Copyright © 2016 by George Gilder All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechani-cal, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclu-sion in a magazine, newspaper, website, or broadcast Regnery® is a registered trademark of Salem Communications Holding Corporation First e-book edition 2016: 978-1-62157-566-5 Originally published in hardcover, 2016 Cataloging-in-Publication data on file with the Library of Congress Published in the United States by Regnery Publishing A Division of Salem Media Group 300 New Jersey Ave NW Washington, DC 20001 www.Regnery.com Manufactured in the United States of America 10 Books are available in quantity for promotional or premium use For information on discounts and terms, please visit our website: www.Regnery.com Distributed to the trade by Perseus Distribution 250 West 57th Street New York, NY 10107 To Bruce Chapman, friend and guide for sixty years Contents PrologueWinning the Debate Chapter 1The Dream and the Dollar Chapter 2Justice before Growth Chapter 3Friedman and the Enigma of Money Chapter 4The Chinese Challenge Chapter 5The High Cost of Bad Money Chapter 6Money in Information Theory Chapter 7What Bitcoin Can Teach Chapter 8Where “Hayeks” Go Wrong Chapter 9The Piketty-Turner Thesis Chapter 10Hypertrophy of Finance Chapter 11Main Street Pushed Aside Chapter 12Wall Street Sells Its Soul Chapter 13A Wrinkle in Time Chapter 14Restoring Real Money Acknowledgments Key Terms for the Information Theory of Money Notes Index The source and root of all monetary evil [is] the government monopoly on the issue and control of money —Friedrich Hayek Prologue Winning the Debate Humans don’t decide what to build by making choices from some cosmic catalog of options given in advance; instead, by creating new technologies, we rewrite the plan of the world —Peter Thiel, Zero to One (2014) ill conservatives win the coming economic debate? The nation depends on it We deserve to win, after all We have the best economic ideas, so we say, aligned with constitutional liberty and the American Dream The economy is in trouble, and after two terms of President Barack Obama the Democrats are mostly to blame After a crash like the 2008 financial debacle, the U.S economy typically takes off on a seven-year boom “Seven fat years” was the harvest of President Ronald Reagan, who entered office in the face of Cold War setbacks and sky-high interest rates, inflation, “malaise,” unemployment, and poverty Pursuing similar policies in faint rhetorical disguise and correcting Reagan’s second-term hike in capital gains tax rates, Bill Clinton delivered a seven-year echo boom of his own The Democrats now must answer the question: Why have Americans suffered seven years (and counting) of a famine of growth—the slowest recovery from recession in a hundred years? Why are jobs increasing more slowly than the job force is shrinking, with lower growth in wages and larger gaps in income and wealth than we have seen since the Great Depression? Why are productivity growth numbers at sixty-five-year lows, down to less than a quarter of the postwar average, and business starts actually in decline? Above all, if the Democrats have governed well, why are our young people demoralized as perhaps no previous American generation has been? Why is the real youth unemployment rate at 25 to 35 percent, even after shrinking the hours for a “full-time job” to thirty? Why fewer young people than ever look forward to an entrepreneurial future, starting their own businesses and careers?2 The crisis we face in 2016 is a fundamental challenge to capitalism and freedom Will seven years of failure tip America into more of what failed? Or will a vigorous case for a new economics emerge that persuades the average American to renew his faith in freedom? Winning the election requires winning this debate Why, after seven years of the Obama economy, is the average American worker facing a declining standard of living? To Democrats, the answers are simple The global financial crisis arose under a Republican administration and was inherited by President Obama It plunged the nation into a “Great Recession” marked by an oppressively skewed distribution of wealth, with an estimated $5 trillion in bonuses for bankers over seven years and unemployment soaring above 10 percent in the face of a shrinking percentage of adults in the workforce.3 Like most financial crises in history, they argue, this one required active governmental interventions, such as extended unemployment benefits and financial stimuli But an $800 billion W stimulus over three years represented less than percent of the economy As usual when there are widespread bank runs and financial turmoil, the Federal Reserve had to step in as “lender of last resort,” necessarily expanding governmental debts Needed also was renewed regulation of systemic risks But our debt levels remained under control compared with those of other countries and in the context of America’s world-leading gross domestic product (GDP) Under Obama, a record-breaking stock market and a thriving dollar confirmed other indications of able economic management Republicans respond to such claims with baffled incredulity Yet the Democratic claims are mostly true To the extent that the economic debate revolves around the usual indices of GDP growth and financial market revival compared with other countries and markets, the Democrats can hold their own They argue that a more balanced economy fueled by redistributive tax and spending policy can close the growing gap between rich and poor It can redress simmering middle-class anxieties and lower-class stagnation For Republicans to succeed, they first must win the debate Today they are floundering Many try to shirk the economic challenge Intimidated by the media and the academy, they shrink from confronting the most devastating threats to our future Though Republicans have more accomplished and articulate spokesmen than perhaps ever before, they have fallen into a rut of clichés and forlorn incantations that have not been fresh since the Reagan era Although they offer inspirational anecdotes, they miss the larger picture Republicans have been running on tax-cut proposals since the era of Harding and Coolidge Taxrate reductions and simplifications are urgently needed But again, there is no mention of the key problems of a global economy in decline—of the acceptance by economic elites of inevitable and irremediable stagnation We have not faced the fact that the Federal Reserve’s capacity to command growth is a god that has failed GREAT DEBATE In mid-July 2015, for example, FreedomFest, the annual libertarian gathering in Las Vegas, hosted a long-awaited “great debate” pitting Paul Krugman, paladin of liberal economics and the most popular New York Times columnist, against Steve Moore, chief economist at the Heritage Foundation and once the most popular Wall Street Journal writer The debate had everything The New York Times versus the Wall Street Journal, the Ivy League and mainstream media versus Fox News and the Heritage Foundation, academic liberalism versus supply-side think-tank activism, the most prestigious voice of liberal economics versus the tribune of the Koch brothers’ libertarianism—all before an avid crowd of several thousand, pumped up by scores of speakers, just off the Vegas strip The topic of the debate was “How can we restore the American Dream for all?”—a question central to the election of 2016 But for many of the attendees, the immediate thrill was to witness the humiliation of Krugman, famous advocate of spending, taxes, debt, and regulations, and Moore promised to be up to the challenge In nine years and perhaps a dozen debates at FreedomFest, on a wide range of economic topics, the flamboyant supply-sider had never lost A master on stage, pirouetting deftly in argument, juggling numbers with aplomb, dramatically unveiling stark and colorful charts, climaxing with eloquent perorations to the crowd, he was a FreedomFest inspiration By contrast, Krugman was dour and low-key Moore did indeed win the votes of an audience overwhelmingly favorable to his cause But FreedomFest impresario and economist Mark Skousen boldly conducted a further vote to determine which speaker had changed the most minds By that measure, Krugman won If conservatives cannot clearly win economic debates at FreedomFest, how can we win them in the all-important November 2016 plebiscite on the economy? Moore, seeming perplexed and chastened, discussed the debate at a breakfast meeting the next morning He had a series of further charts he wanted to show, but he had little to add to his arguments from the day before Given the enormous ongoing stagnation of the economy, why conservatives and libertarians currently have so much trouble winning debates with liberals on economics? The FreedomFest audience seemed startled by the strength of Krugman’s arguments While Moore compared the dismal sluggishness of the current U.S recovery with the brisk three-year turnaround of the Reagan years, Krugman pointed to larger trends around the world All countries historically have been slow to recover from severe financial crises, particularly when they cannot lower interest rates, already nearly zero when Obama assumed office.4 Reagan benefited from Paul Volcker’s high interest rates, which broke the inflation trend and provided a powerful lever to promote growth Obama followed George Bush, who entered office resolved to enact the conservative agenda, lowering tax rates, disciplining government spending outside the military, and appointing many regulators with deregulatory goals But after a few years of faltering growth marked by a rush of investment into real estate and banking bubbles, the result was a devastating crash in 2007 Government spending, said Krugman, was not to be feared In his vivid chart, countries escaped from the recession after 2008 more or less in proportion to their increases in government spending Second only to dirigiste China, the United States under Obama was one of the best-performing economies in the world But even China was now in a slump Comparing economic growth rates under recent American presidents, Krugman showed that the supposed tax-hiker Bill Clinton was the runaway winner, Reagan second, and Obama third, ahead of both Bushes Krugman conceded that tax policy alone did not explain the comparative data But perhaps activist government is not the main enemy of the American Dream after all According to Krugman, a key test came in the predictions of conservatives and libertarians after the 2008 crash As he pointed out, nearly all expected the huge increases in government spending and debt to foster runaway inflation and interest-rate spikes that would crash the dollar and bring down the U.S economy Many expected the Chinese to bolt from the American currency These predictions still echoed at FreedomFest 2015 and across the floor of exhibits Everywhere doom was predicted for the dollar As Krugman mildly pointed out, after more than six years of Obama, all these predictions were proving wrong The dollar was actually surging in value, the stock market was near all-time highs, and interest rates remained near historic lows At the post-debate breakfast, the consensus seemed to be that with another half hour, Moore would have conclusively prevailed at last He had more charts to show and a devastating statement by Krugman in 2003 calling for Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to engineer a “real estate bubble” (be careful what you ask for) He would have liked to hear Krugman answer that one Perhaps all is well with conservative economics after all Or perhaps something fundamental that is missing can be added 7.“How We Got Here,” chapter in Steve Forbes and Elizabeth Ames,Money: How the Destruction of the Dollar Threatens the Global Economy—and What We Can Do about It (New York, NY: McGraw Hill, 2014), 7–24 8.Lewis, Gold 9.Takashi Kiuchi, The Terra TRC White Paper, originally published February 27, 2004, and subsequently updated These numbers are tabulated every three years by the Bank for International Settlements 10.IDC Financial Insights, Worldwide Banking IT Spending Guide (Farmingham, MA: IDC Corporate USA) 11.“The United States’ Experience with Gold Standard Systems,” chapter in Lewis, Gold, 64–85 CHAPTER 7: WHAT BITCOIN CAN TEACH 1.“Twenty-First Century Capitalism,” chapter 17 in Nathan K Lewis,Gold: The Monetary Polaris (New Berlin, NY: Canyon Maple Publishing, 2013), 271–80 2.“E-Commerce Speeds Up, Hits Record High Share of Retail Sales,”MarketWatch (blog), August 15, 2014, http://blogs.marketwatch.com/capitolreport/2014/08/15/e-commerce-speeds-up-hits-record-high-share-of-retail-sales/ 3.Susan Vranica, “The Secret about On-Line Ad Traffic, One-Third is Bogus,”Wall Street Journal, March 23, 2014, http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304026304579453253860786362 4.Nick Szabo, “Macroscale Replicator,” October 19, 1995 5.Szabo’s blog, Unenumerated, is published online by Forbes.com All the quotations here are from the Unenumerated archive 6.Richard Vigilante, personal communication CHAPTER 8: WHERE “HAYEKS” GO WRONG 1.Ferdinando M Ametrano, “Hayek Money: The Cryptocurrency Price Stability Solution,” Social Science Research Network, revised July 5, 2015, http://ssrn.com/abstract=2425270, 54 Ametrano’s paper was shortlisted as a finalist for the Blockchain Awards, category Visionary Academic Paper, at the Bitcoin Foundation Conference 2014, but it lost to Nakamoto’s original breakthrough paper 2.Ibid., 5–6 3.Ibid., 10 4.Ibid., 20; and Friedrich A Hayek,Denationalization of Money—The Argument Refined, 3rd ed (London: The Institute of Economic Affairs, 1990) 5.Ametrano, “Hayek Money,” 20 6.Ametrano, presentation to the Central Bank of Italy, June 9, 2014 7.George Gilder, Telecosm: The World after Bandwidth Abundance (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2002) 8.Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, “Current FAQs: Informing the Public about the Federal Reserve,” http://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/faq.htm 9.Richard Vigilante, personal communication 10.Hayek, “A Free-Market Monetary System,” lecture at the Gold and Monetary Conference, New Orleans, LA, November 10, 1977 Journal of Libertarian Studies 3, no 11.Satoshi Nakamoto, “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System,” Bitcoin.org, 2008 12.George Sammon, speech to CoinAgenda, Las Vegas, October 2014 CHAPTER 9: THE PIKETTY-TURNER THESIS 1.Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, Belknap Press, 2014) 2.“The Scandal of Money,” chapter 12 in George Gilder, Knowledge and Power: The Information Theory of Capitalism and How It Is Revolutionizing Our World (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2013), 113–23 3.Adair Turner, Between Debt and the Devil: Money, Credit, and Fixing Global Finance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016) 4.Joseph E Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents (New York, NY: W W Norton, 2002); and Paul Krugman, The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008 (New York, NY: W W Norton, 2013) 5.“I don’t particularly feel like defending currency speculation I consider it a necessary evil I think it is better than currency restrictions, but a unified currency would be even better [my italics] When speculators profit, the authorities have failed in some way or another But they don’t like to admit failure; they would rather call for speculators to be from lampposts than to engage in a little bit of soul searching to see what they did wrong.” George Soros, Soros on Soros: Staying Ahead of the Curve (New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, 1995) 6.Turner, Between Debt and the Devil, 19–20 7.Henry George, Progress and Poverty: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth The Remedy (New York, NY: Robert Schalkenbach Foundation, 1979) 8.Turner, Between Debt and the Devil, 73, 176, 180 CHAPTER 10: HYPERTROPHY OF FINANCE 1.Ronald McKinnon, Money in International Exchange: The Convertible Currency System(New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1979), and passim Writing in 1978, just seven years after Nixon rescinded Bretton Woods, the Stanford economist showed that various currency cocktails, such as the International Monetary Fund’s then-heralded “special drawing rights,” could not address any real monetary problems and that commodity baskets (whether “full bodied” or fractionally reserved) would serve no purpose either, despite their cumbersome and costly practicalities He demonstrated convincingly that gold and the dollar are the real alternatives I emerged from this definitive early text with the belief that control of money as a key facet of sovereignty is a treacherous temptation, since “monetary policies” by definition create “noise” in the market They use distortions of currency as a unit of account in order to hedge, spur, subsidize, or channel economic activity in directions favored by the government and banking sectors 2.Commodity HQ, “Top Buffett Quotes on Gold Investing,” Minyanville, October 3, 2012,http://www.minyanville.com/trading-andinvesting/commodities/articles/Warren-Buffett-brka-gold-investing-investing/10/3/2012/id/44617 3.Christopher Shea, “Survey: No Support for Gold Standard among Top Economists,”Ideas Market (blog), Wall Street Journal, January 23, 2012, http://blogs.wsj.com/ideas-market/2012/01/23/survey-no-support-for-gold-standard-among-top-economists/ 4.Milton Friedman and Anna Jacobson Schwartz,A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963) See also “Reflections on a Monetary History,” inThe Indispensable Milton Friedman: Essays on Politics and Economics, Lanny Ebenstein, ed (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2012), 229–32 5.Ben Bernanke and Harold James, “The Gold Standard, Deflation, and Financial Crisis in the Great Depression: An Internationa Comparison,” in Financial Markets and Financial Crises, R Glenn Hubbard, ed (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 33–68 6.Walter B Wriston, The Twilight of Sovereignty: How the Information Revolution Is Transforming Our World (New York, NY: Scribner, 1992; Replica Books, Lord and Taylor, Bridgewater, NJ: 1997), 9, 59–62, and passim Wriston beat Thomas Friedman to all the crucial insights of The World Is Flat by fifteen years 7.Ibid., 8.“OTC Foreign Exchange Turnover by Instrument, Counterparty and Currency in April 2013, ‘Net-Net’ Basis, Total Reported Transactions in All Currencies,” in Bank for International Settlements,Triennial Central Bank Survey: Global Foreign Exchange Market Turnover in 2013 (Switzerland: 2014) 9.Eric Janszen, The Postcatastrophe Economy: Rebuilding America and Avoiding the Next Bubble (New York, NY: Portfolio, 2010), 36ff CHAPTER 11: MAIN STREET PUSHED ASIDE 1.Robert J Samuelson, “Obama’s Economic Choices Leaving His Successor Horrible Hurdles,” Washington Post, September 14, 2015 2.Samuelson, “Remarkably, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s Importance Today Is Unparalleled,” Washington Post, November 16, 2015 3.“[W]e describe the economy as the system by which people accumulate knowledge and knowhow to create packets of physical order, or products, that augment our capacity to accumulate more knowledge and knowhow The finiteness of human beings and of the networks we form limits our ability to accumulate and transmit knowledge and knowhow, leading to spatial accumulations that result in global inequality Silicon Valley’s knowledge and knowhow are not contained in a collection of perennially unemployed experts but rather in the experts working in firms that participate in the design and development of software and hardware.” Cesar Hidalgo, Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2015), 8, 142, and passim 4.Charles Gave et al., Our Brave New World (Hong Kong: Gavekal Research, 2005) offers the definitive exposition of the rising role and dominance of the “platform company” model 5.Nick Bilton, “Is Silicon Valley in Another Tech Bubble?,” Vanity Fair, September 2015 6.Marc A Miles, “The Fed’s Zero Interest Rate Policies Amount to a War on Jobs,”Forbes, June 4, 2013, http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/06/04/the-feds-zero-interest-rate-policies-amount-to-a-war-onjobs/#2715e4857a0b72333a807421 7.David Malpass, “Pro-Growth Tools for the Frozen Fed,” Wall Street Journal, October 6, 2015 CHAPTER 12: WALL STREET SELLS ITS SOUL 1.Mike Konczal, “The Devastating Lifelong Consequences of Student Debt,”New Republic, June 24, 2014 See also Bill Walton, On Common Ground, interview with George Gilder 2.Peter Thiel with Blake Masters,Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future (New York, NY: Crown Business, 2014), 89–90; and George Gilder, Knowledge and Power: The Information Theory of Capitalism and How It Is Revolutionizing Our World (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2013), 29–33 The figures on jobs contribution from venture capital vary from 11 percent to 17 percent, but since the epochs of slavery and socialism all jobs have stemmed from the process of knowledge accumulation and learning, which is the focus of venture investment 3.Charles Gave, “Indexation=Parasitism,” GavekalDragonomics (Hong Kong: Gavekal Research, July 15, 2014), 4.John C Bogle, The Clash of Cultures: Investment vs Speculation (New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons, 2012) Bogle astonishingly sees the culture of investment as index funds and the culture of speculation as actively managed capital 5.Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Mark Spitznagel, blog post, Global Public Square, CNN, October 2012 6.Ibid 7.Robert Laughlin, A Different Universe (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2006) 8.Robert J Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S Standard of Living since the Civil War(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016) 9.Walter Bagehot, Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market (London: Henry S King, 1873), text available at the Library of Economics and Liberty, chapter I, paragraph (http://www.econlib.org/library/Bagehot/bagLom1.html#) CHAPTER 13: A WRINKLE IN TIME 1.Alan Turing, Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals, quoted in George Dyson, Turing’s Cathedral (New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 2012), 252 See also Gregory J Chaitin,Thinking about Gödel and Turing: Essays on Complexity, 1970–2007 (Hackensack, NJ: World Scientific Publishing, 2007) 2.Ludwig von Mises as quoted in Israel M Kirzner, Ludwig von Mises (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2001), 72 3.“Life’s Irreducible Structure,” chapter 14 in Michael Polanyi,Knowing and Being: Essays by Michael Polanyi (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1969), 225–39 4.Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 264 and passim 5.Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, chapter 12, as examined in “The Economics of Hate,” chapter in George Gilder,The Israel Test: Why the World’s Most Besieged State Is a Beacon of Freedom and Hope for the World Economy (New York, NY: Encounter Books, 2012), 63–71 6.Sadi Carnot et al., Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire (New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, 1897 edition), http://books.google.com/books?id=tgdJAAAAIAAJ 7.Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, The Entropy Law and the Economic Process (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971) The new Malthusians make the argument that the ecological costs of capitalism, measurable through the entropy law, nullify net profits and thus render the system “unsustainable.” 8.Cesar Hidalgo’s mostly definitive Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2015) presents Ludwig Boltzmann as an advocate of information as order But information theory treats information as disorder—unexpected rather than predictable results, measured by entropy, which in the theories of both Boltzmann and Shannon is the opposite of order 9.Hubert P Yockey, Information Theory, Evolution, and the Origin of Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 166 10.“The Knowledge Horizon,” chapter 24 in Gilder, Knowledge and Power: The Information Theory of Capitalism and How It Is Revolutionizing Our World (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2013), 257–72 11.Dennis W Sciama, The Unity of the Universe (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1959) 12.Robert P Crease, World in the Balance: The Historic Quest for an Absolute System of Measurement(New York, NY: W W Norton, 2011), 261–64 13.Richard Vigilante, personal communication CHAPTER 14: RESTORING REAL MONEY 1.Friedrich Hayek, “Toward a Free Market Monetary System,” in James A Dorn and Anna J Schwartz, eds.,The Search for Stable Money (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 383 2.Arnold Kling, “Turning Guns to Butter: How Postwar America Brought the Boys Home without Bringing the Economy Down,” Reason, October 12, 2010 Kling’s larger theory is expounded in his definitive Unchecked and Unbalanced: How the Discrepancy between Knowledge and Power Caused the Financial Crisis and Threatens Democracy (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010) See also Robert Higgs, “Regime Uncertainty: Why the Great Depression Lasted So Long and Wh Prosperity Resumed after the War,” Independent Review, no (1997): 561–90 3.Ed Conway, The Summit: Bretton Woods 1944: J M Keynes and the Reshaping of the Global Economy(New York, NY: Pegasus Books, 2015), epilogue 4.Maurice McTigue, “Rolling Back Government, Lessons from New Zealand,” Hillsdale College Imprimis 33, no (April 2004) 5.George Gilder, The Israel Test: Why the World’s Most Besieged State Is a Beacon of Freedom and Hope for the World Economy (New York, NY: Encounter Books, 2012) 6.Steve Forbes with Elizabeth Ames, Reviving America: How Repealing Obamacare, Replacing the Tax Code, and Reforming the Fed will Restore Hope and Prosperity (New York, NY: McGraw Hill Education, 2016), 124 and passim 7.Metcalfe’s Law ordains that the power and value of a network rises roughly by the square of the number of compatible devices linked to it 8.Judy Shelton, Fixing the Dollar Now: Why U.S Money Lost Its Integrity and How We Can Restore It(Washington, DC: Atlas Economic Research Foundation, 2011) 9.Ibid., 40–44 10.Ibid., 48, citing Alan Greenspan, “Can the U.S Return to a Gold Standard?,” Wall Street Journal, September 1, 1981 Index A Access to Energy, 48 Affordable Care Act, Allied Powers, 151 Amazon, 119, 122, 160, 170 America, Americans, 55 economy and, xii, xvii–xviii, 5, 15, 25, 51, 54, 58, 66–68, 88–89, 107–8, 115, 121, 128, 150, 154, 160 GDP and, xiii, 130 See also gross domestic product (GDP) Great Recession and, xii, 55, 57 mobility in, politics in, relationship with China, 14, 39–51, 154 See also China, Chinese standard of living and, xii American Dream, xi, xiv, xvi, xxii, 1–4, 12, 15, 149, 163–64 Ametrano, Ferdinando, 77–85 Andreessen, Marc, 121 Apple, xix, 8, 18, 84, 115, 118–19, 122, 131, 153, 158, 160, 170 Applied Materials, 8, 119 Austin, TX, 188 Austrian school of economics, xx, 80, 85, 93, 102, 140 B Bagehot, Walter, 134–36 Bain & Company, 18 Bank for International Settlements (BIS), 103–4 Bank of Italy, 79 bankruptcy, bankruptcies, 11, 13, 21, 80, 116, 169 banks, bankers, xix, 31, 34, 37, 57, 78, 80–81, 93, 96, 102, 104, 114–15, 117, 134–36, 139, 147, 151, 170, 172 See also central banks; Federal Reserve System in Britain, 88, 134–36 calls for reform of, 91–92, 142 in China, 45, 48 See also China, Chinese currency trading and, 67, 80, 101, 104–10, 128–29, 146 Dodd-Frank Act and, 5–6, 93–94 Great Depression and, 99 Great Recession and, xii–xiii, xvi, 32, 57, 90, 132–33 information technology and, 67 regulations and, 129–32 relationship with the Fed, xxii, 26, 32, 57–58, 123–24, 127, 132, 134 Baotou Steel Rare-Earth Hi-Tech Company, 48 BASF, 158 Beckworth, David, 35 Bernanke, Ben, xvii, 99, 114 Between Debt and the Devil (Turner), 88–89 Bezos, Jeff, 122 Bilton, Nick, 122 bin Laden, Osama, 121 bitcoin, 69–77, 79, 172–73 similarity to gold, 63–67, 72, 74, 78, 85–86, 158, 160–61, 163, 167 Boltzmann, Ludwig, 143, 173–74 bonds, 11, 15, 80, 101, 109, 114, 132, 137, 156, 162–63 Boston Consulting Group, 18 Brazil, Brazilians, 111, 118 Bretton Woods Conference, 2, 49, 151 Bretton Woods standard, 12, 41, 44, 151, 155 Buffett, Warren, 98, 130 Bush, George H W., xvi Bush, George W., xvi C Canadians, capital gains taxes, xi, xxii, 6, 94, 118, 152, 159 Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty), 88 capitalism, xii, xviii, 4, 22, 25, 31, 48, 85, 89, 116–18, 124, 131, 151, 168 alleged failure of, central rule of, 19 in China, 39, 45, 47–51, 69, 154 criticisms of, 56, 88, 93, 141 government harm to, 59, 110, 124 information theory of capitalism, 20, 24, 84 innovation and, 83 learning curves and, 18–19 Piketty and, Capitalism and Freedom (Friedman), 31 Carnot, Sadi, 142 Carter, Jimmy, 11 Cato Institute, 29, 150 central banks, 20–21, 36–38, 48, 79, 94–95, 105, 116, 123, 136, 151, 155–57, 163 digital currencies as threat to, 44–45, 69, 79, 146–47 Keynesianism and, 171 monetarism and, 29, 31, 33–35, 51, 171–72 in New Zealand, 152 profits from seigniorage, 12, 79–80 quantitative easing and, 80, 123, 147 Turner and, 92 Chávez, Hugo, 46 Chicago Mercantile Exchange, 11 China, Chinese, 29, 39–51, 54, 76, 158 American criticisms of, 40–41, 45–47, 154 currency tied to the dollar, xvi, 14 economy of, 33, 38–51, 92, 106, 110, 116, 118, 154 Friedman’s and Gilder’s advice to, 29–30, 33, 42, 154 recovery from Great Recession, xvi Robert Mundell and, 43–44 Christianity, Christians, 39, 43 Cisco, 119, 160 Citibank, 104, 127 Clinton, Bill, xi, xvi, xxi, 51, 101, 115 Clinton, Hillary, xxii, Coates, Ta-Nehisi, Cold War, xi Communications Act of 1934, communism, communists, 23, 30, 39, 42–43, 47, 50–51, 100 Congress, 26, 33 Connally, John, 99 conservatism, conservatives, xi, xvi–xviii, xx, 35–36, 58, 86, 88, 92 in Israel, 153 Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, consumer price index (CPI), 58, 81–82 Cook, Tim, 122 crash of 2007–2008, xi, xvi–xvii, xxi, 36, 55, 89, 105, 132, 135 See also global financial crisis Cuba, 46 currency digital, 67, 69, 72, 78–79, 86 floating, 10, 20, 33–34, 45, 57, 59, 106, 154 gold currency, 159 gold standard and, 9–10, 55, 75 manipulation, 14, 32, 40, 45–46, 49, 51 market-based, 81, 83 trading, 11–14, 34, 45, 54, 66, 89, 96–97, 101–10, 128, 133, 167–68, 170 D debt, 11, 13, 80, 89, 91, 94–95, 117, 129, 142, 152, 156–57 deflation and, 13, 78, 80, 116 inflation and, 116, 156 U.S government, xiii–xiv, xvi, 3, 5–7, 14–15, 24, 32, 62, 93 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, xxii deflation, xix, 13, 78–81, 83, 85, 98–99, 116, 156 Democratic Party, Democrats, xi–xiii, xviii, xxi–xxii, 3–4, Deng Xiaoping, 42, 51 deregulation, xvi, 13, 50, 150–51, 153 Deutsche Bank, 104, 127 digital currencies, 44, 68, 72, 79, 168, 170 See also bitcoin; Hayek money critiques of, 77 and elimination of currency speculation, 67 irreversibility of, 62–63, 70, 72, 74, 93, 157, 161, 163 popularity of, 69–70 Disney, 122 Dodd-Frank Act, 6, 57, 94 dot-com bubble, 13, 116–17, 121, 132 E eBay, 160 Ebbers, Bernie, 13 economies, xviii–xix, 23, 33, 47, 59, 85, 88, 105–6, 110, 116, 142, 156 See also information economy capitalism and, 5, 20 Chinese, 29, 41–44, 118, 154 European, 55–56 evolution from barter to commercial, 141 gold standard, 41, 54, 108 Japanese, 108 New Zealand, 152 secular stagnation and, xiv, 26, 56, 92 See also stagnation UK, 89 U.S., xi–xiii, xv–xvi, 4–5, 11–12, 18, 26, 49–50, 66–68, 89, 95, 107–8, 150, 154, 157, 160 world, xiv, 13, 17, 39, 41, 45, 51, 56, 68–69, 92, 101–2, 104, 109–11, 115, 145, 150, 158–60, 163, 171 Economist, the, 83, 135 elites, xiv, xvii, 2, 26, 75, 91, 104, 106, 121–22, 125, 129 entropy, 20, 24, 62–64, 85, 133, 139, 142–44, 146–47, 154, 163, 168, 172–74 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), xxii, 50, 122 Europe, Europeans, 4, 50, 55–57, 105, 118 European Central Bank, 34, 151 ExxonMobil, 159 F Fair Disclosure, 122 Falun Gong, 39, 43 Fannie Mae, 58, 94, 117, 123 Federal Bureau of Economic Analysis, 33 Federal Communications Commission, xxii, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), 94 Federal Express, Federal Housing Administration, 94 Federal Reserve Board, Fed, xvii, 82, 99, 114, 139, 155, 159, 163 control of money supply, xiii, 24, 32–36, 40, 46, 53, 62, 81, 123–25, 132, 136, 151, 163, 170 creation of, 66 failures of, xvii, xiv, xxii, 12, 15, 24, 26, 36, 48, 61, 123–24, 159 relationship with banks, xxii, 26, 57, 124–25, 128, 132, 136 Fieler, Sean, Financial Services Authority, 88 flash boys, 9, 96, 102, 155 Florida, 55, 94, 117 Forbes, Steve, 13, 78, 157 Fortune 500, 118 Foundation for the Advancement of Monetary Education, 157 Fox News, xiv France, French, 3, 36, 88, 99, 141 Freddie Mac, 58, 94, 117, 123 FreedomFest, xiv–xvi free markets, free-market economics, 3, 24, 33, 73 Free to Choose (Friedman), 31 “free zones,” 42, 48–49, 51 Friedman, Milton, 10, 29–38, 41–43, 54, 56, 58, 69, 72, 76, 92, 98–99, 102, 105, 154 G Galbraith, John Kenneth, 150 Gave, Charles, 24, 131 Gave, Louis, 36 Gavekal, 36, 131 Geithner, Timothy, 46 Genentech, 8, 115 General Electric, 130–31 George, Henry, 90 Germany, 55, 57, 100 Gillespie, Nick, 63 global financial crisis, xii, 41, 54, 56, 105 See also crash of 2007–2008 globalization, 3, 5–6, 14, 102, 115–18, 158 Gödel, Kurt, 64, 107, 138–40, 174 gold, 81, 109, 162–63, 167, 170, 172–73 See also gold standard “barbarous relic,” 10, 98 currency, 159 deflation and, 77–79, 83, 98–99, 109 digital currency and, 44, 62, 65–67, 70, 72–75, 86, 157–58, 160, 163 irreversibility of, 62–63, 65–66, 70, 72–75, 85, 93, 158, 160, 163 price of, 10, 12–14, 22, 53–54, 56, 66, 86, 116, 151, 155 use in Asia, 45, 49, 69, 158–59 Goldman Sachs, 127 gold standard, 156–57 See also gold Bretton Woods and, 2, 41, 44, 151 departure from, 9–14, 41, 44, 97–101, 136 prosperity under, 9, 67, 110–11, 158 support for, 36–37, 43, 55, 62, 67, 69, 98, 157, 162 Google, xix, 103, 122, 153, 160–61, 170, 173 Gordon, Robert, 3, 5–7, 56, 134, 150 Grace Semiconductor, 43 Great Britain, 10–11, 42, 88, 99, 110, 134 See also United Kingdom (UK) Great Depression, xii, 87, 99, 150–51 Great Recession, xii, xvi, 36, 53, 55, 90–91, 132 Greece, Greenspan, Alan, 116, 162–63 gross domestic expenditures (GDE), 32–33 gross domestic product (GDP), xiii, xvii, 2, 9, 12, 32–33, 49, 50, 58, 66, 81, 89, 91, 95, 103, 106, 108, 113, 121, 130, 150, 152, 168 H Hamas, 46 Hastings, Reed, 122 Hayek, Friedrich, xx, 78–79, 83, 102 Hayek money, 79–83, 85 “hayeks.” See Hayek money hedge funds, 4, 11, 102, 104, 129, 170 Heritage Foundation, xiv Hezbollah, 46 high-powered money, 32, 36, 53 Holdren, John, Homo economicus, xvii–xx Hong Kong, 30, 36, 42, 49, 106 Huawei, 158 hypertrophy of finance, 13, 57, 87–89, 95, 97–111, 125, 132, 167–68, 170–71 I Iceland, 94, 117 Iger, Robert, 122 Immelt, Jeffrey, 130 income taxes, 91, 152 index funds, 131, 171 India, 45, 106, 118, 158 Indonesia, 110 Industrial Revolution, xx, 100, 158 second industrial revolution, inequality, 3–6, 11, 23, 43, 53, 59, 87–92, 95–96, 106, 125 inflation, xi, 36–37, 62, 78–80, 85, 92, 138, 142, 146–47, 149, 153, 155–57, 159, 162 China and, 29–30 correctives to, 81–82, 92, 152, 157 debtors and, 80, 116 departure from gold standard and, 11 gold and, 22, 111–12, 158 Japan and, 108 monetarism and, 30, 33, 35, 53, 61, 79 recovery from Great Recession and, xvi, 56, 58 Volcker and, xv, 110 information age, 106 information economy, 1, 9, 93, 100, 149, 172 information theory, xviii, 20, 24, 31, 59, 62, 64, 71–72, 77, 84, 93, 95, 133, 138, 140, 143–44, 163, 168–69, 171, 174 initial public offerings (IPOs), 49–50, 115, 119–22, 154 injustice, 25–26 Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), 88–89 Intel, 8, 119, 121, 169 interest rates, 19–20, 22, 35, 66, 109 Fed control of, 15, 24, 80, 114, 123, 132 financial recoveries and, xv high rates, xi, xv–xvi immorality of, 141–42 index of time, 14, 21, 24, 61, 113, 124–25, 141–42, 170 instability of, 11, 13–14, 155 low rates, xvii, 155 zero interest rates, 15, 24, 26, 54, 61, 92–94, 108, 110, 114, 123–25, 132, 142 Internal Revenue Service, International System of Units (SI), 144–46 Internet, the, xviii, 13, 50, 53, 63–64, 73, 78, 80–81, 103, 113, 139, 144, 153, 170, 174 China and, 46–48 digital currencies and, 44, 67, 69–70, 72, 158–61, 163, 172 economy of, 13, 160–61 “internet of things,” 70 Internet Protocols, 8, 71 regulation of, xxii, software stack, xxi, 170 spam, 70 iPhones, 18, 84, 153 Iran, 46 Ireland, 55, 57 Islam, 47, 141 Ivy League, xiv, 26 J Jackson Hole, WY, xvii Janszen, Eric, 107 Japan, 30, 36, 40, 88, 94, 99, 108 Jiang Mianheng, 43 Jiang Zemin, 42–43, 48–49, 51 JPMorgan Chase, 127 K Kahneman, Daniel, xx Keynes, John Maynard, 10, 49, 98 Keynesians, Keynesianism, xviii, xx, 34, 59, 147, 150, 154, 171–72 Kling, Arnold, 150 knowledge, xvii, 17, 93, 129, 131 learning and, source of growth, 9, 14 suppression of, 15 wealth as knowledge, 17–18, 23–24, 31, 64, 100, 106, 108, 117, 124, 132–34, 140, 161, 163, 167–69, 172 Knowledge and Power (Gilder), 17 Koch brothers, xiv Krugman, Paul, xiv–xvii, 35, 54–56, 89, 98–99, 150 Kurzweil, Ray, 18, 169 Kwarteng, Kwasi, 10, 66 L Las Vegas, NV, xiv Laughlin, Robert, 133–34 learning, 127, 129 crucial to knowledge and wealth, 1, 9, 17–18, 23, 32, 64, 108, 124, 145, 163, 169 source of growth, 17, 22, 24, 26, 84–85, 100, 108, 117, 131, 134, 138, 140, 158, 169, 172 suppression of, 21, 24, 62, 67, 128–29, 131, 133, 144, 155 learning curves, xix, 18–19, 22, 37, 63, 75, 84–85, 95, 130, 155–56, 160–61, 169 Left, the, xx, 4, 86–87, 89 Lehrman, Lewis, 37 Lenovo, 158 libertarians, xiv–xvii, 30–31, 51, 53, 81 Likud Party, 153 Linear Technology, 119 Lipsky, Seth, 13 London, 8, 105, 134–35 M Mach, Ernst, 144 Main Street, xvii, xxii, 56, 87, 113–25, 127–29, 132, 149, 164, 170–71 Malpass, David, 58 Malthusianism, 3–4 Maoism, 30 Mao Zedong, 42, 47, 154 Marxism, Marxists, xviii, 3–4, Mauldin, John, 40 McAdam, Lowell, 122 McKinnon, Ronald, 31, 97 McTigue, Maurice, 152 Medicaid, 15, 123 Medicare, 15 mergers and acquisitions (M&As), 121 Microsoft, 8, 119–20, 122, 160 middle class, the, 4, 118 anxieties in, xiii Chinese members of, 116 economic well-being of, xxii, 115, 120 harmed by economic policies, xxii, 15, 58–59, 66, 91–92, 95, 113–14, 119–20, 128 Mises, Ludwig von, xx, 102, 139–40 monetarism, monetarists Chinese rejection of, 38, 43–44, 51, 154 Milton Friedman and, 29, 32 tenets of theory, 32–38, 59, 92, 156, 171–72 versus information theory of money, 31, 61, 155 Monetary History of the United States (Friedman), 99 money connection to time, 9, 14, 17, 21–24, 61–68, 70–72, 74, 85–86, 93–96, 113, 134, 137–47, 150, 154–55, 157–58, 160–61, 163, 170–73 as measuring stick, 9, 21, 24, 49, 59, 63–64, 67, 73, 75, 78, 96, 108–9, 144–46, 157, 160, 173 money supply, 20, 29–37, 58, 80, 92–93, 98–99, 158 monopoly money, xxii, 1, 34, 53, 58, 81, 92, 124, 149, 155, 157, 163–64, 167, 170–72 Moore, Gordon, 169 Moore, Steve, xiv–xv, xvii Moore’s Law, 18, 64, 160, 169 Morgan Stanley, 127 Mundell, Robert, 43–44, 51 Mundell International University of Entrepreneurship, 44 mutual funds, 130 N Nadella, Satya, 122 NASDAQ exchange, 49, 121 National Bureau of Economic Research, 56 National Interstate and Defense Highways Act, xxii National Review, 35 Netflix, 122 Netscape, 115 Nevada, 55 New Deal, 87 New Hampshire, 2, 41 Newton, Isaac, xx, 63, 136 New York, NY, 74, 95 New York Times, xiv, 54, 122 New Zealand, 152–53 Nixon, Richard, 9–10, 12, 41, 98–99 Nobel Prize, xx, 29, 31, 36, 43, 89, 133, 150 Nordhaus, William, 19 North America, 118 North Dakota, 55 North Korea, 46 O Obama, Barack, xi–xii, xv–xvi, xxi, economy under, xi–xiii, xvi presidential administration of, 3, 40, 99 Obamacare, Office of Price Administration, 150 oil, 11–12, 81, 83, 116, 158, 168 One Percent, xvii, Oracle, 119 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 82 P Page, Larry, 122 Palantir, 121 Palo Alto, CA, 118, 171 Parks, Larry, 157 People’s Bank of China, 48 People’s Liberation Army, 42 Piketty, Thomas, 3–6, 9, 15, 19, 87–96, 110, 141–42, 150 polymerase chain reaction (PCR), xxi, Ponnuru, Ramesh, 35 Popper, Karl, 89, 169 Popular Economics (Tamny), 11 Portugal, 55 principal trading funds (PTFs), 102, 104 producer price index (PPI), 81 Progress and Poverty (George), 90 Q Qualcomm, 115, 119, 160 quantitative easing, 14, 54, 80, 114, 123, 147, 157 R Rand, Ayn, xviii, 137 Reagan, Ronald, xi, xiv–xvii, 12, 40–41, 51, 115 real estate, xvi–xvii, 11, 13, 26, 37, 55, 66, 88, 90, 92–95, 117, 168, 173 Reason, 63 regulation, xiii–xiv, xvi, xix, xxii, 6, 26, 29, 31, 35, 39, 50, 57, 80, 88, 91, 93–94, 96, 122, 128, 130, 151, 154, 167 Reich, Robert, xxi Republican Party, Republicans, xii–xiv, xvii, 25, 35, 150 Right, the, 40, 89 Robinson, Arthur, 48 Romer, Christina, 99–100 Rueff, Jacques, 36–37 S Samsung, 158 Samuelson, Paul, 10, 150 Sanders, Bernie, xxii San Francisco, CA, 95 Sarbanes-Oxley, 49, 122 Satoshi Nakamoto, 64, 72–73, 172 Schacht, Hjalmar, 110 Schiff, Peter, 53 Schumpeter, Joseph, 83 science of information, 17 second industrial revolution, second law of thermodynamics, 62, 142 secular stagnation, 3, 26, 56, 89, 91–92, 150–51 See also stagnation seigniorage, 12, 34, 67, 80 Shanghai, 30, 42–43, 48 Shannon, Claude, 64, 133, 138–40, 143, 168, 173–74 Shell, 158–59 Shelton, Judy, 162–63 Shelton bonds, 163 Silicon Valley, xvii, xxii, 18, 50, 70, 87, 115, 117–20, 122–25, 127–29, 149, 164, 169, 171 Singapore, 106 Skousen, Mark, xv, 32–33 Smith, Adam, xx socialism, socialists, xviii, 5, 20, 25, 31, 150, 152–53 Social Security, 15, 55 Solyndra, 123 Sony, 158 Soros, George, 89, 96–97, 110 South China Sea, 40 Southwest Airlines, Soviet Union, 42, 156 See also Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) Spain, 55, 57, 94, 117 Spratly Islands, 40 stagnation, xiii–xv, 31, 84, 87, 91, 96, 117, 129, 134, 149, 152, 162, 164 See also secular stagnation Stiglitz, Joseph, 89 stimulus, xiii, xviii, 14, 150, 171 Stockman, David, 40, 48, 50 Stone Age, 19, 169 Summers, Lawrence “Larry,” 3, 7, 56, 114, 134, 150 Sun Microsystems, 119 Swanson’s Law, 18 Sweden, Swedes, 5, 36 Szabo, Nick, 64, 72–76, 160 T Taiwan, Taiwanese, 30, 46–48, 106 Tamny, John, 11 tax cuts, xiv, 12, 151, 153 Taylor, John, 35 Taylor Rule, 35 technology, xi, xviii–xix, xxi–xxii, 2–3, 5–9, 12–13, 19, 41, 43, 45, 56–58, 63–67, 70, 83, 90, 92, 100, 143, 158, 171 Tel Aviv, 118 Texas, 55, 99 Thailand, 110 Thiel, Peter, xi, 14, 56 third world, the, 6, 118, 152 Tiananmen Square, 29, 43 Troubled Asset Relief Program, 55 Trump, Donald, 40, 113 Turing, Alan, 64, 138, 168, 174 Turing machine, 138 Turner, Adair, 88–96, 110 Turner-Piketty thesis, 93, 96 Tversky, Amos, xx Twilight of Sovereignty (Wriston), 101 U UBS, 127 unemployment rates, xi–xiii, 35, 55, 100, 150, 152 Unenumerated, 73 “unicorns,” 50, 87, 119–23, 171 Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), 42 See also Soviet Union United Kingdom (UK), 87–89, 104 See also Great Britain United Nations, 82, 98 United States, 7, 41, 159 banks in the, 104–5 economy of the, 13, 15, 36, 49–50, 55, 68, 88, 108, 118, 153–54, 159 entitlement liabilities in the, gold standard and, 41, 68, 100, 158 interest rates in, 10–11 relationship with China, 45–50 upward mobility in the, U.S Department of Commerce, 81 U.S Department of Labor, 81–82 U.S Department of State, 46 U.S Department of the Treasury, 3, 12, 35, 46, 56–57, 80, 124, 159, 162, 170, 172 U.S Environmental Protection Agency, xxii, 50, 122 U.S Food and Drug Administration, 50 U.S Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), 50, 120, 129–31 usury, 141 V Vanity Fair, 122 velocity of money, 20, 32, 34–37, 72, 74–76, 133, 147 venture capitalism, capitalists, 50, 56, 92, 118–23, 130–31, 158, 171 Verizon, 122 Vigilante, Richard, 75, 145 Volcker, Paul, xv, 12, 97, 110 von Neumann, John, 64, 174 W Wall Street, 48, 120, 123, 170 captured by Washington, xxii, 32, 87, 125, 127–28, 170–71 debauch of, xvii, 26, 56, 128, 132, 149 need to work with Main Street, xxii, 115, 117–19, 164, 170–71 Wall Street Journal, xiv, 98, 162 War and Gold, 10 War Labor Board, 150 War Production Board, 150 Warren, Elizabeth, xxi Washington, D.C capture of Wall Street, xvii, xxii, 32, 87, 127, 171 monetary policy of, 45, 54, 57 Wealth and Poverty (Gilder), 30 Wen Jiabao, 46 Whitebox Advisors, 75 White House, 26, 99–100 Wisconsin, 153 World Bank, 82 World Technological Frontier, World War I, 4, 98 World War II, 41, 95, 113, 150 Wright, Jeremiah, Wriston, Walter, 100–1, 106–7 Y Yellen, Janet, 48, 157 Yockey, Hubert, 143 Z Zhou Xiaochuan, 48–49, 51 Zuckerberg, Mark, 121 ... deemed just another of the cascading effects of the destruction of the information content of money as a metric The most salient immediate result was the abrupt end of two centuries of nearly stable... injustice It affects the distribution of wealth, the exercise of power, the management of learning, and the administration of law This injustice dwarfs all the other items in the ledger of national decline—from... oday the established theories of top-down money face serious challenges from digital alternatives on the Internet and from the perennial appeal of the case for gold Both of these forms of money offer