Well-Written, Well-Timed: The Dollar Meltdown

by John Rubino

Recently by Charles Goyette: The Gnomes of Washington

Charles Goyette is a veteran radio guy, a libertarian who supported Ron Paul before it was fashionable. Now he’s written his first book, The Dollar Meltdown, and from beginning to end it’s a pleasant surprise. Goyette writes as smoothly as he speaks and his perspective is unapologetically libertarian. So he gets it right on both content and delivery.

As you’d expect with a talk show host, he’s comfortable with polemics:

America’s national government has moved way beyond a political spoils system. A spoils system leaves the host alive so that a politician’s occasional ne’er-do-well brother-in-law can be put on the payroll. America has become a piñata: everybody gets a crack at it. Presidents and other elected officials pass the big stick around as a reward to those who help keep them in charge of the piñata party. The American media plays the role of the party’s mariachi band, keeping festive spirits high. And the people in their demographic and interest groups all line up to take a whack at the goodies. America has become a piñata.

But he also does a good job of laying out the substantive argument for a currency crisis. Readers, for instance, find out that with the explosion of government borrowing and unfunded liabilities, U.S. debt now totals $1.3 million per family of four. And that the Fed is in reality a cabal of global banks that tricked the U.S. into giving it control of the money supply back in 1913. The chapters covering the history and function of money introduce concepts like fractional reserve banking and recount some of the past episodes of hyperinflation. And the quotes Goyette uses to illustrate his points are well-chosen, ranging from Austrian economists to Fed governors. This one from Ludwig von Mises introduces the “crack-up boom”:

They become suddenly aware of the fact that inflation is a deliberate policy and will go on endlessly. A breakdown occurs. The crack-up boom appears. Everybody is anxious to swap his money against “real” goods, no matter whether he needs them or not, no matter how much money he has to pay for them. Within a very short time, within a few weeks or even days, the things which were used as money are no longer used as media of exchange. They become scrap paper. Nobody wants to give away anything against them.

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