Product Description
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.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 15 reviews)

Worthless by J. Mao

1 Stars
April 15, 2009
The author's thinking of monetary standards and history belongs to the Austrian School of Economics, a historical school of thinking that is entirely discredited by today's Economists. I picked up the book out of curiosity to see what new arguments can be put forth to support a return to the gold standard. The idea that floating exchange rates are not a sustainable system and subject the global economic system to periodic financial crises is not a new one. One of the prominent recent proponents of a return to the gold standard is the Nobel Laureate Robert Mundell. His Nobel lecture: 'A Reconsideration of the Twentieth Century' can be found at [...] This book by Lewis, however, is disappointing. It is not an economic treatise by any standard, but a 421-page-long rant by a layman who knows little if any about economics. There are NO tables, graphs, or statistics whatsoever, quite a feat for a modern text on economics. There are NO proofs and evidences given for any of the views - they are simply stated as if they are a matter of fact. There are even NO references. (To be sure, there are paultry "notes" for each chapter, one of which, for example, informs me that one of the quotes from Plato in the book is taken from ... Mundell) On top of that, the author quotes Hemingway, Karl Marx, Charles de Gaulle and Webster's Dictionary to support his view on monetary standards, again extraordinarily refreshing for a supposed text on economics. From the limited part of the book that I have read (for I soon gave it up), Lewis' account of monetary history is surprisingly over-simplified, naive, and mostly plain wrong. For example, he alleges that the Great Depression is triggered by the Smoot-Hawley Tariff. The tariff, however, though precipitated the U.S. fall into depression, was written mainly as a response to the rising unemployment and falling GDP at the time and was passed almost a year after the stock market crash in Oct. 1929. Lewis argues that the deflation during the Depression was not monetary in nature, rather,he claims, "Prices fell due to ... general economic difficulties." Sure, that is why the money stock fell by a third from 1929 to March 1933, right? Now, some facts about the breakdown of the international gold standard during the Great Depression, quoted from Hetzel's "The Monetary Policy of the Federal Reserve:" The New York Fed raised its discount rate from 3.5 to 6% between May 1928 to August 1929, which forced foreign central banks to raise their discount rates in suite due to the gold-competing nature of the international gold-standard days. France's return to the gold standard at the time further exacerbated the problem by setting an undervalued price for franc and drawing large sums of gold flow to France, forcing other central banks to raise their discount rates even higher. Eventually in 1931, Britain ceased redeeming sterling in gold. All this history is missing from Lewis's book. Instead, he casually mentions that people "claim the Depression was caused by gold purchases by the Bank of France," (where's the reference? Who claims this? Who would put the blame squarely on France's shoulder?) Lewis went on to defend against such (imaginary) claim by saying "central bank gold purchases worldwide at the time were in line with ... long-term averages." This is a ridiculous statement, for gold stocks of the Banque de France went from $1.1 billion in June 1928 to $2.3 billion in September 1931, a doubling in 3 years. How can that be "in line with long-term average"? and the layman-like statement that the central banks were "purchasing" gold is just painful to read. Again, when talking about not deviating from long-term averages, where is the statistics? What does the author mean by "long-term"? For a good and accessible treatment of the history of monetary standards, I recommend Eichengreen's "Globalzing Capital." More academic in writing and more focused in topic is Hetzel's "The Monetary Policy of the Federal Reserve." Finally, for a good treatment on the disruptive role the gold standard had on the Great Depression, see Eichengreen's "Gold Fetters."

The Most Important Book on Money by A. Williams (New York, NY)

5 Stars
January 24, 2009
First, it is disheartening that there are not even more positive reviews on this book considering the times that we exist in with the Federal Reserve purposefully destroying the value of the dollar. This book is really important on understanding that a dollar is meant as a storage of value, and not as a tool to inflict trade wars or inflate your way out of debt, therefore the gold standard is the best way of maintaining that storage value throughout time. This book advocates the correct gold standard which is pegging the dollar to a gold ounce, such as using a 10 year moving average of gold prices to find an average price of gold or as an example say it takes $500 dollars to buy 1 ounce of gold. This allows the Federal Reserve to contract or expand the number of dollars in the economy to maintain that gold peg (less dollars are needed in a contracting economy and more dollars are needed in a growing economy to conduct transactions, both situations can be accommodated by maintaining the gold peg and the storage value of a dollar stays the same no matter what.) Those who advocate a "hard gold standard", aka using only gold coins, do not understand the gold standard and are usually just the constant doom and gloom types. So, I would strongly recommend this book if you want to know why a dollar is worth less than it was 30 years ago or now just 6 years ago or how monetary policy plays out across the world. This book uses the best teaching method, which teaches through economic history so you can learn what really caused the Asian Crisis of the 90's, or Japan's Stagnation, or our own hyperinflation of the 70's. Finally, if you really enjoyed this book I recommend reading The Way the World Works, 20th Anniversary Edition (Gateway Contemporary) this is the fiscal side of the government equation. If you read these two books, you will know more than 99% of the politicians who are supposed to be running our economy and will greatly help in making your own profitable investment decisions.

Yes, it's long. That's what makes it a great history book. by Herb Hunter (Baghdad)

4 Stars
October 05, 2008
This is a great book discussing the reasons why Gold will be the ultimate monetary standard and why an individual should consider making gold a part of his personal portfolio. However, the people looking for an investment guide should look elsewhere. This is a history book discussing the possible future of the gold standard in America by historical example from the US and select countries. It doesn't take 400+ pages to give you reasons why to put some of your money into gold, but this kind of historical detail helps a potential gold buyer understand the yellow metal is not so much an investment as it is an insurance policy. This book reinforced my already skeptical leanings towards the Fed and US monetary policy. It also made me wonder what's being taught in high school history nowadays with respect to economics as it relates to the causes of war. The sections discussing the civil war and WWII in particular were great gap-fillers for me, and the authors explanation of the Japanese financial slump made perfect sense. Importantly, the author makes it clear on page 114-155 that he does not advocate a 100% gold-backed currency. That is, it is not possible and we should not be expected to back every last dollar with gold. Rather, gold should be part of the system to include a convertibility aspect. The strength of the gold standard comes not from digging up gold and burying it again in government vaults, but from the strength of the governments promise to uphold the integrity of the monetary system. A fixed reserve requirement would assist this promise tremendously. Currently, there is little to reassure anyone of the validity of the "full faith and credit" we now depend upon. The sections discussing IMF and the upheaval for which they are responsible should be required reading for all members of congress. The IMF is directly responsible for the Asian monetary crisis, the Balkan upheaval and countless other disasters and yet they escape blame every time. The author points out the IMFs hypocritical habit of meddling in less-developed countries with ridiculous and irresponsible policies that would be laughed out of the room in stable economies. Though the author picks apart nearly every US administration with regard to the dismantling of the gold standard, the book is refreshingly bare of the usual tin-foil-hat-wearer conspiracy theories - always a problem when reading anything about gold standards and monetary policy in general. There are two small negatives to this book: First, the look forward suggested by the author is highly unrealistic. I pessimistically think there needs to be outright economic collapse and perhaps even conflict before anything will budge bureaucratic inertia. Second would be the books length, but that's a small price to pay for a very worthwhile history lesson. Overall its a great read.

absolute must read by pejvan (London, UK)

5 Stars
April 28, 2008
This book is absolutely unbelievable vuluable and probably worth paying 1000$ for it (or should I say, 1 oz of gold!). Not only does it explain in details what the gold standard is, and how it has worked in the past, but it also gives a very good overview of the various currency systems used in the past, the various fallacies about currencies, gold, politics, economics schools, etc. It also reviews the history of our society through a different angle/lens. I feel like I understand the history now, and all the crises, wars, chaos that seemed to come out of nowhere has found a rational and sensible explanation. I had turned off my TV set and my radio receiver about 10 years ago, stopped reading the news papers and any other kind of useless noise, and all of the sudden, the world makes sense again. Unfortunately, ignorance is bless... Many thanks to Nathan Lewis for sharing his knowledge and wisdom. I just wish that the book was twice as thick, so that you could go into more details about the causes and consequences of the various policies and actions taken by the governments or the IMF, etc. because sometimes the short cuts you take are more than hard to follow and even though I think I was able to follow you, I would have preferred to be sure about it.

Conceptually good, but too detailed for my liking by incognito (USA)

3 Stars
February 15, 2008
The book starts and finishes strong--the first 100 pages or so and the last 50. But the middle gets very bogged down in intricate economic history with lots of minutiae. The author begins in the mercantile ages, perhaps the 1600s or thereabouts, and continues to the early 2000s. I was disappointed that the last few years were pretty much not covered, as that is what I'm most interested in. Discussion is not limited to the USA and covers the entire world. I think every economic event, significant or not, was touched on. Discussions of US presidents are mostly limited to Nixon, Carter, and Reagan. So aside from the start and finish of this, this is mostly a book of economic history. Maybe I was expecting something otherwise when I picked it up. I support the author's premise, and he seems very confident in it. I'm new to the gold standard and I plan to learn more about it. I ended up skimming the middle 200 pages or so as I could not bear to read them in depth anymore after entering them. I understand that history is important for lessons, but I prefer summaries of it. It's never been my strong point, and this book is littered with dates and years that have always been anathema to me. If you're new to the subject of the gold standard like me, this may not be the best initial choice. Or you might want to skip it entirely and instead seek other books or shorter articles online. This review might be somewhat useless, but if anything I would say to be mindful of the history in this book. Consider using Amazon's preview feature to see what I mean. *Wow, coincidentally it's unbelievable how much I'm in agreement with Average Joe. I also have "The Coming Collapse of the Dollar" on my reading queue.

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