The Spectre of Price Inflation

Table of Contents:
Introduction Part I: Innocence: when principles guided policy 1. Drs Fisher, Friedman and no inflation 2. The rise of inflation 3. The end of metal for money 4. War, peace, deflation and recession 5. Seigniorage versus hyperinflation 6. Blaming the victim 7. Inflation and unemployment Part II: Ignominy: central banks, insurance and inflation 8. The rise of central banks 9. Fractured insurance 10. Bank failure and crisis 11. The problem of excess reserves 12. Giving away the inflation tax Part III: Purgatory: capital markets, interest and inflation 13. Fed price-fixing 14. A plague of negative interest rates 15. Shifting money demand 16. The new usury prohibition? 17. Money, inflation and banking reform

About the Author :
Max Gillman is Hayek Professor of Economic History at the University of Missouri–St Louis. His books include Advanced Modern Macroeconomics (2011) and Inflation Theory in Economics (2009). He has also edited Collected Papers on Monetary Theory by Robert E. Lucas, Jr. (2011).

Review :
Yet again, inflation has returned. Rather than searching for historical parallels, this book provides an extremely important exploration that links the past to contemporary inflation. This is an extremely useful book for central bankers, macroeconomists and readers who wish to deepen their understanding of the causes – and effects – of inflation. Central bankers of the world are hereby put on notice: Based on impeccable scholarship, Max Gillman’s devastating indictment of their policies explains why distortionary interest rates impose severe damage on economies by misallocating the financial investment resources needed to fuel productive growth. He makes a compelling case against the Federal Reserve’s price-fixing approach to determining the cost of capital – and illuminates the unhealthy relationship between the Fed and the US Treasury Department. Gillman’s analysis will be riveting for monetary policy experts, even as it will prove eye-opening for non-specialists who have long sensed that government-engineered inflation and manipulated money betray the principles of democratic capitalism. Professor Gillman's book is important and ambitious. Since the link between money and gold was broken in 1971, the world's major economies have suffered repeated inflation outbreaks. Why? Gillman asks this fundamental question – and insists, against the latest fashions, that the behaviour of the quantity of money is crucial to the answer. His views are challenging, thought-provoking and central to current debates on economic policy. This is a thought-provoking journey through monetary and financial history, asking how we got into some of our current monetary messes and banking binds; and wondering how our forebears have helped or hindered us in getting here. An insightful journey through the history of inflation and its master, the Central Bank. Gillman explains how the Fed suppressed inflation, flooding the financial system with money since 2008 and imposing significant distortions. This equilibrium has now ended to the relief of Chicago-trained Gillman and all of us who believe that the fundamental principles of economics still work. Inflation is back, and this book is a timely account of how this happened and how it can be cured. On the way Professor Gillman provides a learned history of the origins and development of money across the world since the very beginnings of the ancient world.