Download or read book A History of Gold and Money 1450 to 1920 written by Pierre Vilar and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For much of human history, the motive force behind war, conquest, social conflict and world exploration has been the drive to acquire gold. From the ancient world of Croesus to the wealthy dynasties of Renaissance Italy, from the earliest European explorations into Africa, America, and Asia to the gold rushes of the nineteenth century and the banking crises that lay beyond them, Pierre Vilar depicts the awesome power of avarice to structure the world in which we live. The insidious power of gold and money is the subject of this enlightening and entertaining history. The age of exploration brought an influx of treasure into Western Europe, prompting disputes between theologians and early economists over the causes of inflation in the sixteenth century. In time, American silver distorted metropolitan Spanish society beyond recognition. Vilar goes on to examine the roots of the modern banking and financial systems in institutions founded in Holland, England and France during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. And in the nineteenth century, the gold rushes of Australia, California and South Africa generated new modifications in the international monetary system. Vilar concludes the story of these developments with a discussion of the crisis of the 1920s that, in the wake of the world credit crash of 2008, is more pertinent than ever. A History of Gold and Money provides a unique work of synthesis on the role of money in modern economic history.
Download or read book Money that Changed the World written by Svein H. Gullbekk and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book War and Gold written by Kwasi Kwarteng and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2014-05-27 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world was wild for gold. After discovering the Americas, and under pressure to defend their vast dominion, the Habsburgs of Spain promoted gold and silver exploration in the New World with ruthless urgency. But, the great influx of wealth brought home by plundering conquistadors couldn't compensate for the Spanish government's extraordinary military spending, which would eventually bankrupt the country multiple times over and lead to the demise of the great empire. Gold became synonymous with financial dependability, and following the devastating chaos of World War I, the gold standard came to express the order of the free market system. Warfare in pursuit of wealth required borrowing -- a quickly compulsive dependency for many governments. And when people lost confidence in the promissory notes and paper currencies issued during wartime, governments again turned to gold. In this captivating historical study, Kwarteng exposes a pattern of war-waging and financial debt -- bedmates like April and taxes that go back hundreds of years, from the French Revolution to the emergence of modern-day China. His evidence is as rich and colorful as it is sweeping. And it starts and ends with gold.
Download or read book Hard Money written by Shayne McGuire and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2010-09-09 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An in-depth guide to making gold a serious part of your portfolio Gold, the long forgotten store of value that was once the center of the global financial system, suddenly matters a great deal again. It has become a leading asset by virtue of its strong performance, and its booming demand has made it the only financial asset that remains in an uninterrupted bull market. And yet gold remains one of the least-owned financial assets in investment portfolios today. Hard Money helps investors move beyond the simple, yet widely accepted notion that gold makes sense in today's financial environment, and explores ways to magnify potential investment returns driven by precious metals. This reliable resource examines the investment vehicles (bullion, stocks, derivatives, and even rare coins) and strategies (aggressive, conservative, passive, and variations) aimed at beating the price of gold as it rises, and ways to protect a portfolio should the metal decline. Identifies five key drivers that should continue to push gold higher in the years ahead Explores the ins and outs of investing in gold and making this precious metal a part of your portfolio Examines the pros and cons of multiple ways to buy gold via coins, ETFs, mining and royalty stocks, and other investment vehicles Author Shayne McGuire is a highly-regarded expert on gold Written in a straightforward and accessible style, Hard Money offers key strategies to enhancing returns with new methods for investing in gold.
Download or read book The Gold Standard at the Turn of the Twentieth Century written by Steven Bryan and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2010-08-31 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the end of the nineteenth century, the world was ready to adopt the gold standard out of concerns of national power, prestige, and anti-English competition. Yet although the gold standard allowed countries to enact a virtual single world currency, the years before World War I were not a time of unfettered liberal economics and one-world, one-market harmony. Outside of Europe, the gold standard became a tool for nationalists and protectionists primarily interested in growing domestic industry and imperial expansion. This overlooked trend, provocatively reassessed in Steven Bryan's well-documented history, contradicts our conception of the gold standard as a British-based system infused with English ideas, interests, and institutions. In countries like Japan and Argentina, where nationalist concerns focused on infant-industry protection and the growth of military power, the gold standard enabled the expansion of trade and the goals of the age: industry and empire. Bryan argues that these countries looked less to Britain and more to North America and the rest of Europe for ideological models. Not only does this history challenge our idealistic notions of the prewar period, but it also reorients our understanding of the history that followed. Policymakers of the 1920s latched onto the idea that global prosperity before World War I was the result of a system dominated by English liberalism. Their attempt to reproduce this triumph helped bring about the global downturn, the Great Depression, and the collapse of the interwar world.
Download or read book A Global History of Gold Rushes written by Benjamin Mountford and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2018-10-16 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nothing set the world in motion like gold. Between the discovery of California placer gold in 1848 and the rush to Alaska fifty years later, the search for the precious yellow metal accelerated worldwide circulations of people, goods, capital, and technologies. A Global History of Gold Rushes brings together historians of the United States, Africa, Australasia, and the Pacific World to tell the rich story of these nineteenth century gold rushes from a global perspective. Gold was central to the growth of capitalism: it whetted the appetites of empire builders, mobilized the integration of global markets and economies, profoundly affected the environment, and transformed large-scale migration patterns. Together these essays tell the story of fifty years that changed the world.
Download or read book History of Money and Banking in the United States The Colonial Era to World War II A written by Murray Newton Rothbard and published by Ludwig von Mises Institute. This book was released on 2002 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Gold and the Gold Standard written by Edwin Walter Kemmerer and published by Ludwig von Mises Institute. This book was released on 1944 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Selected bibliography" at end of each chapter.
Download or read book Gold Is Real Money written by Louis W. Piacentini and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2016-05-19 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many people today don't think about gold much. Far less really think about the U.S. dollar. They assume that there is no need. Ignorance is not bliss. In the future, people will wish they had considered the relationship that gold shares with our currency. For most of U.S. history, money was gold. The dollar was backed by gold, and the paper currency that traded hands were backed by gold held in vaults. It was no coincidence that the U.S. enjoyed a great rise to become a superpower in the world. People wanted our money because they recognized that it was good, honest, and sound money backed by gold. There was a reason and an incentive to save money. Other nations gladly accepted our money - in fact, the U.S. Dollar was so trusted and respected that our money became the world's Reserve Currency. This means that other nations would buy dollars and keep them as part of their money reserves, right along with their gold holdings. And why not - our money was as good as gold, because it was representative of gold. Over the years, there were some cracks to our system that developed. Finally, in 1971, gold was totally severed from the U.S. dollar. In that year the whole world changed. Our honest money which was so trusted turned into nothing more than worthless paper. The U.S. government and the big banks publicly told everyone that gold was no longer relevant. This was total hypocrisy, since they clung to their own gold reserves. Since 1971, both the government and the big banks have a love/hate relationship with gold. They hate gold when it is in the public's hands because it represents a threat to their fraudulent paper money system. They secretly love gold when it is in their vaults. You can't have it both ways. If gold is no longer relevant, the governments and largest banks on earth would get rid of their gold holdings. Instead, they maintain their gold holdings and even add to the gold in their vaults. While the governments of the world and big international banks hold tightly to their gold, we now have this paper currency in our lives. We work for it, spend it, save it, and have a belief that it somehow has value. The problem is that it really has no value. It is worth about as much as Monopoly Money with patriotic images. The only thing that gives it any buying power is our collective belief that it is worth something. Worse still, our government lets the privately owned Federal Reserve print as much money as they would like. This causes inflation and the purchasing power of a dollar to go down all the time. We'll examine all of this and how this current mess came to be. We'll look at the players and bad actors in this sorry saga of how our money has been debased from a solid gold backed system to worthless paper currency. We'll also look at what We The People can do about it to protect ourselves. I admit that this book is not light hearted fun reading. But it is essential reading to understand the current mess we are in, and what may come next for our world, our country, and our family.
Download or read book The Case for Gold written by Ron Paul and published by Cato Institute. This book was released on 1982 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book What Has Government Done to Our Money written by Murray Newton Rothbard and published by Ludwig von Mises Institute. This book was released on 1990 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Brief History of the Gold Standard GS in the United States written by Craig K. Elwell and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2011-10 with total page 18 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The U.S. monetary system is based on paper money backed by the full faith and credit of the fed. gov't. The currency is neither valued in, backed by, nor officially convertible into gold or silver. Through much of its history, however, the U.S. was on a metallic standard of one sort or another. On occasion, there are calls to return to such a system. Such calls are usually accompanied by claims that gold or silver backing has provided considerable economic benefits in the past. This report reviews the history of the GS in the U.S. It clarifies the dates during which the GS was used, the type of GS in operation at the various times, and the statutory changes used to alter the GS and eventually end it. It is not a discussion of the merits of the GS. A print on demand oub.
Download or read book Washed in Gold written by Ann Woolner and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 1994 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Looks at the investigation that shut down the Medellin cocaine cartel's most important financial operation, and explains how money is laundered.
Download or read book Gold written by Nathan Lewis and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2012-06-12 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For most of the last three millennia, the world’s commercial centers have used one or another variant of a gold standard. It should be one of the best understood of human institutions, but it’s not. It’s one of the worst understood, by both its advocates and detractors. Though it has been spurned by governments many times, this has never been due to a fault of gold to serve its duty, but because governments had other plans for their currencies beyond maintaining their stability. And so, says Nathan Lewis, there is no reason to believe that the great monetary successes of the past four centuries, and indeed the past four millennia, could not be recreated in the next four centuries. In Gold, he makes a forceful, well-documented case for a worldwide return to the gold standard. Governments and central bankers around the world today unanimously agree on the desirability of stable money, ever more so after some monetary disaster has reduced yet another economy to smoking ruins. Lewis shows how gold provides the stability needed to foster greater prosperity and productivity throughout the world. He offers an insightful look at money in all its forms, from the seventh century B.C. to the present day, explaining in straightforward layman’s terms the effects of inflation, deflation, and floating currencies along with their effect on prices, wages, taxes, and debt. He explains how the circulation of money is regulated by central banks and, in the process, demystifies the concepts of supply, demand, and the value of currency. And he illustrates how higher taxes diminish productivity, trade, and the stability of money. Lewis also provides an entertaining history of U.S. money and offers a sobering look at recent currency crises around the world, including the Asian monetary crisis of the late 1990s and the devastating currency devaluations in Russia, China, Mexico, and Yugoslavia. Lewis’s ultimate conclusion is simple but powerful: gold has been adopted as money because it works. The gold standard produced decades and even centuries of stable money and economic abundance. If history is a guide, it will be done again. Nathan Lewis was formerly the chief international economist of a firm that provided investment research for institutions. He now works for an asset management company based in New York. Lewis has written for the Financial Times, Asian Wall Street Journal, Japan Times, Pravda, and other publications. He has appeared on financial television in the United States, Japan, and the Middle East.
Download or read book Money and Empire written by Marcello De Cecco and published by . This book was released on 1975 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book American Gold Digger written by Brian Donovan and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2020-10-05 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The stereotype of the "gold digger" has had a fascinating trajectory in twentieth-century America, from tales of greedy flapper-era chorus girls to tabloid coverage of Anna Nicole Smith and her octogenarian tycoon husband. The term entered American vernacular in the 1910s as women began to assert greater power over courtship, marriage, and finances, threatening men's control of legal and economic structures. Over the course of the century, the gold digger stereotype reappeared as women pressed for further control over love, sex, and money while laws failed to keep pace with such realignments. The gold digger can be seen in silent films, vaudeville jokes, hip hop lyrics, and reality television. Whether feared, admired, or desired, the figure of the gold digger appears almost everywhere gender, sexuality, class, and race collide. This fascinating interdisciplinary work reveals the assumptions and disputes around women's sexual agency in American life, shedding new light on the cultural and legal forces underpinning romantic, sexual, and marital relationships.
Download or read book The Ascent of Money written by Niall Ferguson and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-11-13 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 10th anniversary edition, with new chapters on the crash, Chimerica, and cryptocurrency "[An] excellent, just in time guide to the history of finance and financial crisis." —The Washington Post "Fascinating." —Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek In this updated edition, Niall Ferguson brings his classic financial history of the world up to the present day, tackling the populist backlash that followed the 2008 crisis, the descent of "Chimerica" into a trade war, and the advent of cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, with his signature clarity and expert lens. The Ascent of Money reveals finance as the backbone of history, casting a new light on familiar events: the Renaissance enabled by Italian foreign exchange dealers, the French Revolution traced back to a stock market bubble, the 2008 crisis traced from America's bankruptcy capital, Memphis, to China's boomtown, Chongqing. We may resent the plutocrats of Wall Street but, as Ferguson argues, the evolution of finance has rivaled the importance of any technological innovation in the rise of civilization. Indeed, to study the ascent and descent of money is to study the rise and fall of Western power itself.
