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ISBN: 1-932701-91-5
Edition: Paperback, 209 Pages
Publication Date: February 28, 2005
Money and Banking in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
“...the government could have been debt free long before
1914, could have saved billions of dollars in interest,
and could have had billions remaining for public
improvements or for reductions in taxes. But the bankers
triumphed over common sense and the public interest: banks
created money apace, and the government created none. A
more inane and shameful abnegation of government power
is hardly imaginable.”
William F. Hixson
This book discusses crucial monetary events in Colonial
America, the United States, and Great Britain over the
period 1690 to 1914. It explains some general
characteristics of money and its function, the
impracticality and undesirability of a gold or silver
standard, and how a change in the quantity of money
affects the total output of an economy and the level of
prices of goods and services. It argues that by 1914
bankers had virtually complete control of the
money-creation process and that this was largely the
cause of the cataclysm of 1929 and the ensuing years. It
contends that the system is still in effect.
Journal of Economic Literature
Vol.32, No. 1, March 1994
Anyone who seeks to understand “the preposterous
financial system” which evolved after 1690 cannot do
better than to start here. Hixson interweaves economic
history with evaluations of theories of the leading
economists starting with Adam Smith... The chapters on
the financing of the American Revolution and the Civil
War are particularly fascinating.
Dr. John H. Hotson
Department of Economics
University of Waterloo,
Ontario