Good Money, Part II

Book excerpt: The second part of this collection presents five articles that lay the foundation for some of the Nobel Prize–winning economists most controversial ideas. The two volumes of Good Money present a comprehensive chronicle of F.A. Hayek’s writings on monetary policy. Together, they offer readers an invaluable reference to some of his most profound thoughts about money. Good Money, Part II: The Standard offers five more of Hayek’s articles that advance his ideas about money. In these essays, Hayek investigates the consequences of the “predicament of composition.” This principle works on the premise that the entire society cannot simultaneously increase liquidity by selling property or services for cash. This analysis led Hayek to make what was perhaps his most controversial proposal: that governments should be denied a monopoly on the coining of money. “One of the great thinkers of our age who . . . revolutionized the world’s intellectual and political life.” —Former President George Herbert Walker Bush