283. The Fiat Standard: Lecture 2 - The Never-Ending Bank Holiday

In this book, Murray N. Rothbard challenges conventional wisdom by arguing that the Great Depression was caused by government intervention and the Federal Reserve's monetary policies, rather than by market failures. He explains the Austrian theory of the business cycle and details how the inflationary policies of the 1920s, combined with the interventionist policies of the Herbert Hoover administration, exacerbated the economic crisis. The book also discusses the long-term impacts of the Great Depression on economic policies and societal structures, including the establishment of regulatory bodies and safety nets.

In 'The Fiat Standard', Saifedean Ammous delves into the world's transition from the gold standard to the current system of government-backed fiat money. He explains the fiat standard as a feat of engineering and technology, similar to his analysis of bitcoin in 'The Bitcoin Standard'. Ammous outlines the purposes and failures of the fiat standard, deriving its wider economic, political, and social implications. He also examines how bitcoin could affect the fiat system over time, highlighting issues such as inflation, government intervention, and the potential for bitcoin to provide a more stable and salable alternative across space. The book critiques the distortions caused by fiat money in various global markets and suggests that bitcoin could lead to an orderly upgrade of the world's monetary operating system.