This must-read classic on currency and credit covers the three areas of key interest -- the nature of money, the value of money, and money and banking. Economist and philosopher Ludwig von Mises presents his "Theory of Money and Credit" by first looking at the nature and value of money, why there is a demand for money, and how it is used as currency. He goes on to explain the purchasing power of money and how it determines economic and monetary policy, often in a way that results in financial melt-downs. Never in modern history has there been a greater need for this book and others like it. All of its ideas and principles are coming true right before our eyes in today's economy and its problems.

2009 Reprint of original 1956 edition. Paperback, 114pp. Mises wrote and lectured extensively on behalf of classical liberalism and is seen as one of the leaders of the Austrian School of economics. Mises introduced praxeology as a more general conceptual foundation of the social sciences and established that economic laws were only arrived at through the means of methodological individualism firmly rejecting positivism and materialism as a foundation for the social sciences. Many of his works were on two related economic themes:1. Monetary economics and inflation; 2. The differences between government controlled economies and free trade.

We can't sit under Mises at his famous Vienna private seminar. We can't go back in time and attend his New York seminar, or follow him to his speaking engagements that he held in the 50s and 60s.But thanks to this second volume in a thrilling series (here is volume one), we do have access to what he said. He is warm, funny, passionate, and learned. This book provides a candid look at the man and his teaching style. It demonstrates his dazzling command over the material, and teaches in a breezier way than his treatises.This volume contains nine lectures delivered over one week, from June 23, to July 3, 1952, at the San Francisco Public Library. Mises was at his prime as a teacher and lecturer. He shares a lifetime of learning on topics that were (and remain) central to American public life.As the title indicates, his main focus is on Marxism. He discusses Marx and his place in the history of ideas, the destruction wrought by his dangerous ideology, the manner in which his followers have covered up his errors, and how the Marxists themselves have worked for so long to save Marxism from itself. He discusses Marxist claims about history and refutes the smear of the industrial revolution.The approach is systematic but casual. So the reader encounters wonderful insights in the form of short asides. For example: "The worst thing that can happen to a socialist is to have his country ruled by socialists who are not his friends."As a lecturer, he is steady and relentless. The reader can nearly "hear" him speaking through the prose. And there are times when Mises reveals a level of rhetorical passion that you would never encounter in print. That's because what is printed here are not pre-prepared lectures in the sense that they were written out. They were transcribed by Bettina Bien Greaves from what he actually said.Thus can we hear this passage:It is not true, as Marx said, that the improvements in technology are available only to the exploiters and that the masses are living in a state much worse than on the eve of the Industrial Revolution. Everything the Marxists say about exploitation is absolutely wrong! Lies! In fact, capitalism made it possible for many persons to survive who wouldn't have otherwise.Some readers of Mises's larger works have said that while his rigor is dazzling, the man himself can seem remote. Whether or not you agree with this observation, Mises comes across in these lectures as brilliant but very warm and charming in an old world sense.This approach is particularly fruitful in the last four of the lectures, which cover topics such as savings, interest, inflation, profit and loss, and the place of foreign investment. The lecture on interest rates, for example, must surely rank as one of the best explanations of this complicated topic. He recounts the history of the attempt to suppress interest rates, from the ancient world to the modern period. He explains why this cannot work because interest is merely the objective sign of a phenomenon that is integral to human action. As he moves on to money, Mises reveals himself to be tougher on the issue of fiduciary media than he was when he wrote his 1912 book The Theory of Money and Credit.In response to a question Mises says: "In the future no additional banknotes should be issued, no additional credit should be entered on a bank subject to check, unless there is 100 percent coverage in money."Also not to be missed is Mises's wry defense of "money cranks": at least they were only more consistent than the advocates of Keynesian and monetarism.Mises was clearly pressed for time, so he had to be at once thorough and move quickly through the material. It's still not "light reading" by the normal standards, but for people who want to see a great mind at work, this has a wonderful element of spontaneity about it that attracts and teaches at the same time.

By one of the preeminent theorists of the Austrian school of economics, "The Theory of Money and Credit" represents a major contribution to the science of economics. Von Mises examines the value of money, how it can be measured, and the effects of credit and monetary policy at the nation-state level. Von Mises is well known for advocating a return to the gold standard as a way to eliminate the growth and recession cycles. Given the current economic crises, many people who want a better understanding of economic theory are turning back to this classic work in order to become informed on the role of monetary and credit policy.

Stimulus or laissez-faire? That's the essential debate about what to about financial crisis in our time. It was the same in the 1930s.In this world before and after the Great Depression, there was a lone voice for sanity and freedom: Ludwig von Mises. He speaks in The Causes of the Economic Crisis, a collection of newly in print essays by Mises that have been very hard to come by, and are published for the first time in this format.Here we have the evidence that the master economist foresaw and warned against the breakdown of the German mark, as well as the market crash of 1929 and the depression that followed.He presents his business cycle theory in its most elaborate form, applies it to the prevailing conditions, and discusses the policies that governments undertake that make recessions worse. He recommends a path for monetary reform that would eliminate business cycles and provide the basis for a sustainable prosperity.In foreseeing the interwar economic breakdown, Mises was nearly alone among his contemporaries. In 1923, he warned that central banks will not "stabilize" money; they will distort credit markets and generate booms and busts. In 1928, he departed dramatically from the judgment of his contemporaries and sounded an alarm: "every boom must one day come to an end."Then after the Great Depression hit, he wrote again in 1931. His essay was called: "The Causes of the Economic Crisis." And the essays kept coming, in 1933 and 1946, each explaining that the business cycle results from central-bank generated loose money and cheap credit, and that the cycle can only be made worse by intervention.Credit expansion cannot increase the supply of real goods. It merely brings about a rearrangement. It diverts capital investment away from the course prescribed by the state of economic wealth and market conditions. It causes production to pursue paths which it would not follow unless the economy were to acquire an increase in material goods. As a result, the upswing lacks a solid base. It is not real prosperity. It is illusory prosperity. It did not develop from an increase in economic wealth. Rather, it arose because the credit expansion created the illusion of such an increase. Sooner or later it must become apparent that this economic situation is built on sand.Did the world listen? The German-speaking world knew his essays well, and he was considered a prophet, until the Nazis came to power and wiped out his legacy. In England, his student F.A. Hayek made the Austrian theory a presence in academic life.In the popular mind, the media, and politics, however, it was Keynes who held sway, with his claim that the depression was the fault of the market, and that it can only be solved through government planning.Just at the time he wanted to be fighting, Mises had to leave Austria, forced out by political events and the rising of the Nazis. He wrote from Geneva, his writings accessible to too few people. They were never translated into English until after his death. Even then, they were not circulated widely.The sad result is that Mises is not given the credit he deserves for having warned about the coming depression, and having seen the solution. His writings were prolific and profound, but they were swallowed up in the rise of the total state and total war.But today, we hear him speak again in this book.Bettina B. Greaves did the translations. It is her view that in that in the essays, Mises provides the clearest explanation of the Great Depression ever written. Indeed, he is crystal clear: precise, patient, and thorough. It makes for a gripping read, especially given that we face many of the same problems today.This book refutes the socialists and Keynesian, as well as anyone who believes that the printing press can provide a way out of trouble. Mises shows who was responsible for driving the world into economic calamity. It was the inevitable effects of the government's monopoly over money and banking.

This new edition (completely reset) of Planned Chaos features a new introduction by Chris Westley of Jacksonville State University. The introduction brings this classic up to date - not that it has ever fallen out of date or ever will.The title comes from Mises's description of the reality of central planning and socialism, whether of the national variety (Nazism) or the international variety (communism). Rather than create an orderly society, the attempt to central plan has precisely the opposite effect. By short-circuiting the price mechanism and forcing people into economic lives contrary to their own chosing, central planning destroys the capital base and creates economic randomness that eventually ends in killing prosperity.This important work was written decades after Mises's original essay on economic calculation and includes the broadest and boldest attack on all forms of state control.

2012 Reprint of 1962 Edition. Exact facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. If Mises has an unheralded masterpiece, "The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science" is it. There are two senses in which this book is indeed ultimate: it deals with the very core of economics as a science, and it is the last book that he wrote. For that reason, it is a real milestone in the history of his work. In this volume, Mises argued that economics is a science because human action is a natural order of life and that it is the actions of humans that determine markets and capital decisions. Since Mises believed these links could be proven scientifically, he concluded that economics, with its basis on that human action, is indeed a science in its own right and not an ideology or a metaphysical doctrine.

The Free Market and Its Enemies is a classic work of economic theory, written by one of the most influential economists of the 20th century. Ludwig von Mises argues that the free market is the only system that can effectively allocate resources and create prosperity, and he exposes the fallacies of socialism and other rival economic systems. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

2014 Reprint of Original 1960 Edition. Exact facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. "Epistemological Problems" is a milestone in Ludwig von Mises' groundbreaking development of praxeology. This important work contains foundational thoughts on his theory of human action, or "logic of action," which forms the "distinctive methodology of the Austrian School... Mises was not only the major architect and elaborator of this methodology, but also the economist who most fully and successfully applied it to the construction of economic theory" (Rothbard). Mises headed the Austrian School, which "celebrates freedom and the individual, rather than determinism and the collective... and explicitly rejects the idea that the natural sciences provide the proper model for economic analysis" (Shenoy et al., Towards a Theoretical Framework, 19, 19n). In establishing the school's epistemological foundations, Mises first began working on the subject in a series of articles published in the 1920s. He "collected and published them in his seminal philosophical and methodological work, "Grundprobleme der Nationalökonimie" in 1933," which was not translated into English until this edition. Here Mises presents "economics from the point of view of the philosophy of science, and the actual economic analysis of value and inconvertible capital." The first chapter of the book, "The Task and Scope of the Science of Human Action," evolved as the core of the system "Mises had been working on for years... He argued that economic laws were true a priori, on a par with the laws of logic and mathematics... [This] remained one of his most controversial tenets," in that it frames economic theory as addressing "acts of the real world, such as the one that human beings make choices. But the facts of this sort cannot be observed... Economics is not an empirical science in this sense, but it is a science nevertheless." To Mises "the epistemology of economics was not just an idle pastime for ivory tower intellectuals. It was of direct practical relevance." "Epistemological Problems" remains fundamental in establishing the "significance of economic calculation for the architecture of economic science." It is his most powerful and comprehensive elaboration of the span of economic science, arguing that errors of socialism, institutional racism, nationalism and other aspects of human society can be seen as a revolt against the distinctive rationality of economic logic and science. A work that "has lost nothing of its importance... Epistemological Problems contains a considerable amount of discussion that cannot be found in any other of his writings... in particular his critical discussion of the works of those thinkers to whom he felt the greatest intellectual affinity and intellectual debt: Carl Menger, Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk and Max Weber" (Hülsmann, Introduction, 2002 edition, 670-671, 948, xxix, lv).

These are difficult times for those who love freedom. But they are nothing like what Mises faced during his life. He prevailed, and his Memoirs explain how. "How one carries on in the face of unavoidable catastrophe is a matter of temperament," wrote Ludwig von Mises in his private memoir of his life in Europe. It was true in his time and it is true in ours. This new translation and edition of Mises's moving account of his life, published by the Mises Institute, provides not only deeply fascinating personal history; it also functions as a moral and spiritual guide for any lover of liberty during times of despotism. It was written during and after his immigration to the United States in 1940. Despite being driven from his home, seeing his country taken over by a foreign dictator, having his books burned and his papers stolen, and finally pushed out of the sanctuary he had for six years, he never lost determination and never doubted the truth of liberty. "Again and again I had met with situations from which rational deliberation found no means of escape; but then the unexpected intervened, and with it came salvation. I would not lose courage even now. I wanted to do everything an economist could do. I would not tire in saying what I knew to be true." Mises wrote his memoirs and then promptly locked up the manuscript. He had good reason. Many of the politicians and intellectuals he exposed were still alive. Much of the jaw-dropping detail had never been revealed. He figured it would have to wait until after his death. He was 59-years old, and a political exile, first from Vienna (fleeing the Nazi takeover) and then from Geneva. He had been camped out in Switzerland for six years, teaching and writing the masterpiece that would later become Human Action. But he had been warned that some people wanted him turned in. He had to find a new home. Leaving Geneva, he and his wife Margit drove across France, just in front of the advancing German army. They barely made it out. There was no professorship waiting for him in the United States. He had lost everything. His library had been burned. His papers were missing. He had no money. He would have to start over, writing and speaking in a new language. Making this transition would require all his moral courage. As he looked back over his life, he wrote the most moving, personal work ever to bear his name. It is one of the most inspiring books ever written by an intellectual and it happens to be by one of the greatest intellectuals of all time. There is anger in this book but also inspiration. What strikes the reader is how Mises never lost his focus on the battle of ideas. The enemies in this book are bad ideas. The answer, however, is not war or revolution or a new form of rule. For him, the path to liberty is through the right ideas. In this sense, this book is incredibly high minded, revealing his nobility and intellectual commitments to truth. Mises writes about his time as an economic advisor to Austrian officials; his battles against Bolshevism and the inflationism; and his attempts to prevent New Deal-like policies in Europe. He talks about his teaching and his seminar. He discusses corrupt politicians and central bankers, and all the shills for statism in academia and the media. He had almost singlehandedly stopped a Bolshevik takeover, and stopped Austrian from following Germany into the inflationist abyss. And here he even writes of his one regret that he compromised more than he should have! The vault that held Mises's manuscript wasn't opened until after his death. He died in 1973. A German translation appeared. F.A. Hayek wrote the introduction. Four years ago, we commission a new translation that preserves his idiom and preci