The Government Must Stop Printing Phony Money

Richard Ebeling emails:

Dear Bob,

I have a new article on the “EpicTimes” news and commentary website on, “The Government Must Stop Printing Phony Money.”

If friends of freedom have a list of New Years resolutions, one of them should be the end of government monopoly of money. A free economic system is based on freedom of choice and open competition. This should include the monetary system, as well.

Yet that is precisely what the people of the world do not have, with government-established central banks and regulated financial markets, including with the Federal Reserve in the United States.

While nowadays it is often reticulated by both many mainstream economists and most policy-makers and analysts, the advantage of the gold standard was that it made the monetary system independent of direct political control, in that changes in the quantity of money in the economy and the banking system was based on the market supply of and demand for gold for monetary uses.

The last one hundred years has demonstrated just disastrous it can be when a market-based commodity is no longer the money-good, and when governments and their central banks have monopoly control over the issuance of paper monies. The consequences have been waves of booms and busts, and ruinous inflations that have eaten away or even destroyed the wealth and savings of entire societies.

That is why central to any free society must be monetary freedom in the choice of the medium (or media) of exchange. It is why, for instance, a little of over 40 years ago, Austrian economist and Nobel Laureate, F. A. Hayek, argued that the beginning of a denationalization and de-politicization of money must be everyone having the liberty to choose the money they use outside the monopoly control of governments.

http://www.epictimes.com/richardebeling/2016/01/ending-government-monopoly-money/

Best,
Richard