False Dawn: The New Deal and the Promise of Recovery, 1933–1947 (Markets and Governments in Economic History)

Business & Money

Selgin, George

Economics

University of Chicago Press

This book sets out to explain the complexity of why increased production does not that always bring with it lower prices. According to the book, those who look upon monetary expansion as a way to eradicate almost all unemployment fail to appreciate that persistent unemployment is a non-monetary or 'natural' economic condition, which no mount of monetary medicine can cure. Selgin explores the differences between these monetary and natural conditions, and proposes solutions of his own.

Less Than Zero: The Case for a Falling Price Level in a Growing Economy (IEA Hobart Paper)

Institute Of Economic Affairs

George Selgin is one of the world's foremost monetary historians. In this book, based on the 2016 Hayek Memorial Lecture, he shows how a system of private banks without a central bank can bring about financial stability through self-regulation. If one bank stretches credit too far, it will be reined in by the others before the system as a whole gets out of control. The banks have a strong incentive to ensure an orderly resolution if a particular bank is facing insolvency or illiquidity. Selgin draws on evidence from the era of 'free banking' in Scotland and Canada. These arrangements enjoyed greater financial stability, with fewer banking crises, than the English system with its central bank and the US model with its faulty government regulation. The creation of the Federal Reserve appears to have increased the frequency of financial crises. The book also includes commentaries by Kevin Dowd and Mathieu Bédard. Dowd asks whether free-banking systems should be underpinned by a gold standard, which he regards as a tried-and-tested institution at the heart of their success. Bédard challenges the assumption that the banking sector is inherently unstable and therefore requires state intervention. He argues that increases in government control have made the banking system more prone to crisis.

Financial Stability without Central Banks

Bédard, Mathieu

Dowd Durham University, Kevin

Bank Deregulation & Monetary Order (Routledge International Studies in Money and Banking)

Can the 'invisible hand' handle money? George Selgin challenges the view that government regulation creates monetary order and stability, and instead shows it to be the main source of monetary crisis. The volume is divided into three sections: * Part I refutes conventional wisdom holding that any monetary system lacking government regulation is 'inherently unstable', and looks at the workings of market forces in an otherwise unregulated banking system. * Part II draws on both theory and historical experience to show how various kinds of government interference undermine the inherent efficiency, safety, and stability of a free monetary system. * Part III completes the argument by addressing the popular misconception that a monetary system is unsound unless it delivers a stable output price-level.

Routledge

Bank Deregulation and Monetary Order

Can the 'invisible hand' handle money? George Selgin challenges the view that government regulation creates monetary order and stability, and instead shows it to be the main source of monetary crisis. The volume is divided into three sections: * Part I refutes conventional wisdom holding that any monetary system lacking government regulation is 'inherently unstable', and looks at the workings of market forces in an otherwise unregulated banking system. * Part II draws on both theory and historical experience to show how various kinds of government interference undermine the inherent efficiency, safety, and stability of a free monetary system. * Part III completes the argument by addressing the popular misconception that a monetary system is unsound unless it delivers a stable output price-level.

LARGE PRINT EDITION! More at LargePrintLiberty.com.  This book sets out to explain the complexity of why increased production does not that always bring with it lower prices. According to the book, those who look upon monetary expansion as a way to eradicate almost all unemployment fail to appreciate that persistent unemployment is a non-monetary or 'natural' economic condition, which no mount of monetary medicine can cure. Selgin explores the differences between these monetary and natural conditions, and proposes solutions of his own.

Less Than Zero (Large Print Edition): The Case for a Falling Price Level in a Growing Economy

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

A fascinating story of the important yet virtually unknown episode in the history of money, this history chronicles the British manufacturers’ challenge to the Crown’s monopoly on coinage. In the 1780s, when the Industrial Revolution was gathering momentum, the Royal Mint failed to produce enough small-denomination coinage for factory owners to pay their workers. As the currency shortage threatened to derail industrial progress, manufacturers began to mint custom-made coins, called “tradesman’s tokens,” which served as the nation’s most popular currency for wages and retail sales until 1821, when the Crown outlawed all moneys except its own. This book not only examines the crucial role of private coinage in fueling Great Britain’s Industrial Revolution, but also sheds light on contemporary private-sector alternatives to government-issued money, such as digital monies, cash cards, electronic funds transfer, and—outside of the United States—spontaneous “dollarization.”

Good Money: Birmingham Button Makers, the Royal Mint, and the Beginnings of Modern Coinage, 1775–1821

Independent Institute

The United States has endured crippling financial crises, together with many other sorts of monetary disorder, throughout its history. Why? The popular answer has long been that U.S. banks have been under-regulated, that increased regulation and centralization over the years have helped, and that still more regulation and centralization is needed. In Money: Free and Unfree, George Selgin turns this conventional wisdom on its head. Through a series of painstakingly researched essays covering U.S. monetary history since before the Civil War, he traces U.S. financial disorders to their source in misguided government regulations. State governments were early culprits--but in taking advantage of the Civil War to dramatically increase its own involvement in the banking and currency system, the federal government set the stage for even worse problems to come. Instead of addressing the root causes of these crises, the Federal Reserve Act reinforced some of them, while dramatically increasing the potential for politically-motivated abuse of monetary policy. Selgin's revisionist thesis may shock and anger champions of monetary orthodoxy, but they'll be hard-pressed to refute the solid scholarship upon which that thesis rests.

Money: Free and Unfree

Cato Institute

In October 2008, as the U.S. economy plunged, the Federal Reserve began paying interest on banks' reserve balances. The resulting switch to a "floor system" of monetary control, in which changes in the interest rate on reserves, rather than reserve creation or destruction, became the Fed's chief tool for influencing economic activity, was to have far-reaching consequences--almost all of them regrettable.
Besides intensifying the downturn by causing banks to hoard reserves, the floor system all but destroyed the market for unsecured interbank loans that had been banks' ordinary "first resort" source of last-minute liquidity. By depriving the Fed's asset purchases of the ability to stimulate investment and spending, it also compelled the Fed to compensate by purchasing assets on an unprecedented scale. All of this resulted in a substantial increase in the Fed's role in allocating scarce credit. Finally, by severing the ordinary connection between the stance of monetary policy and the extent of the Fed's asset holdings, the floor system risks turning the Fed's balance sheet into a fiscal-policy playground.
Floored! offers a matchless account of our post-crisis monetary system's history and shortcomings.

Floored!: How a Misguided Fed Experiment Deepened and Prolonged the Great Recession

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Selgin, George. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Selgin, George

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Selgin, George. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

False Dawn: The New Deal and the Promise of Recovery, 1933–1947 (Markets and Governments in Economic History)

Less Than Zero: The Case for a Falling Price Level in a Growing Economy (IEA Hobart Paper)

Financial Stability without Central Banks

Bank Deregulation & Monetary Order (Routledge International Studies in Money and Banking)

Bank Deregulation and Monetary Order

Bank Deregulation & Monetary Order (Routledge International Studies in Money and Banking)

Less Than Zero (Large Print Edition): The Case for a Falling Price Level in a Growing Economy

Good Money: Birmingham Button Makers, the Royal Mint, and the Beginnings of Modern Coinage, 1775–1821

Money: Free and Unfree

Floored!: How a Misguided Fed Experiment Deepened and Prolonged the Great Recession