Bob Murphy pummels the propagandists in his excellent new book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal. Finally someone with a clue about economics tackles these misunderstood episodes. Here’s my review.
Here’s some ammunition you can use to defend yourself when you’re told “deregulation” and the “free market” caused the economic crisis. Naturally, I recommend Meltdown, my new book on the crisis. (Read a free chapter!) Then I suggest my Articles page, where I’ve just posted links to some of my most recent articles on the subject. Finally, I recommend this video, which I posted for the first time about six weeks ago, and which has had over 27,000 views.
Here I am last weekend in Seattle, assessing the state of things in front of a big, fired-up crowd. UPDATE: Here’s a YouTube, taken by someone in the audience. Unfortunately, the official video from public TV has proven too unreliable. If you click on the screen you’ll go to the main page for this video, which contains links to parts 2 and 3.
Plenty of sensible people recognize there’s something wrong with our money, and favor a return to a commodity money as existed under the gold standard. But how do we get from here to there? Here are the answers of Henry Hazlitt (.pdf; scroll down to pp. 58-61); Murray Rothbard, and George Reisman (mp3).
One of the difficulties with the classical gold standard is that it relied on decent, honorable, and intelligent politicians who wouldn’t just abandon the system when it suited them. Nobel Prize winner F.A. Hayek didn’t trust them. Here are his remarks on the complete separation of money and state.
Ron Paul has arguably the simplest solution, which he outlines in The Revolution: A Manifesto, his #1 New York Times bestseller: abolish legal tender laws (which are a monopolistic intrusion into the free market), do away with all taxation on gold and silver, and simply allow people — this is a free country, right? — to choose what suits them best as a medium of exchange. In no time society would, I am certain, converge once again on precious metals, what Professor Jörg Guido Hülsmann calls “natural money.”
For those of you visiting the site for the first time, here’s the link to a free chapter of Meltdown.
A few other items: I’ll be on C-SPAN2 this weekend; see Upcoming Appearances at right. Second, I was interviewed on Financial Sense Newshour last week, and the broadcast is available for download. Finally, you might also enjoy this recent speech, called “Why You’ve Never Heard of the Great Depression of 1920″:
Declan McCullagh gives Meltdown an excellent review at (of all places) CBSNews.com.
Welcome to all those who have heard about Meltdown on the radio or via other outlets in recent days. Download a free chapter!
In other news, the audiobook version is now available. (Someone who wrote to ask me about it gave me an email address that didn’t work, so if you never heard back from me, that’s why.)
Check out this brief and funny interview Young Americans for Liberty did with me, as well as my speech at CPAC (part 1, part 2).
March 19 UPDATE: On March 29 the book will enter its fifth week on the New York Times bestseller list for hardcover nonfiction. Thanks for buying it, and promoting a perspective on the crisis that challenges what Americans are being fed by the drones on television.
In its second week on the New York Times bestseller list, Meltdown will rise to #11. That’s the week of March 8, by the way — publishers receive the list more than a week in advance. Thanks so much for all your support. Please keep spreading the word!
Meltdown will debut at #16 (tied for #15) in hardcover nonfiction in the March 1 New York Times. Thanks for buying it!
At this link you can download a free chapter of my new book, Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse. Enjoy!
Thomas E. Woods, Jr., is the New York Times bestselling author of nine books. A senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, Woods holds a bachelor's degree in history from Harvard and his master's, M.Phil., and Ph.D. from Columbia University. Read more »
Well written, well researched, and the thesis put forth is well argued... Woods has opened up an area of historical analysis that should invite further study.Journal of American History