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The Scandal of Money: Why Wall Street Recovers but the Economy Never Does
Why do conservatives have such a hard time winning the economic debate in the court of public opinion? Simple, George Gilder says: Conservatives misunderstand economics almost as badly as liberals do. Republicans have been running on tax cut proposals since the era of Harding and Coolidge without seriously addressing the key problems of a global economy in decline. Enough is enough. Gilder, author of the New York Times bestseller Wealth and Poverty, proposes a completely new framework for understanding economic growth that will replace failed twentieth-century conservative economics and turn the economic debate-and the country-around.
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Published April 26, 2016
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January 30, 2025
Audible.
We're toast. Something like bitcoin might get us out of this mess. It is possible to have a parallel money and it is the likeliest way to get out of the Fed-created mess we're in. Money represents time. Inflation is borrowing from the future.
5x5: Economics. We're currently in a giant, government-run ponzy scheme and it's probably going to get worse before it resolves; however, it will resolve, most likely through some form of privatizing money. Recommended.
We're toast. Something like bitcoin might get us out of this mess. It is possible to have a parallel money and it is the likeliest way to get out of the Fed-created mess we're in. Money represents time. Inflation is borrowing from the future.
5x5: Economics. We're currently in a giant, government-run ponzy scheme and it's probably going to get worse before it resolves; however, it will resolve, most likely through some form of privatizing money. Recommended.
October 7, 2016
Gilder is always an encouraging author, and this book is no exception. If you have a hunch that the world is run by monetary monkeyshines, this book will make the case.
August 13, 2016
If you have ever driven through the rustbelt and wondered why communities outside of Detroit and Cleveland can't seem to feel the wealth of cities like New York, Boston, and Chicago; if you've ever gone back to your hometown in rural America and noticed how many shops had closed up and were not reopened after the Great Recession; if you've ever wondered why so few people seem prepared for retirement or even seem to care about the relationship between money and value; or if you've wondered why so few of the massive tech startups have gone public and why they are inaccessible to people outside of established institutions, you have to read this book.
George Gilder (whose Knowledge and Power was his first book I read) presents a cogent and persuasive case that the growing feeling of inequality is rooted in the separation of money from value and knowledge from growth. Without a clear standard against which investments can be set and against which we can compare the present to the future, we are left to the machinations of political institutions and those savvy enough and well-enough connected to play the financial game. The dissolution of the gold standard disconnects the present from the future and money from both. Gilder explores a number of alternatives, including going back to a gold standard, a dollar pinned to a bucket of commodities ("a Hayek Standard"), and a currency like bitcoin/bitgold.
If you are wondering why most of America feels like it is being left behind by the economic progress of the coasts and why wages and savings don't reflect any rational connection to perceived technological progress since the 1970s, you'll want to pick up this book.
For me, personally, Gilder presented the most convincing case for taking bitcoin seriously as a currency (or as a standard for currency) and provided the much-needed economic foil against which theorists like Putnam and Murray can be compared for their sociological observations concerning the decline of America's mainstreet and the perceived rise in inequality.
I only wish it had been longer.
George Gilder (whose Knowledge and Power was his first book I read) presents a cogent and persuasive case that the growing feeling of inequality is rooted in the separation of money from value and knowledge from growth. Without a clear standard against which investments can be set and against which we can compare the present to the future, we are left to the machinations of political institutions and those savvy enough and well-enough connected to play the financial game. The dissolution of the gold standard disconnects the present from the future and money from both. Gilder explores a number of alternatives, including going back to a gold standard, a dollar pinned to a bucket of commodities ("a Hayek Standard"), and a currency like bitcoin/bitgold.
If you are wondering why most of America feels like it is being left behind by the economic progress of the coasts and why wages and savings don't reflect any rational connection to perceived technological progress since the 1970s, you'll want to pick up this book.
For me, personally, Gilder presented the most convincing case for taking bitcoin seriously as a currency (or as a standard for currency) and provided the much-needed economic foil against which theorists like Putnam and Murray can be compared for their sociological observations concerning the decline of America's mainstreet and the perceived rise in inequality.
I only wish it had been longer.
July 13, 2016
George Gilder is famous among conservatives. For decades, I have heard positive things about him, primarily for his work in supply-side economics and, more recently, in technology. “The Scandal of Money” is an unsuccessful attempt to combine the two. Criticizing both Left and Right, and most of all Wall Street, Gilder calls for unleashing economic growth through a monetary restructuring—namely, a return to the gold standard, buttressed by Bitcoin.
Maybe we do need a gold standard. But Gilder does a poor job of explaining to the reader why that should be. Now, honestly, I’m not the best person to comment on this book. While I theoretically have a fair bit of economics knowledge, including an economics concentration in a University of Chicago MBA, I don’t really grasp most economic theory. In particular, I know little about monetary theory. But really, the reader’s knowledge shouldn’t matter in a book like this—the author should be clearly able to explain what others think, what he thinks, why for both, and what that implies. Gilder does explain what others think, and to some extent why. It’s what HE thinks that’s incoherent—not because it’s necessarily wrong, but because the reader has almost no idea what he’s saying, other than his basic conclusion, much less why he’s saying it. So yes, it’s possible that a return to the gold standard, buttressed by Bitcoin, is a solution to all our economic problems. But as to why that should be, I’m still in the dark.
From what I can tell, this book is designed to supplement an earlier book in which Gilder created what he views as new theory of economics, relating to information and time being the key drivers of economic success and measurement. Gilder touches on this, but at least in the way he summarizes it here, it makes no sense. Maybe you have to read his earlier book.
This book, short itself, is organized around a series of very short chapters, each of which could stand alone. That itself is a bad sign, of a book not fully tied together and consisting of outlined thoughts thrown down on paper, and that initial perception is borne out by the reading. Each of these chapters reads like a morning’s musings blown up into a short essay. This is not helped by constant citations as experts to unimportant people like Richard Vigilante (who?) and sucking up to Peter Thiel by dragging him in irrelevantly (he, at least, is known, and contributed a blurb quote). The net effect is disorganized.
Within these chapters, Gilder keeps repeating himself. For example, as I return to below, he blames the collapse of telecom companies at the end of the Internet bubble, and by extension the entire bubble collapse, on the stronger dollar causing debt-heavy telecoms to face deflationary pressure (though he does not explain this fully, and that seems like it’d only be true for unhedged cross-border debt). But he repeats this at least four times in separate sections in the book.
Anyway, on to the text of the book. Gilder’s first chapter talks of our economic stagnation and rejects the thesis, most recently advanced by Robert Gordon, that the age of rapid growth and innovation is over, since roughly 1970, for structural reasons. According to Gilder, yes, innovation and productivity have dropped—not for structural reasons, but because innovation has been choked by the government. Not by government regulation, which is a common argument. Rather, it has been choked exclusively by the government taking the United States off the gold standard, in 1971, which resulted in volatility and “chaos in money stultifying the entire economy,” and causing all our economic problems up until today. This is presented in essentially a conclusory fashion—post hoc, ergo propter hoc.
On the face of it, this makes little sense to someone who understands business. Volatility and unpredictability, even if they do result from lack of a gold standard, can’t explain business stagnation and lack of innovation. Uncertainly is the one business constant; businesspeople always face huge uncertainty. Extra uncertainty due to monetary changes isn’t a massive change. Gilder seems to acknowledge this indirectly, and undercuts his thesis, noting that during the 1980s and 1990s “U.S. entrepreneurs fought back, empowered by technology and spurred by tax-rate reductions and deregulation.” So apparently the lack of a gold standard wasn’t fatal after all?
But then, according to Gilder, in the late 1990s the appreciation of the dollar (because of no gold standard) was equivalent to deflation, and that brought down the Internet economy. To show this, he (again) cites the bankruptcy of telecoms resulting from debt becoming more expensive. Leaving aside that makes no sense except for cross-border debts, it should be obvious that those assets went in bankruptcy to new owners, and the Internet economy should have gone on essentially as before, with new equity owners (not to mention that Internet infrastructure is by no means a synonym for the Internet economy, nor was the Internet economy our whole economy). So if it seems like none of this makes sense, you’re on to something.
We’re still on the first chapter. Here also begins constant rambling and lack of clarity. I could pick many examples, but let’s pick one paragraph:
“Dissolved were the maps and metrics across both space and time. The spatial index is the web of exchange rates between currencies that mediate all global trade. This is a horizontal axis, the geographical span of enterprise. Here existing products are replicated across now-globalized space—in Peter Thiel’s trope, from ‘one to n.’ The indices of time are the interest rates that mediate between past and future—the vertical dimension that takes the economy into the future, what Thiel depicts as the vectors from ‘zero to one.’”
What does that mean? I have no idea (though, having read Thiel’s book from which these phrases come, I’m pretty sure it has nothing to do with Thiel’s usage of the terms ascribed to him). What does any of this have to do with the lack of a gold standard creating business chaos and lack of innovation? Beats me.
In the next chapter, Gilder pushes his “information theory of money and capitalism,” which is opaque, but seems to mostly be a conclusion that increases in wealth are created only by increases in knowledge. Mostly, though, he just sounds drunk, rambling about the speed of light, justice and the corruption of elites.
Presumably believing he’s set up a framework for analysis, Gilder turns to attacking Milton Friedman for his opposition to the gold standard and failure to understand how the velocity of money works. I can’t speak to this, because it’s above my pay grade. But the writing again shows flaws. For example, Gilder alleges that velocity must remain constant under standard monetary theory in order for monetarist policies to work, and given that people may voluntarily change velocity, “Why monetary theory disregards this policy has long been an enigma to me.” The very next sentence, beginning the next paragraph, is “Friedman developed a shrewd and plausible answer.” It seems to me that if Friedman, the high priest of monetary theory, offered an answer to the question, it’s very much not being “disregarded.”
Gilder then discusses, in the subsequent chapters:
1) That government control of monetary policy allows government to make stupid and corrupt choices to benefit pet projects and people (undoubtedly true, but a commonplace).
2) Why gold is unique (in essence, because the only real measure of a unit of exchange is time and gold is closely tied to time, in that it requires time to extract it). Non-gold money distorts decision making by unmooring the scarcity of time from the measure of value.
3) Why countries that refuse to participate in floating currencies, such as China, benefit immensely from this (and we should make nice with China).
4) Why Bitcoin is similar to gold in its time basis, and why non-governmental currencies tied to commodity baskets are not equivalent.
5) Attacking the leftist Thomas Piketty and the rightist Lord Adair Turner (who?) as being both slaves to monetary fallacies and slaves to the evil genius George Soros.
6) Attacking the entire finance industry (while only specifically indicting currency trading) as growing hugely while providing no actual value.
7) Rambling about Silicon Valley “unicorns,” venture capital and IPOs with no point I can detect.
8) Attacking big banks as both being clients of the government and profiting off the volatility that harms businesses which actually produce (also undoubtedly true).
9) Attacking insider trading rules (this part actually makes sense).
10) And, finally, returning to a call for the gold standard.
But at the end, the reader knows nothing new, except that George Gilder really likes the gold standard. My conclusion is that Moses should not have left Gilder alone when he went up to Sinai, because when Moses returns, Gilder will still be sitting, entranced, in front of a golden idol of his own making.
Maybe we do need a gold standard. But Gilder does a poor job of explaining to the reader why that should be. Now, honestly, I’m not the best person to comment on this book. While I theoretically have a fair bit of economics knowledge, including an economics concentration in a University of Chicago MBA, I don’t really grasp most economic theory. In particular, I know little about monetary theory. But really, the reader’s knowledge shouldn’t matter in a book like this—the author should be clearly able to explain what others think, what he thinks, why for both, and what that implies. Gilder does explain what others think, and to some extent why. It’s what HE thinks that’s incoherent—not because it’s necessarily wrong, but because the reader has almost no idea what he’s saying, other than his basic conclusion, much less why he’s saying it. So yes, it’s possible that a return to the gold standard, buttressed by Bitcoin, is a solution to all our economic problems. But as to why that should be, I’m still in the dark.
From what I can tell, this book is designed to supplement an earlier book in which Gilder created what he views as new theory of economics, relating to information and time being the key drivers of economic success and measurement. Gilder touches on this, but at least in the way he summarizes it here, it makes no sense. Maybe you have to read his earlier book.
This book, short itself, is organized around a series of very short chapters, each of which could stand alone. That itself is a bad sign, of a book not fully tied together and consisting of outlined thoughts thrown down on paper, and that initial perception is borne out by the reading. Each of these chapters reads like a morning’s musings blown up into a short essay. This is not helped by constant citations as experts to unimportant people like Richard Vigilante (who?) and sucking up to Peter Thiel by dragging him in irrelevantly (he, at least, is known, and contributed a blurb quote). The net effect is disorganized.
Within these chapters, Gilder keeps repeating himself. For example, as I return to below, he blames the collapse of telecom companies at the end of the Internet bubble, and by extension the entire bubble collapse, on the stronger dollar causing debt-heavy telecoms to face deflationary pressure (though he does not explain this fully, and that seems like it’d only be true for unhedged cross-border debt). But he repeats this at least four times in separate sections in the book.
Anyway, on to the text of the book. Gilder’s first chapter talks of our economic stagnation and rejects the thesis, most recently advanced by Robert Gordon, that the age of rapid growth and innovation is over, since roughly 1970, for structural reasons. According to Gilder, yes, innovation and productivity have dropped—not for structural reasons, but because innovation has been choked by the government. Not by government regulation, which is a common argument. Rather, it has been choked exclusively by the government taking the United States off the gold standard, in 1971, which resulted in volatility and “chaos in money stultifying the entire economy,” and causing all our economic problems up until today. This is presented in essentially a conclusory fashion—post hoc, ergo propter hoc.
On the face of it, this makes little sense to someone who understands business. Volatility and unpredictability, even if they do result from lack of a gold standard, can’t explain business stagnation and lack of innovation. Uncertainly is the one business constant; businesspeople always face huge uncertainty. Extra uncertainty due to monetary changes isn’t a massive change. Gilder seems to acknowledge this indirectly, and undercuts his thesis, noting that during the 1980s and 1990s “U.S. entrepreneurs fought back, empowered by technology and spurred by tax-rate reductions and deregulation.” So apparently the lack of a gold standard wasn’t fatal after all?
But then, according to Gilder, in the late 1990s the appreciation of the dollar (because of no gold standard) was equivalent to deflation, and that brought down the Internet economy. To show this, he (again) cites the bankruptcy of telecoms resulting from debt becoming more expensive. Leaving aside that makes no sense except for cross-border debts, it should be obvious that those assets went in bankruptcy to new owners, and the Internet economy should have gone on essentially as before, with new equity owners (not to mention that Internet infrastructure is by no means a synonym for the Internet economy, nor was the Internet economy our whole economy). So if it seems like none of this makes sense, you’re on to something.
We’re still on the first chapter. Here also begins constant rambling and lack of clarity. I could pick many examples, but let’s pick one paragraph:
“Dissolved were the maps and metrics across both space and time. The spatial index is the web of exchange rates between currencies that mediate all global trade. This is a horizontal axis, the geographical span of enterprise. Here existing products are replicated across now-globalized space—in Peter Thiel’s trope, from ‘one to n.’ The indices of time are the interest rates that mediate between past and future—the vertical dimension that takes the economy into the future, what Thiel depicts as the vectors from ‘zero to one.’”
What does that mean? I have no idea (though, having read Thiel’s book from which these phrases come, I’m pretty sure it has nothing to do with Thiel’s usage of the terms ascribed to him). What does any of this have to do with the lack of a gold standard creating business chaos and lack of innovation? Beats me.
In the next chapter, Gilder pushes his “information theory of money and capitalism,” which is opaque, but seems to mostly be a conclusion that increases in wealth are created only by increases in knowledge. Mostly, though, he just sounds drunk, rambling about the speed of light, justice and the corruption of elites.
Presumably believing he’s set up a framework for analysis, Gilder turns to attacking Milton Friedman for his opposition to the gold standard and failure to understand how the velocity of money works. I can’t speak to this, because it’s above my pay grade. But the writing again shows flaws. For example, Gilder alleges that velocity must remain constant under standard monetary theory in order for monetarist policies to work, and given that people may voluntarily change velocity, “Why monetary theory disregards this policy has long been an enigma to me.” The very next sentence, beginning the next paragraph, is “Friedman developed a shrewd and plausible answer.” It seems to me that if Friedman, the high priest of monetary theory, offered an answer to the question, it’s very much not being “disregarded.”
Gilder then discusses, in the subsequent chapters:
1) That government control of monetary policy allows government to make stupid and corrupt choices to benefit pet projects and people (undoubtedly true, but a commonplace).
2) Why gold is unique (in essence, because the only real measure of a unit of exchange is time and gold is closely tied to time, in that it requires time to extract it). Non-gold money distorts decision making by unmooring the scarcity of time from the measure of value.
3) Why countries that refuse to participate in floating currencies, such as China, benefit immensely from this (and we should make nice with China).
4) Why Bitcoin is similar to gold in its time basis, and why non-governmental currencies tied to commodity baskets are not equivalent.
5) Attacking the leftist Thomas Piketty and the rightist Lord Adair Turner (who?) as being both slaves to monetary fallacies and slaves to the evil genius George Soros.
6) Attacking the entire finance industry (while only specifically indicting currency trading) as growing hugely while providing no actual value.
7) Rambling about Silicon Valley “unicorns,” venture capital and IPOs with no point I can detect.
8) Attacking big banks as both being clients of the government and profiting off the volatility that harms businesses which actually produce (also undoubtedly true).
9) Attacking insider trading rules (this part actually makes sense).
10) And, finally, returning to a call for the gold standard.
But at the end, the reader knows nothing new, except that George Gilder really likes the gold standard. My conclusion is that Moses should not have left Gilder alone when he went up to Sinai, because when Moses returns, Gilder will still be sitting, entranced, in front of a golden idol of his own making.
August 15, 2018
This is an exceptional book. I don't believe you can just read through it and really understand the points he is trying to make. These concepts are deep and require a lot of thought.
Western culture has become thoroughly indoctrinated with the idea of looking for something that appears to be a problem, giving the problem a clear definition, and then developing something to fix it. We have become obsessed with this. We have millions of highly credentialed "experts" and are minting tens of thousands more every year; they are all searching for problems to define and solve. We do this in medicine, education, economics and government. And, since this mentality has permeated every aspect of our culture, there is probably no area of our lives that has not been impacted. Too frequently the "problems" we see on the surface are symptoms rather than underlying causes. Unfortunately, searching out root problems and fixing them is often not financially rewarding or very exciting. While treating symptoms can be very lucrative and fascinating—at least in the form of a few minute sound bite for television: a pill for this, a stimulus package for that, you'll be happy when you borrow to get that ..., a process to make your child a genius, and all with near-immediate results.
This book will never be popular and will be discounted by many who read it. Gilder is looking for the root problems, the very foundation of much that plagues our culture. It is not very exciting stuff, it requires hard work to understand, and nobody is going to get rich by understanding it—certainly not in the near-term, but not in the long-term either because solving the real problems related to money would shake the very foundations of our economic infrastructure, would likely be painful in the near-term, and would reduce power and control in established institutions.
There are others—some may even read this book—who will counter everything that Gilder posits here. As with most things, there are differing perspectives usually accompanied by some type of benefit to those expounding them, Gilder not excepted. The only way to gain some inkling of what might be real is to study these differing perspectives and draw your own conclusions. For me, Gilder is close to seeing the root problems.
Western culture has become thoroughly indoctrinated with the idea of looking for something that appears to be a problem, giving the problem a clear definition, and then developing something to fix it. We have become obsessed with this. We have millions of highly credentialed "experts" and are minting tens of thousands more every year; they are all searching for problems to define and solve. We do this in medicine, education, economics and government. And, since this mentality has permeated every aspect of our culture, there is probably no area of our lives that has not been impacted. Too frequently the "problems" we see on the surface are symptoms rather than underlying causes. Unfortunately, searching out root problems and fixing them is often not financially rewarding or very exciting. While treating symptoms can be very lucrative and fascinating—at least in the form of a few minute sound bite for television: a pill for this, a stimulus package for that, you'll be happy when you borrow to get that ..., a process to make your child a genius, and all with near-immediate results.
This book will never be popular and will be discounted by many who read it. Gilder is looking for the root problems, the very foundation of much that plagues our culture. It is not very exciting stuff, it requires hard work to understand, and nobody is going to get rich by understanding it—certainly not in the near-term, but not in the long-term either because solving the real problems related to money would shake the very foundations of our economic infrastructure, would likely be painful in the near-term, and would reduce power and control in established institutions.
There are others—some may even read this book—who will counter everything that Gilder posits here. As with most things, there are differing perspectives usually accompanied by some type of benefit to those expounding them, Gilder not excepted. The only way to gain some inkling of what might be real is to study these differing perspectives and draw your own conclusions. For me, Gilder is close to seeing the root problems.
May 16, 2019
I read a couple of Gilder’s books on technology back a few decades when I was in college, and I must say that they had an impact in how I thought about the march of technology. I thought I would read one of his more current books to see if I could glean any other simple-to-repeat insight into economics, and from this book I got one. I won’t judge the veracity of this claim, but Gilder says that gold maintains its value because it can be mined, and mining requires time and money and resources. And he likens it to bitcoin mining. Interesting thought, and one that I’ll keep in my head. The bulk of the book is about the gold standard. I was expecting more related to technology, but was disappointed. I found the arguments presented here to be at times quite confusing, despite Gilder’s simple writing style. It’s one of those books where the sentences make sense, but the paragraphs sometimes don’t. I may try more Gilder books, as I like the way he writes, but I can’t say this topic was that interesting to me.
June 6, 2020
I’ve been listening to Gilder’s books systematically by accident. I’m not sure I meant to read them chronologically in order of writing, but that seems to have happened naturally. This book has a lot of repeat material. Gilder tends to write that way. I’m not complaining. His concepts are important, valuable, and complex enough that repeated exposure is really helpful. But that being said, Knowledge and Power contained quite a bit of information that was already presented in Wealth and Poverty. Scandal has an even higher proportion of rehashed greatest hits. In fact, this book seems to be a truncated version of Knowledge and Power more than anything. (And The 21st Century Case for Gold, which I’m also nearly finished with, has almost no new information at all.)
But again, I have no problem with this. It just needs to be pointed out.
In part because of that dynamic, and in part because I’ve been drinking these down back to back, his books are all mixed together in a stew in my head. I’m gleaning various takeaways at different moments, including new ones when he repeats (at times verbatim) large sections from previous books.
One key helpful point for me has been an upending of how I view and understand investing. The concept that struck me as I listened to guilders chapter on insider trading, and his continued insistence that we should allow it, is that investing is hardly the same thing as trading. Furthermore, I think these concepts are often conflated and misunderstood. Specifically, trading is not investing any more than a person buying a piece of property at an auction and turning it around to resale at next week’s auction should be considered a property mogul. Trading in the stock market has become a glorified parallel to professional poker playing. Investing requires knowledge and some substantial time. This is important for several reasons. Gilder makes many of those reasons very clear, and a few more have developed in my own head.
The whole gist of Gilder’s arguments, across most of his economics books, is for intelligent investment that leads to wealth production. Thinking about investment in terms of giving rather than getting is actually a pretty sharp turn, and it makes all the difference. Until we learn to think about investing from the standpoint of wealth production, not making a quick buck (day-trading), or simply beating inflation (long-term / hedge fund investing), intelligent investing can't really begin. I could go on, but I won’t.
The last chapter really brought it together. Gilder writes about the blockchain, it’s relationship to gold, time, floating currencies, and gives us a portrait of where things ought to, and just might go next.
But again, I have no problem with this. It just needs to be pointed out.
In part because of that dynamic, and in part because I’ve been drinking these down back to back, his books are all mixed together in a stew in my head. I’m gleaning various takeaways at different moments, including new ones when he repeats (at times verbatim) large sections from previous books.
One key helpful point for me has been an upending of how I view and understand investing. The concept that struck me as I listened to guilders chapter on insider trading, and his continued insistence that we should allow it, is that investing is hardly the same thing as trading. Furthermore, I think these concepts are often conflated and misunderstood. Specifically, trading is not investing any more than a person buying a piece of property at an auction and turning it around to resale at next week’s auction should be considered a property mogul. Trading in the stock market has become a glorified parallel to professional poker playing. Investing requires knowledge and some substantial time. This is important for several reasons. Gilder makes many of those reasons very clear, and a few more have developed in my own head.
The whole gist of Gilder’s arguments, across most of his economics books, is for intelligent investment that leads to wealth production. Thinking about investment in terms of giving rather than getting is actually a pretty sharp turn, and it makes all the difference. Until we learn to think about investing from the standpoint of wealth production, not making a quick buck (day-trading), or simply beating inflation (long-term / hedge fund investing), intelligent investing can't really begin. I could go on, but I won’t.
The last chapter really brought it together. Gilder writes about the blockchain, it’s relationship to gold, time, floating currencies, and gives us a portrait of where things ought to, and just might go next.
January 17, 2025
1.5 Stars this is one of these books in the new genre I'm now seeing of fast food facts books. "Authors" just copy and paste a bunch of facts some data and give commentary on it and it's all completely disparate even though it's nonfiction there's really no plot or point of the book but just puking out a bunch of facts it's like eating bad fast food. 80% puking facts incoherently and disparately) and 20% of maybe some good takeaway commentary I'm seeing this trend over and over again in these books. I think these books are actually written by AI because all they do is just take out a bunch of random political or economic data points and thrown together in a book it would almost be plagiarism or copyright infringement but legally it's not there's really nothing original here. You can take any takeaway and write one book on that but then the AI couldn't do that you'd actually need an author. Like this book at the end was hugely disappointing talking about the joys of Bitcoin which is nothing but a Ponzi. But here and there are some points on the danger of money printing and currencies but you're getting it in a fast food manner where the whole book should be written about that I might even change this to one star. I listen to this anyone reading this I don't see how they could read it I listen to it at two times speed and it was less than 5 hours but still not worth my time. Think about it a book on an important subject that's only 5 hours long what a joke. And your left not necessarily knowing the perspective of the book it's largely common Sense conservative but then he throws in Bitcoin at the end.
I'm now calling this genre AI generated fast food fact books. They have to be generated by AI cuz there's too many books like this now this is like my third in a row. And the important takeaways are lost because there's no Focus on the relevant facts cuz everything is just thrown out in a quick data dump. For example talking about currencies being more volatile than the country's economies themselves and just saying that not going into the reasons why. I'm being nice giving this 1.5 Stars.
I'm now calling this genre AI generated fast food fact books. They have to be generated by AI cuz there's too many books like this now this is like my third in a row. And the important takeaways are lost because there's no Focus on the relevant facts cuz everything is just thrown out in a quick data dump. For example talking about currencies being more volatile than the country's economies themselves and just saying that not going into the reasons why. I'm being nice giving this 1.5 Stars.
April 14, 2022
The concept of Money as the time required for the production of something of value used as standard of currency rather than a currency on relation to other currencies in the Forex. The volatility plus manipulation created someone like Gorge Soros. Venture Capital and index fund investment do not contribute to the growth of new innovation.
From chapter 12”Wall Street sells its Soul”
“The current world monetary and economic system favors this new Walls Street currency regime over both Main Street and Silicon Valley. Once associated by research and analysis and support for the independent enterprises of America, the new Wall Street simply means giant banks informally nationalized by Washington… But they (Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Chase, UBS, Morgan Stanly etc.) are too big to [let] fail and too dependent on Government to succeed. Their horizons are too short to foster entrepreneurial growth and wealth. The bulk of their financial profits now come from proprietary trading with a time horizon measured in minutes and weeks rather than years and decades…. They are profitable because of a vast transfer of wealth away from workers and savers to bankers. These institutions insidiously thrive by serving Government rather than entrepreneurs. Government policy now favors the short term and rapid trading of the big banks over the long term commitments that foster employment and growth leaving us with a predatory zero sum economy that destroys the jobs and depletes the incomes of the middle class.”
From chapter 12”Wall Street sells its Soul”
“The current world monetary and economic system favors this new Walls Street currency regime over both Main Street and Silicon Valley. Once associated by research and analysis and support for the independent enterprises of America, the new Wall Street simply means giant banks informally nationalized by Washington… But they (Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Chase, UBS, Morgan Stanly etc.) are too big to [let] fail and too dependent on Government to succeed. Their horizons are too short to foster entrepreneurial growth and wealth. The bulk of their financial profits now come from proprietary trading with a time horizon measured in minutes and weeks rather than years and decades…. They are profitable because of a vast transfer of wealth away from workers and savers to bankers. These institutions insidiously thrive by serving Government rather than entrepreneurs. Government policy now favors the short term and rapid trading of the big banks over the long term commitments that foster employment and growth leaving us with a predatory zero sum economy that destroys the jobs and depletes the incomes of the middle class.”
December 2, 2022
If one gets past the somewhat rambling and occasionally repetitive nature, they will stumble upon one of the most revelatory observations of money, verging on the edge of an acid trip enlightenment.
Money is not the result of regulations, laws, dictates. It's a system of the world, reflecting the most fundamental laws of the universe, such as the finiteness of time and the laws of conservation of energy. If money cannot reflect the value of work put into obtaining it, ie. if its value becomes arbitrarily manipulable, thus retroactively manipulating also past work - eg. discounting it via inflation - it goes against the aforementioned fundamental truths. Hijacking it so downgrades it to merely a backdoor into everyone's pocket by bureaucrats. Not only is this bad for obvious reasons, it also forcibly pushes everyone into high time preference, up the risk curve, seeking compensation for stolen time and energy in mandatory participation of the up and down girations of useless speculative bubbles.
Forcing everyone to remedy the infinitude of monopoly money by chasing the finitude of assets only produces price distortions and financial bloat. The real fix is real money. Don't believe it? Nuke the Fed and US Mint and watch real money fuel real productivity.
Money is not the result of regulations, laws, dictates. It's a system of the world, reflecting the most fundamental laws of the universe, such as the finiteness of time and the laws of conservation of energy. If money cannot reflect the value of work put into obtaining it, ie. if its value becomes arbitrarily manipulable, thus retroactively manipulating also past work - eg. discounting it via inflation - it goes against the aforementioned fundamental truths. Hijacking it so downgrades it to merely a backdoor into everyone's pocket by bureaucrats. Not only is this bad for obvious reasons, it also forcibly pushes everyone into high time preference, up the risk curve, seeking compensation for stolen time and energy in mandatory participation of the up and down girations of useless speculative bubbles.
Forcing everyone to remedy the infinitude of monopoly money by chasing the finitude of assets only produces price distortions and financial bloat. The real fix is real money. Don't believe it? Nuke the Fed and US Mint and watch real money fuel real productivity.
December 12, 2020
There's a really interesting intuition here about money et al. being a channel along which signals passed to investors carrying information germane to learning and capacity for meaningful innovation. Less noise in the channel = clearer hearing capacity of the subtle.
Book also has some astonishing information about 1) the FOREX world and 2) how insider trading regulations have empowered conglomerates.
Sadly, I don't think a physicist reviewed this -- it's replete with statement's that don't make sence if we use the physicists definitions of science terms that Gilder uses with flair but without clear definition.
I do think there's something astonishingly deep here but Gilder didn't have the fully formed idea yet before writing this book and probably won't get it until we get him in a room with a statistical physicist.
Book also has some astonishing information about 1) the FOREX world and 2) how insider trading regulations have empowered conglomerates.
Sadly, I don't think a physicist reviewed this -- it's replete with statement's that don't make sence if we use the physicists definitions of science terms that Gilder uses with flair but without clear definition.
I do think there's something astonishingly deep here but Gilder didn't have the fully formed idea yet before writing this book and probably won't get it until we get him in a room with a statistical physicist.
June 26, 2022
Some of the content is not logically self-consistent. One example is when the author wants to blame the floating currency monetary policy he uses the US as an example, and when he talks about China he says China's economic miracle is based on a fixed currency based on the US dollar(while the underline US dollar is a floating currency aka Fiat currency). To me, it is like a contradictory argument.
When talking about economic growth, the author only focuses on the monetary system but does not talk much about other aspects that are also important in developing a nation. And also it seems the author only uses evidence and data that support his argument, but deliberately ignores the evidence that is not supporting his argument.
I would not really recommend this book to people who would like to learn about the monetary system, especially what is a sound money system.
When talking about economic growth, the author only focuses on the monetary system but does not talk much about other aspects that are also important in developing a nation. And also it seems the author only uses evidence and data that support his argument, but deliberately ignores the evidence that is not supporting his argument.
I would not really recommend this book to people who would like to learn about the monetary system, especially what is a sound money system.
October 30, 2018
Mr. Gilder takes some getting used to as you start this book. Stick to it: this is a worthy read. Bottom line: the author would rather that the USA return to the Gold Standard so casually abandoned by Mr. Nixon in 1971. He also recommends that we take advantage of the blockchain revolution and adopt a digital currency which would facilitate reliable commercial trade without the dominance of a central bank run by greedy, politically-driven overseers. Read the whole book (and some of Gilders other works too) and form your own opinion.
December 13, 2022
Gilder provides an interesting take on the current American economy that I largely agree with and that is rarely represented in academia or in mainstream media. The book still feels long for its 200 pages and the alliterative sentences get tiresome after a while.
He could use some longer chapters and a more thorough explanation of his concepts in this book. His criticism of Wall Street banks and the Fed is spot-on, but I would appreciate a longer book detailing his objections.
He could use some longer chapters and a more thorough explanation of his concepts in this book. His criticism of Wall Street banks and the Fed is spot-on, but I would appreciate a longer book detailing his objections.
December 27, 2018
Such a powerful lesson in monetary policy. Every page full with powerful ideas and lessons. Brave ideas and a revolutionary road map of the future monetary policy. Money is time and time is real!
A must read
A must read
November 13, 2020
When fiat currencies create a market where everything becomes more expensive because labor is unlinked to time. Productivity goes stale, capital investment declines, and middle class shrinkage become the quo.
November 18, 2020
Time as a value of/for exchange.
Time as a constant in order to relate value exchanged...in order to establish equity of the medium of the referenced and mutually recognized medium of/ for that which is exchanged.
Time as a constant in order to relate value exchanged...in order to establish equity of the medium of the referenced and mutually recognized medium of/ for that which is exchanged.
February 9, 2023
2.5 stars. I can't focus anymore.
Notes:
Where the left goes wrong is misdiagnosing the problem and therefore failing to find a solution
Interests rates are the money value of time.
Notes:
Where the left goes wrong is misdiagnosing the problem and therefore failing to find a solution
Interests rates are the money value of time.
June 28, 2017
Gilder is always a pleasure to read. Stretching and stimulating, contrarian yet intuitive. He's a polymath who never seems partisan or ideological. The best supply-side prophet out there.
January 24, 2018
99 Stars
Required reading for anyone interested in money. Ironclad, compelling argument on why our current system is a joke — and an outline for the future.
Required reading for anyone interested in money. Ironclad, compelling argument on why our current system is a joke — and an outline for the future.
June 26, 2019
To make a long story short, we should revert back to money backed by gold.
February 20, 2020
An insightful look at the hokery that is modern fiat currency.
January 13, 2023
An interesting book. A bit terse but makes a great case for the gold standard and even Bitcoin.
August 7, 2023
Good. Talks about his “Money is time” theory. This and Knowledge and Power lead to his book Life After Capitalism
June 27, 2019
Thank you George Gilder for writing such an incredible book. The English it's written in is of a level I never knew existed. And I feel more capable of understanding the world now.
May 13, 2016
George Gilder has forged so many new paths this short book is no exception. Coming off his prior book on Knowledge and Power - Gilder examines why a lot of the actions of central banks are actually destructive of middle class wealth. He argues for alternative monetary regimes (including gold and possibly electronic exchange mechanisms like Bitcoin) that he believes could help correct for current problems in the system of central banks.
He is not a fan of writers like Robert Gordon or Thomas Piketty - both of whom now argue that we have entered a period of slow economic growth. With the right economic policies we could get back to earlier levels. But that is a very high hurdle. Policies like Sarbanes Oxley and Dodd Frank have discouraged small business startups - the level of IPO funding (even though it is recovered a bit) is still well below historic levels. At the same time he describes the paradox of the sophisticated buyer rules which discourage small investors from helping to fund startups while encouraging true insider traders like Warren Buffett or Jeff Immelt to exercise their unique expertise by taking companies private. All of these things come from too much regulation.
He is also not a fan of currency arbitrage -which he describes as mostly non-productive. Although the value of currency arbitrage is huge it benefits only a very small number of traders.
Quantitative easing, in Gilder's thinking did a couple of things. First, by keeping rates artificially low - it diminished the value of savings - and as he points out money is really bounded on a reference of time. He claims (and I think this might be a bit of an overstatement) that defined benefit pensions began to deteriorate at the point that Nixon unbounded the dollar from a clear exchange rate. Second, it discouraged investments in new startups and small businesses.
He makes a credible argument that Chinese monetary policy (which tied the Yuan to the dollar) was actually not manipulation but a sound policy for China and for the rest of the world. One of the interesting facts in the book is that with the liberalization that took place in China they actually spend a smaller fraction of GDP on government than we do.
He is not a fan of writers like Robert Gordon or Thomas Piketty - both of whom now argue that we have entered a period of slow economic growth. With the right economic policies we could get back to earlier levels. But that is a very high hurdle. Policies like Sarbanes Oxley and Dodd Frank have discouraged small business startups - the level of IPO funding (even though it is recovered a bit) is still well below historic levels. At the same time he describes the paradox of the sophisticated buyer rules which discourage small investors from helping to fund startups while encouraging true insider traders like Warren Buffett or Jeff Immelt to exercise their unique expertise by taking companies private. All of these things come from too much regulation.
He is also not a fan of currency arbitrage -which he describes as mostly non-productive. Although the value of currency arbitrage is huge it benefits only a very small number of traders.
Quantitative easing, in Gilder's thinking did a couple of things. First, by keeping rates artificially low - it diminished the value of savings - and as he points out money is really bounded on a reference of time. He claims (and I think this might be a bit of an overstatement) that defined benefit pensions began to deteriorate at the point that Nixon unbounded the dollar from a clear exchange rate. Second, it discouraged investments in new startups and small businesses.
He makes a credible argument that Chinese monetary policy (which tied the Yuan to the dollar) was actually not manipulation but a sound policy for China and for the rest of the world. One of the interesting facts in the book is that with the liberalization that took place in China they actually spend a smaller fraction of GDP on government than we do.
May 8, 2016
Enjoyed this book. It provides a thorough analysis of the debasement of the US dollar and the repercussions since FDR took the nation off of the gold standard and then Nixon closed the gold window.
The author makes a good case for going back on the gold standard to have a credible money as a medium of exchange. The book also explains the costs of massive government overreach in other areas, but the main focus is on money.
I remain skeptical that the gold standard is the solution. A huge concern is that the Federal Reserve controls the price of credit (interest rates) through the manipulation of money, but a gold standard gives the government the ability to control another price: gold. This has its own weaknesses.
A more free market approach would be to have a free banking system whereby interest rates and the money supply would be determined by market forces. At the very least, a monetary rule should be put in place on the supple of money to reduce discretion.
I recommend reading this book to learn more.
The author makes a good case for going back on the gold standard to have a credible money as a medium of exchange. The book also explains the costs of massive government overreach in other areas, but the main focus is on money.
I remain skeptical that the gold standard is the solution. A huge concern is that the Federal Reserve controls the price of credit (interest rates) through the manipulation of money, but a gold standard gives the government the ability to control another price: gold. This has its own weaknesses.
A more free market approach would be to have a free banking system whereby interest rates and the money supply would be determined by market forces. At the very least, a monetary rule should be put in place on the supple of money to reduce discretion.
I recommend reading this book to learn more.
January 16, 2019
This book was difficult for me to read primarily because of its complex language. It is worth laboring through because its message is true. The Message is that the meaning of money has been distorted by self protecting politicians/governments. The net affect is that the growth in the money supply is going to people and organizations that do not produce, they simply redistribute money/value. The sequence reminds me of the Satanic Bible, which preaches that anyone who in dumb enough to be taken advantage of deserves to be taken advantage of or used. The politicians/governments are the ones who are taking advantage of the true creators/wealth creators of the world by manipulating the monetary system. Gilder proposes using the internet and systems such as Bitcoin as a medium and method for tracking transactions and determining the real value/content/meaning/information carried/conveyed by money.
April 3, 2016
I think Gilder deserves a Nobel Prize in economics for his advancement of information theory to not only entrepreneurialism, wealth creation, and growth, but now for monetary policy with this work. Brilliant explanation of how and why Milton Friedman, and Keynesians, got it wrong. This book will convert you to a goldbug, but it might be of the digital variety. Highly recommended.
October 12, 2016
A serious, interesting and relevant essay on the nature and significance of money.
"Since existing moneys fail to perform the key role of money as a measuring stick, we currently live in a world without money. What people call money is actually mere credit and debt with no reliable unit of account." Amen.
"Since existing moneys fail to perform the key role of money as a measuring stick, we currently live in a world without money. What people call money is actually mere credit and debt with no reliable unit of account." Amen.
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