

2010-11-29T17:23:03Z

DickClarkMises: reply to RB

==Categories for this entry==
I have added a few and think we might want to create a new category of "Government agency". Goodness knows, it could end up being used a LOT, I am sorry to say. I was considering also "Money" but the BEP "only" prints the currency. Thoughts, anyone? -- [[User:RayBirks|RayBirks]] 18:40, 28 November 2010 (CST)
:Ray, I think that "Category:Government agency" would be very useful. Imagine being able to go to the category page and see the legion of bureaucracies, with links to articles where the evils of each are documented and footnoted from the Austrian perspective! I think Category:Money is appropriate for BEP as well. [[User:DickClarkMises|DickClarkMises]] 11:23, 29 November 2010 (CST)

User:RayBirks

2010-11-27T20:50:56Z

DickClarkMises: not sure why is on the list...

==First day==
Joined the Mises Wiki today, November 20, 2010. I have been editing over on Wikipedia since April of 2004 and have made nearly 2000 edits there. I have been trying to better manage my time making Wikipedia edits, as it can pull one in if one is not careful.

But now that there is a wiki for classical-liberal thought and all that that entails, I may never be heard from again! Unless, of course, it's here on the Mises Wiki. :)

Welcome to all, newbies and old hands!

-- [[User:RayBirks|RayBirks]] 15:40, 21 November 2010 (CST)
==On the just-today-developing "Mises Meetup" phenom==
[''excerpted from the Mises Wiki mailing list'']
I agree with Jeffrey that the prospect of this idea (developing structure for meetups) is fantastic. With all the messages just now arriving in my inbox based on this topic, it is already hitting a nerve.

Living in the namesake city of the dreaded [[Chicago School]] (ack!), I could stand to meet an Austrian or two--better yet, 100! I might even study a little. I need to hang with people who think clearly, and this would be the place for that! Throw in a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martini_%28cocktail%29 martini] and, well, see you soon. (heh)

Oh, sorry (slightly off-topic [for the mailing list]): My name is Ray Birks, and I live in Chicago and started reading [[Murray N. Rothbard|Murray]]'s stuff in 1976 just after graduating from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucknell_University Bucknell University]. Thanks to all here who are getting things rolling even further.

[''To see the latest list of meetup locations, click here:'' [[MisesWiki:Meetups]] ]

-- [[User:RayBirks|RayBirks]] 21:37, 24 November 2010 (CST)

==Cats==
Not sure why [[MisesWiki:Featured article/November 2010|this]] is still on [[Special:UncategorizedPages|the list]]... [[User:DickClarkMises|DickClarkMises]] 14:50, 27 November 2010 (CST)

Austrian Economics Wiki:Featured article/November 2010

2010-11-27T20:49:13Z

DickClarkMises: rm redundant cat

[[File:Carl Menger.png|left|50px|alt=Carl Menger]]
The '''[[Austrian School|Austrian School of Economics]]''' derives its name from its Austrian founders and early supporters, including [[Carl Menger]], [[Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk]] and [[Ludwig von Mises]]. Other significant economists include [[Henry Hazlitt]], [[Murray Rothbard]] and Nobel Laureate [[Friedrich Hayek]]. This school emphasizes the spontaneous organizing power of the price mechanism and holds that the complexity of subjective human choices makes mathematical modeling of the evolving market extremely difficult (or impossible). Its proponents tend to advocate a [[laissez faire]] approach to the economy and the enforcement of voluntary contractual agreements between economic agents, but otherwise the smallest imposition of coercive force (especially government-imposed) on commercial transactions.
<div align="center" class="plainlinks" style="margin: 0.5em auto 0.25; text-align: right; font-size: 92%;">[http://wiki.mises.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=MisesWiki:Featured_article/November_2010&action=edit Edit this box]</div>
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Austrian Economics Wiki:Featured article/November 2010

2010-11-27T20:31:58Z

DickClarkMises: add cat

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2010-11-27T20:28:24Z

DickClarkMises: add cat

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Peter Boettke

2010-11-27T20:04:23Z

DickClarkMises: rm wp template

{{Wikipedia text}}
'''Peter J. Boettke''' (born January 3, 1960) is an [[United States|American]] economist of the [[Austrian School]].

==Early life and education==
Boettke was born in [[Rahway, New Jersey]] to Fred and Elinor Boettke and remained there until he moved to [[Pennsylvania]] to attend [[Thiel College]] in Greenville and later [[Grove City College]]. He became interested in economics there when he took a course taught by [[Hans Sennholz]].<ref name="wsj">[http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052748703418004575455911922562120-lMyQjAxMTAwMDIwNzEyNDcyWj.html "Spreading Hayek, Spurning Keynes: Professor Leads an Austrian Revival," ''Wall Street Journal'', August 27, 2010]</ref> After completing a [[Bachelor of Arts|B.A.]] (1983) in economics at Grove City, Boettke attended [[George Mason University]] where he earned an [[Master of Arts (postgraduate)|M.A.]] (1987) and a [[Ph.D.]] (1989) in economics.<ref name="official">[http://economics.gmu.edu/people/details/pboettke Boettke's faculty bio] at [[George Mason University]]</ref>

==Professional history==
After receiving his doctoral degree, Boettke taught at several schools, including [[Oakland University]], [[Manhattan College]], and [[New York University]].<ref name="personalbio">[http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/pboettke/bio.html Peter J. Boettke - Biographical Information]</ref> In 1998, he returned to George Mason University as a faculty member. In 2004, he was named a Hayek Fellow at the [[London School of Economics]]. He has also been a Faculty Fellow at the Charles University/Georgetown University [http://www.tfasinternational.org/aipes/about/ American Institute for Political and Economic Studies] in Prague and a Visiting Scholar at the [[Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace]] at [[Stanford University]]. Boettke is Deputy Director of the James M. Buchanan Center for Political Economy at [[George Mason University]] where he is a professor of economics. He is also senior research fellow at the [[Mercatus Center]]. Until 2007, Boettke held the position of Director of Graduate Studies for the Ph.D. program in economics at George Mason. He is also editor-in-chief of the [http://www.gmu.edu/rae/ Review of Austrian Economics].
He is also head coach of the boys Freshman basketball team at Robinson Secondary School in Fairfax, Virginia.

He lives in [[Fairfax, Virginia]] with his wife Rosemary and their two sons, Matthew and Stephen.

==Books==
=== As author ===
*''The Political Economy of Soviet Socialism: The Formative Years, 1918-1928'' (Kluwer, 1990) ISBN 0-7923-9100-4.
*''Why Perestroika Failed: The Economics and Politics of Socialism Transformation'' (Routledge, 1993) ISBN 0-415-08514-4.
*''Calculation and Coordination: Essays on Socialism and Transitional Political Economy'' (Routledge, 2001) ISBN 0-415-77109-9.
*''The Economic Way of Thinking'' with Heyne and Prychitko (Prentice Hall, 2005) ISBN 0-13-154369-5.
*''Challenging Institutional Analysis and Development: The Bloomington School'' with Paul D. Aligica (Routledge, 2009) ISBN 978-0-415-77820-6

=== As editor ===
*''Market Process: Essays in Contemporary Austrian Economics''. Edward Elgar, 1994.
*''The Collapse of Development Planning''. New York University Press, 1994.
*''The Elgar Companion to Austrian Economics''. Elgar, 1994
*''The Market Process'', 2 volumes. Elgar, 1998
*''The Legacy of F. A. Hayek: Politics, Philosophy, Economics'', 3 volumes. Edward Elgar, 1999
*''Socialism and the Market: The Socialist Calculation Debate Revisited'', 9 volumes. Routledge, 2000.
*''The Economic Role of the State (ed. with [[Peter Leeson]]). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, under contract.
*''The Legacy of Ludwig von Mises: Theory and History'', ed. with Peter Leeson. 2 vols. Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 2006. ISBN 978-1840644029

== References ==
<references/>

==External links==
*[http://www.coordinationproblem.org/ Boettke's Coordination Problem blog]
*[http://www.theihs.org/node/245 Boettke's bio] at the [[Institute for Humane Studies]]
*[http://www.libertyandpower.com/ Liberty & Power] Group Blog
*[http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2006/12/boettke_on_katr.html 2006 Podcast featuring Boettke] Boettke discusses [[Hurricane Katrina]] and the economics of disaster on [[EconTalk]].
*[http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2007/12/boettke_on_aust.html 2007 Podcast featuring Boettke] Boettke on the origins and tenets of Austrian economics on [[EconTalk]].
*[http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2009/01/boettke_on_the.html 2009 Podcast featuring Boettke] Boettke talks about the Austrian perspective on business cycles, monetary policy and the current state of the economy on [[EconTalk]].
*[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119249811353060179.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries "A Market Nobel," ''Wall Street Journal'' op-ed, October 16, 2007]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Boettke, Peter}}
[[Category:Economists]]

User talk:Ymaltsev

2010-11-26T04:16:51Z

DickClarkMises: Welcome!

'''Welcome!'''

Hello, Ymaltsev, and welcome to the [[MisesWiki:About|Mises Wiki]]! Thanks for signing up – we're glad to have you, and look forward to seeing your contributions.

Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes (<nowiki>~~~~</nowiki>); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, just let me know. [[User:DickClarkMises|DickClarkMises]] 22:16, 25 November 2010 (CST)

User talk:Josh Fulton

2010-11-26T04:16:20Z

DickClarkMises: Welcome!

'''Welcome!'''

Hello, Josh Fulton, and welcome to the [[MisesWiki:About|Mises Wiki]]! Thanks for signing up – we're glad to have you, and look forward to seeing your contributions.

Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes (<nowiki>~~~~</nowiki>); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, just let me know. [[User:DickClarkMises|DickClarkMises]] 22:16, 25 November 2010 (CST)

Bob Higgs

2010-11-25T06:43:21Z

DickClarkMises: create redirect

#REDIRECT[[Robert Higgs]]

User talk:RayBirks

2010-11-25T06:41:58Z

DickClarkMises: /* Community Portal */ expand reply

== Welcome to my user talk page! ==
Thanks for visiting. :)
-- [[User:RayBirks|RayBirks]] 13:48, 20 November 2010 (CST)

==Good to see you...==
...around Mises Wiki! Cheers, [[User:DickClarkMises|DickClarkMises]] 19:39, 24 November 2010 (CST)

==Community Portal==
Ray, I think we may have just been unlucky and had an editing conflict because we were both working on the page at the same time. So far as I can tell, anyone should be able to edit the [[MisesWiki:Community_portal|Community portal]] page. Try again, and first check to see if it lets you make a minor change. [[User:DickClarkMises|DickClarkMises]] 00:40, 25 November 2010 (CST)

User talk:RayBirks

2010-11-25T06:40:44Z

DickClarkMises: reply re: community portal edits

== Welcome to my user talk page! ==
Thanks for visiting. :)
-- [[User:RayBirks|RayBirks]] 13:48, 20 November 2010 (CST)

==Good to see you...==
...around Mises Wiki! Cheers, [[User:DickClarkMises|DickClarkMises]] 19:39, 24 November 2010 (CST)

==Community Portal==
Ray, I think we may have just been unlucky and had an editing conflict because we were both working on the page at the same time. So far as I can tell, anyone should be able to edit the [[MisesWiki:Community_portal|Community portal]] page. [[User:DickClarkMises|DickClarkMises]] 00:40, 25 November 2010 (CST)

Hans Sennholz

2010-11-25T04:50:39Z

DickClarkMises: add cat

{{Wikipedia text}}
'''Hans F. Sennholz''' (February 3, 1922 – June 23, 2007) (born in [[Brambauer]], [[Germany]]) was an economist of the [[Austrian school]] of economics who studied under [[Ludwig von Mises]]. After serving in the [[Luftwaffe]] in World War II, he took degrees at the universities of Marburg and Köln. He then moved to the United States to study for a Ph.D. at [[New York University]]. He was [[Ludwig von Mises]]'s first PhD student in the United States. He taught [[economics]] at [[Grove City College]], 1956–1992, having been hired as department chair upon arrival. After he retired, he became president of the [[Foundation for Economic Education]], 1992–1997. [[Calvinist]] Political Philosopher, [[John W. Robbins]] pointed out in a book printed in honor of Sennholz shortly after his death that "Sennholz, ... rests his defense of a free society on revelation."<ref>http://trinityfoundation.org/journal.php?id=271</ref>

Fellow [[Austrian School|Austrian]] [[Joseph Salerno]] has notably [http://www.mises.org/story/1155 praised] Sennholz as an under-appreciated member of the Austrian school who "writes so clearly on such a broad range of topics that he is in danger of suffering the same fate as [[Jean-Baptiste Say|Say]] and [[Frederic Bastiat|Bastiat]]. As Joseph Schumpeter pointed out, these two brilliant nineteenth-century French economists, who were also masters of economic rhetoric, wrote with such clarity and style that their work was misjudged by their British inferiors as 'shallow' and 'superficial'."

2008 U.S. presidential candidate [[Ron Paul]] [http://www.usagold.com/gildedopinion/taylorpaulintrvw.html credits] his fascination with economics to meeting Sennholz and getting to know him well. [[Peter Boettke]] first learned economics from Sennholz as a student at Grove City College.

==Books==
*''Divided Europe'', New York, NY, 1955.
*''[http://mises.org/books/survive.pdf How Can Europe Survive]'', D. Van Nostrand Company, 1955
*''Moneda y libertad'', Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1961.
*''The Great Depression'', Lansing, MI, 1969.
*''Inflation or Gold Standard'', Lansing, MI, 1973.
*''[http://mises.org/books/Gold_is_Money_Sennholz.pdf Gold is Money]'', Westport, CT, 1975.
*''Death and Taxes'', Washington, DC, 1976, 2nd ed. 1982.
*''Problemas económicas de actualidad'', Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1977.
*''Age of Inflation'', Belmont, MA, 1977, 1979; Spanish: ''Tiempos de inflation'', Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1983.
*''Money and Freedom'', Spring Mills, PA, 1985; Spanish: ''Moneda y libertad'', Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1987; Polish: ''Pieniadze I Wolnosc'', London, England, 1991.
*''The Politics of Unemployment'', Spring Mills, PA, 1987.
*''Debts and Deficits'', Spring Mills, PA, 1987.
*''The Great Depression: Will We Repeat It?'', Spring Mills, PA, 1988.
*''The Savings and Loan Bailout'', Spring Mills, PA, 1989.
*''Three Economic Commandments'', Spring Mills, PA, 1990.
*''The First Eighty Years of Grove City College'', Grove City, PA, 1993.
*''Reflection and Remembrance'', Irvington, NY, 1997.
*''Sowing the Wind'', Grove City, PA, 2004.
*''Age of Inflation Continued'', Grove City, PA, 2006.

==References==
{{Reflist|2}}

==External links==
*[http://academic.bellevue.edu/~jpatton/hans.html A biography]
*[http://www.sennholz.com/ Sennholz's Website]
*[http://www.gcc.edu/Renowned_economist_Dr__Hans_Sennholz_dies_at_age_85.php Obituary]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sennholz, Hans}}
[[Category:Economists]]

Hans Sennholz

2010-11-25T04:49:49Z

DickClarkMises: reorder sections

Hans Sennholz

2010-11-25T04:49:08Z

DickClarkMises: port from wiki-en

{{Wikipedia text}}
'''Hans F. Sennholz''' (February 3, 1922 – June 23, 2007) (born in [[Brambauer]], [[Germany]]) was an economist of the [[Austrian school]] of economics who studied under [[Ludwig von Mises]]. After serving in the [[Luftwaffe]] in World War II, he took degrees at the universities of Marburg and Köln. He then moved to the United States to study for a Ph.D. at [[New York University]]. He was [[Ludwig von Mises]]'s first PhD student in the United States. He taught [[economics]] at [[Grove City College]], 1956–1992, having been hired as department chair upon arrival. After he retired, he became president of the [[Foundation for Economic Education]], 1992–1997. [[Calvinist]] Political Philosopher, [[John W. Robbins]] pointed out in a book printed in honor of Sennholz shortly after his death that "Sennholz, ... rests his defense of a free society on revelation."<ref>http://trinityfoundation.org/journal.php?id=271</ref>

Fellow [[Austrian School|Austrian]] [[Joseph Salerno]] has notably [http://www.mises.org/story/1155 praised] Sennholz as an under-appreciated member of the Austrian school who "writes so clearly on such a broad range of topics that he is in danger of suffering the same fate as [[Jean-Baptiste Say|Say]] and [[Frederic Bastiat|Bastiat]]. As Joseph Schumpeter pointed out, these two brilliant nineteenth-century French economists, who were also masters of economic rhetoric, wrote with such clarity and style that their work was misjudged by their British inferiors as 'shallow' and 'superficial'."

2008 U.S. presidential candidate [[Ron Paul]] [http://www.usagold.com/gildedopinion/taylorpaulintrvw.html credits] his fascination with economics to meeting Sennholz and getting to know him well. [[Peter Boettke]] first learned economics from Sennholz as a student at Grove City College.

==References==
{{Reflist|2}}

==Books==
*''Divided Europe'', New York, NY, 1955.
*''[http://mises.org/books/survive.pdf How Can Europe Survive]'', D. Van Nostrand Company, 1955
*''Moneda y libertad'', Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1961.
*''The Great Depression'', Lansing, MI, 1969.
*''Inflation or Gold Standard'', Lansing, MI, 1973.
*''[http://mises.org/books/Gold_is_Money_Sennholz.pdf Gold is Money]'', Westport, CT, 1975.
*''Death and Taxes'', Washington, DC, 1976, 2nd ed. 1982.
*''Problemas económicas de actualidad'', Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1977.
*''Age of Inflation'', Belmont, MA, 1977, 1979; Spanish: ''Tiempos de inflation'', Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1983.
*''Money and Freedom'', Spring Mills, PA, 1985; Spanish: ''Moneda y libertad'', Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1987; Polish: ''Pieniadze I Wolnosc'', London, England, 1991.
*''The Politics of Unemployment'', Spring Mills, PA, 1987.
*''Debts and Deficits'', Spring Mills, PA, 1987.
*''The Great Depression: Will We Repeat It?'', Spring Mills, PA, 1988.
*''The Savings and Loan Bailout'', Spring Mills, PA, 1989.
*''Three Economic Commandments'', Spring Mills, PA, 1990.
*''The First Eighty Years of Grove City College'', Grove City, PA, 1993.
*''Reflection and Remembrance'', Irvington, NY, 1997.
*''Sowing the Wind'', Grove City, PA, 2004.
*''Age of Inflation Continued'', Grove City, PA, 2006.

==External links==
*[http://academic.bellevue.edu/~jpatton/hans.html A biography]
*[http://www.sennholz.com/ Sennholz's Website]
*[http://www.gcc.edu/Renowned_economist_Dr__Hans_Sennholz_dies_at_age_85.php Obituary]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sennholz, Hans}}