Murray Rothbard Quotes
It is important to realize that gold and silver are international commodities and that, therefore, when not prohibited by government decree, foreign coins are perfectly capable of serving as standard moneys.
Rothbard, Murray N. A History of Money and Banking in the United States: The Colonial Era to World War II. Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2002.
There has always been a fear of inflation and currency debasement by governments. Since ancient times, rulers issued coins and when they were made of cheap metals like copper or iron, the ruler could mint as much as he wanted and when he did so the value went down. By using only precious metals, gold and silver, for coins, there would be a natural restraint on government. Garfield was one of those who believed that we should always have money of gold and silver. The United States would use that principle for the next century even backing its paper money with gold and silver. In the Nixon administration the United States abandoned the gold standard. Today, it is the ability of a country to produce things that maintains value of paper money which has been supplanted in many cases by electronic money.
Economists they world over have differed as to how critical it was to have a money supply that is based on a gold standard or other precious metal. United States history has had a dispute over whether the money should be backed by gold or silver. Finally, under the Richard M. Nixon administration, the United States went off the gold standard and American money ever since is only backed by the ‘full faith and credit’ of the United States. Some politicians like Paul believe this is a poor policy since it allows governments to control their own money supply irrespective of their gold or silver holdings. Paul goes further than most and sees freedom itself dependent on a precious metal standard. Most politicians disagree.
This objective finally reached its peak in the Nixon administration when the U. S. went off the gold standard. 75 Years after FDR tried to make the U. S. dollar more resilient, America had been so successful that many foreign governments having the same problem of little or no control over their currency, have pegged their currency to the U. S. dollar, thus gaining our stability.
Arguing that the gold standard is ordained by God:
When the Muslims dominated most of Spain, under Sharia (Koranic Law), Christians and Jews had to pay a special tax. Also, for many years the Christian areas had to provide 100 virgins a year for the Moorish harems. When the Christians occupied most of Spain in the “reconquest,” they required the few Muslim enclaves left to pay an annual tribute to avoid major war. In 1476 Granada ceased paying the tribute. War followed and in 1492 the Christians reconquered Grenada.
Murray Newton Rothbard was an American heterodox economist of the Austrian School, economic historian and political theorist. Rothbard was the founder and leading theoretician of anarcho-capitalism, a staunch advocate of historical revisionism and a central figure in the 20th-century American libertarian movement. He wrote over twenty books on political theory, revisionist history, economics, and other subjects.
