A definitive history of the United States' recovery from the Great Depression--and the New Deal's true part in it.

FDR's New Deal has long enjoyed a special place in American history and policy--both because it redefined the government's fundamental responsibilities and because Roosevelt's bold experimentation represented a type of policymaking many would like to see repeated.

But the thing about bold experiments, economist George Selgin reminds us, is that they often fail. In False Dawn Selgin draws on both contemporary sources and numerous studies by economic historians to show that, although steps taken during the Roosevelt administration's first days raised hopes of a speedy recovery from the Great Depression, instead of fulfilling those hopes, subsequent New Deal policies proved so counterproductive that over seventeen percent of American workers--more than the peak unemployment rate during the COVID-19 crisis--were still either unemployed or on work relief six years later.

By distinguishing the New Deal's successes from its failures, and explaining how the U.S. finally managed to lay the specter of mass unemployment to rest, Selgin draws salient lessons for dealing with future recessions.

In this new edition of his highly praised 1997 book, George Selgin argues that monetary policy should not have the goal of price stability, but should aim to allow prices to move in-line with movements in productivity (the so-called productivity norm). Radical and contrarian, this hugely original book remains a mini-classic.

In October 2008, as the U.S. economy plunged, the Federal Reserve began paying interest on banks' reserve balances. The resulting switch to a floor system of monetary control, in which changes in the interest rate on reserves, rather than reserve creation or destruction, became the Fed's chief tool for influencing economic activity, was to have far-reaching consequences--almost all of them regrettable.

Besides intensifying the downturn by causing banks to hoard reserves, the floor system all but destroyed the market for unsecured interbank loans that had been banks' ordinary first resort source of last-minute liquidity. By depriving the Fed's asset purchases of the ability to stimulate investment and spending, it also compelled the Fed to compensate by purchasing assets on an unprecedented scale. All of this resulted in a substantial increase in the Fed's role in allocating scarce credit. Finally, by severing the ordinary connection between the stance of monetary policy and the extent of the Fed's asset holdings, the floor system risks turning the Fed's balance sheet into a fiscal-policy playground.

Floored offers a matchless account of our post-crisis monetary system's history and shortcomings.

A fascinating story of the important yet virtually unknown episode in the history of money, this history chronicles the British manufacturers' challenge to the Crown's monopoly on coinage. In the 1780s, when the Industrial Revolution was gathering momentum, the Royal Mint failed to produce enough small-denomination coinage for factory owners to pay their workers. As the currency shortage threatened to derail industrial progress, manufacturers began to mint custom-made coins, called tradesman's tokens, which served as the nation's most popular currency for wages and retail sales until 1821, when the Crown outlawed all moneys except its own. This book not only examines the crucial role of private coinage in fueling Great Britain's Industrial Revolution, but also sheds light on contemporary private-sector alternatives to government-issued money, such as digital monies, cash cards, electronic funds transfer, and--outside of the United States--spontaneous dollarization.

As the Federal Reserve struggles to fulfill its mandate in a world of low and falling interest rates, it faces yet another challenge: that of resisting a new threat to its hard-won independence.

Thanks to crisis-era changes to its operating procedures, the Fed now enjoys practically unlimited powers of quantitative easing (QE): it can buy as many assets as it likes while still controlling inflation. So far, QE has been a weapon for combating recession. But if certain politicians have their way, the Fed may be forced to use it not for macroeconomic purposes but to finance backdoor spending. That's The Menace of Fiscal QE.

In his brief but systematic study, George Selgin reviews the movement favoring fiscal QE, shows how it threatens both the Fed's independence and democratic control of government spending, and counters claims that it offers a low-cost means for financing such spending. Finally, he suggests a way to guard against fiscal QE without limiting the Fed's ability to counter slumps.

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This book sets out to explain the complexity of why increased production does not that always bring with it lower prices. According to the book, those who look upon monetary expansion as a way to eradicate almost all unemployment fail to appreciate that persistent unemployment is a non-monetary or 'natural' economic condition, which no mount of monetary medicine can cure. Selgin explores the differences between these monetary and natural conditions, and proposes solutions of his own.

Can the 'invisible hand' handle money? George Selgin challenges the view that government regulation creates monetary order and stability, and instead shows it to be the main source of monetary crisis. The volume is divided into three sections: * Part I refutes conventional wisdom holding that any monetary system lacking government regulation is 'inherently unstable', and looks at the workings of market forces in an otherwise unregulated banking system. * Part II draws on both theory and historical experience to show how various kinds of government interference undermine the inherent efficiency, safety, and stability of a free monetary system. * Part III completes the argument by addressing the popular misconception that a monetary system is unsound unless it delivers a stable output price-level.

The United States has endured crippling financial crises, together with many other sorts of monetary disorder, throughout its history. Why? The popular answer has long been that U.S. banks have been under-regulated, that increased regulation and centralization over the years have helped, and that still more regulation and centralization is needed. In Money: Free and Unfree, George Selgin turns this conventional wisdom on its head. Through a series of painstakingly researched essays covering U.S. monetary history since before the Civil War, he traces U.S. financial disorders to their source in misguided government regulations. State governments were early culprits--but in taking advantage of the Civil War to dramatically increase its own involvement in the banking and currency system, the federal government set the stage for even worse problems to come. Instead of addressing the root causes of these crises, the Federal Reserve Act reinforced some of them, while dramatically increasing the potential for politically-motivated abuse of monetary policy. Selgin's revisionist thesis may shock and anger champions of monetary orthodoxy, but they'll be hard-pressed to refute the solid scholarship upon which that thesis rests.

George Selgin is one of the world's foremost monetary historians. In this book, based on the 2016 Hayek Memorial Lecture, he shows how a system of private banks without a central bank can bring about financial stability through self-regulation. If one bank stretches credit too far, it will be reined in by the others before the system as a whole gets out of control. The banks have a strong incentive to ensure an orderly resolution if a particular bank is facing insolvency or illiquidity.

Selgin draws on evidence from the era of 'free banking' in Scotland and Canada. These arrangements enjoyed greater financial stability, with fewer banking crises, than the English system with its central bank and the US model with its faulty government regulation. The creation of the Federal Reserve appears to have increased the frequency of financial crises.

The book also includes commentaries by Kevin Dowd and Mathieu Bédard. Dowd asks whether free-banking systems should be underpinned by a gold standard, which he regards as a tried-and-tested institution at the heart of their success. Bédard challenges the assumption that the banking sector is inherently unstable and therefore requires state intervention. He argues that increases in government control have made the banking system more prone to crisis.

Can the 'invisible hand' handle money? George Selgin challenges the view that government regulation creates monetary order and stability, and instead shows it to be the main source of monetary crisis. The volume is divided into three sections: * Part I refutes conventional wisdom holding that any monetary system lacking government regulation is 'inherently unstable', and looks at the workings of market forces in an otherwise unregulated banking system. * Part II draws on both theory and historical experience to show how various kinds of government interference undermine the inherent efficiency, safety, and stability of a free monetary system. * Part III completes the argument by addressing the popular misconception that a monetary system is unsound unless it delivers a stable output price-level.