Hi Don - yes, I did check out Rothbard's The Mystery of Banking and some others by Rothbard, but started reading Money and Banking: The American Experience, published by George Mason University Press, and got enthralled by a chapter written by Ronald W. Batchelder and David Glasner, "Debt, Deflation, the Great Depression and the Gold Standard," and then through them to The Gold Standard by Ralph G. Hawtrey (1933). I need to understand how the gold standard was supposed to work in theory, and how it worked in actuality, before I read anything else about that time frame. Hawtrey is good.
I discovered that I could have a 6 mb website hosted by GMU because I am a student, and there is a lab with all the various programs on the computers, plus a lab in the history department. I've signed up for a class for publishing history via new media, and workshops using a lot of different programs, including DreamWeaver. Also downloaded a copy of DreamWeaver.
Right now I am drawing up a list of concepts I want to define via hyperlinks, and working on definitions:
What is a depression? . . . recession? . . . speculation? . . . a bubble? . . . the gold standard? . . . the gold exchange standard? . . . sterilization? . . . money? . . . fractional reserve banking . . .? . . . bank panics?
The Federal Reserve? First Bank of the United States? Second Bank of the United States? Bimetalism? Arbitrage? Credit? Mortgages? Consumer credit? Callable loans? Hot money? High powered money?
Panic of 1837. Panic of 1857. Panic of 1873. Panic of 1893. Panic of 1907. [Note the apparent symmetry - this may explain why some economists started believing in waves, a complete waste of time as far as I am concerned, similar to astrology.]
Tariffs. Smoot-Hawley tariff - why, and what effect. Speculations and swindles - not the same thing. Florida land bubble. Buying on margin. Where does credit come from? How does credit become money?
Monetarism. Other economic schools - classical, neoclassical, Keynsian, Austrian. Communism. Third International. Labor movement. Strikes. Populism.
Anyway, I'll start like that and keep adding.
Everyone remains vague about the events of 1930, which I find encouraging. They are very good up to about the time of the Great Crash, and then pick back up in 1931, when the banks start failing. That gives me something to contribute. Some like to remain in their comfortable offices and theorize, some like to dig in dusty archives searching for facts. I love the sweet smell of dusty old paper. :) |
