"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert," the economist Milton Friedman once quipped, "in five years there'd be a shortage of sand." The U.S. Mint, to its credit, had a much longer run. The Federal Reserve, which purchases coins from the Mint…
During the Western Han Dynasty (206 B.C. – A.D. 9), the question of monetary freedom was vigorously debated. There were as yet no banks or paper money in China — money consisted solely of coin. Private mints competed with government mints, either in the shadow market or…
I fully expected Larry White's recent post challenging the state theory of money, and particularly that theory's understanding of the origins of metallic coinage, to generate some critical feedback. In particular, I expected it to raise the hackles of "Lord Keynes" (henceforth LK), the otherwise anonymous author…
I've begun working on a new book on the gold standard. In the first chapter I plan to discuss the origin of money, as a preliminary to discussing how silver and gold became the world's dominant commodity monies. The topic of the origin of money has become…