FCL Series - Friedman - Money Mischief Episodes in Monetary History

The “FCL” Series – For some length of time now, I’ve given some thought to putting out something like this. A principal problem is that of labels, and another is the lack of room in a torrent description to write anything approaching even a SYNOPSIS of a clear manifesto. Therefore, I have decided to call this FCL (an acronym for Fiscal Conservative Libertarian) for the sake of brevity and clarity.

There are in America (and to a lesser degree in Europe) a huge number of people who would largely fit into this camp. We are the practical, the scientific, the skeptical and the truly logically analytical. We are IN NO WAY dogmatic or organized, but we generically agree to a certain extent on some core ideas. We think people who attend rallies or protests are shmucks. We think people can express their political opinions on bumperstickers are too stupid to vote. We think whenever we hear the phrase “there ought to be a law!” that there probably shouldn’t be. We have differing opinions on abortion, gun control, the death penalty, flag burning, and gay rights, but agree categorically that such decisions ought not to be Constitutional issues and are best left to the local voters. We think that the Federal Government ought not to do much of anything other than core responsibilities, especially if they have no idea how to pay for it. We don’t vote with out hearts but with our heads. We are never loyal to any party. We are very pro-military, and most of us have served. We don’t trust any politician and we despise empty symbolism, ignorant populism, and idiotic sloganeering. We are all about practical economics, actual freedom from the leftist nannies and rightist religious police, and we like individual responsibility.

People like me have been going nuts for a long time with the economic stupidities of our government and fellow citizens, the general inability of these to understand real long term effects, and we are sick to death of people blaming US for George Bush instead of the RELIGIOUS and SOCIAL conservatives who elected him. We are NOT “neo-cons”, “dittoheads”, or lovers of Fox News, and we are sick and tired of lefties telling us we must be supporters of Limbaugh and Falwell. WE are the people who watch Penn & Teller’s BULLSHIT and love SOUTH PARK. We think Obama is a very nice fellow whose economic policies at best will lead America on a path in the long run to a low rent failed soft-core Socialism. Finally, we think that the 40% on either side that make up the core of the two major sides are usually reaching bad conclusions and voting stupidly because they listen to propaganda and don’t truly understand some complicated issues with an honest degree of depth.

Therefore, since there is no shortage of people here with an agenda (some of which borders on the insane), I am going to put out a collection of material that gives a good accounting of the fiscal conservative point of view. Some of it I personally take as gospel, some of it is merely generic. Speaking as a history and social studies teacher, I feel qualified to select materials that reflect this point of view. It is my hope that many will increase their knowledge of complicated historical and economic events by this effort. I do not seek to foster argument or win converts, but merely to explain to the right wingers why we would rather have freedom than ban abortion or marijuana, and to get it through to the left that not everyone who doesn’t toe their fantasy line is a flat-Earther or fascist. Most of this material will be conservative, and most will deal with economics. There will be no political diatribes from dogmatic and non-practical people (Sorry to all the Coulter and Chomsky fans) who are more intent on pushing a fantasy utopia that pursuing practical liberty.

Rambam1776

Transcribed from Audiotape, torrent originally found on MakeGreatMusic dot Net

General Information
===================
 Title:                  Money Mischief
 Author:                 Milton Friedman
 Read By:                Nadia May
 Genre:                  Audio Book
 Abridged:               No

File Information
================
 Number of MP3s:         10
 Total Duration:         6:35:06
 Total MP3 Size:         90.48
 Parity Archive:         No
 Encoded At:             CBR 32 kbit/s 32000 Hz Mono
 ID3 Tags:               Set, v1.1, v2.3

 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman


Book Description
================
What kind of mischief can result from misunderstanding the monetary system? The work of 2 obscure Scottish chemists destroyed the presidential prospects of William Jennings Bryan, as well as Franklin D. Roosevelt's decision to appease a few senators from the American West who helped communism triumph in China, are just 2 such mishaps cited in this important work by Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman. This accessible work also provides an in-depth discussion on the creation of value: from stones to feathers to gold; the central role of monetary theory and how it can act to ignite or deepen inflation; and what the present monetary system means for both the domestic and global economy.

From Publishers Weekly
From the Micronesian Yap islands' 12-foot stone "coins" to today's paper currencies backed only by fiat, Nobel-laureate economist Friedman ( Free to Choose ) here examines anomalies of world monetary history, including the effect of successive 19th-century gold ore discoveries and refining improvements on U.S. and British tender. He traces American currency's long, contentious gold-silver bimetalist saga, marked by the so-called Congressional coinage "crime of 1873" and ending with William Jennings Bryan's unsuccessful "Cross of Gold" presidential campaign in 1896. Friedman cites harsh lessons from postwar hyperinflation in many countries and declares that Roosevelt's 1933 silver-buying program may have skewed China's silver-based economy toward eventual communism. Uncontrolled money growth is the cause of inflation, the author stresses, and only monetary reform, despite undesirable side effects like unemployment, can cure it. Abstruse, theoretical and chiefly for the initiate, the book recycles parts of earlier works by Friedman, who himself suggests here that the general reader might wish to skip a particularly challenging chapter.