My first introduction to the truth behind the business cycle was Alan Greenspan’s 1967 essay, “Gold and Economic Freedom”, which was published in Ayn Rand’s book, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. You can read the essay here or here. After giving a theoretical justification for the gold standard, Greenspan goes on to explain how the Great Depression was caused by fiat credit expansion and contraction.
“In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation
through inflation.” —Alan Greenspan
Austrian-school economists were among the few economists to predict the Crash of 2008. On a Friday night in 2009, I watched as Tom Woods, a senior fellow of the Mises Institute, gave a phenomenal lecture very much like this as part of his book tour for Meltdown. This is one of the best explanations of the Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle I’ve ever heard.
Bitcoin and other “hard” cryptocurrencies were designed to mimic the monetary properties of gold, while at the same time resisting government attempts to control and subvert it, for example capital controls.
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