The Gold Standard: A Critique of Friedman, Mundell, Hayek, Greenspan from the Free Enterprise Perspective
Managerial Finance, Vol. 25, No. 5, 1999
19 Pages Posted: 7 Jul 2011
Date Written: July 5, 2011
Abstract
This is an essay which takes as its jumping off point the free enterprise system. It then attempts to evaluate the contributions of four distinguished scholars to monetary theory in general, and to an evaluation of the gold standard in particular. I take for granted the general case for markets, competition, economic freedom. The four individuals mentioned in the title have been chosen be cause they are widely believed to be exemplars of this limited government, free market, political philosophy – and are also opponents of the gold standard. It is one of the purposes of the present contribution to test that very proposition. To wit, it is an attempt to see how consistent with their otherwise expressed principles of free enterprise are their contributions to monetary theory.
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