http://mises.org/podcasts/case-100-percent-gold-dollarMurray Rothbard's classic short book on money, first published in 1962 and carrying his 1991 preface. Rothbard argues that the "dollar" was never a thing in itself but a name for a weight of gold, and that the long drift from weight to name—beginning with the government monopoly of the mint and ending in 1933—was a chain of interventions rather than a single wicked act. He breaks with fellow gold advocates by holding that fractional-reserve banking is not merely unstable but fraudulent: a bank note is a warehouse receipt, and issuing more receipts than gold is legalized counterfeiting. The remedy is a 100 percent gold dollar. Rothbard answers the standard objections, places the program in the Jeffersonian and Jacksonian tradition, and maps the transition.enMurray N. RothbardSerialnohttps://cdn.mises.org/images/2026-08/Case-for-100-Percent-Gold-Dollar_Rothbard_2400.jpghttp://mises.orgMises Institutemisesmedia@gmail.comhttp://mises.org/podcasts/case-100-percent-gold-dollar/prefaceMurray N. RothbardWed, 05 Aug 2026 11:11:21 -0500145706Writing in 1991, Rothbard sets the essay in its original context: Bretton Woods as an international dollar standard masquerading as a gold standard. He contrasts it with the classical pre-1914 system, in which every currency was a defined weight of gold redeemable on demand, then recounts how the breakdowns of 1968 and 1971 tested Misesian predictions against an Establishment certain that gold would fall to $6 an ounce.

]]>noGold Standard, History of the Austrian School of Economics, Money and Banking1http://mises.org/podcasts/case-100-percent-gold-dollar/money-and-freedomMurray N. RothbardWed, 05 Aug 2026 11:20:25 -0500145707Rothbard declines both the fashionable dismissal of gold and the restorationist call to return to the pre-1933 standard, which he judges too far decayed to have lasted. He then states his ethical premise plainly: the free market, extended to money itself. Against the claim that money is whatever government says it is, he warns that command of the unit of account is command of the whole society.

]]>noGold Standard, Money and Banking, Political Theory2http://mises.org/podcasts/case-100-percent-gold-dollar/dollar-independent-name-or-unit-weightMurray N. RothbardWed, 05 Aug 2026 11:23:16 -0500145708The conceptual core of the essay. Rothbard answers the charge that gold advocates want government to fix a price by rejecting its premise—“dollar” was never an independent entity but a name for a weight of gold. He shows how money is properly obtained only through production, and argues that a bare name could never have arisen as money on a free market.

]]>noGold Standard, Money and Banking, Value and Exchange3http://mises.org/podcasts/case-100-percent-gold-dollar/decline-weight-name-monopolizing-mintMurray N. RothbardWed, 05 Aug 2026 11:34:23 -0500145709Rothbard argues that 1931–33 was the last step in a long process rather than a sudden break. Government’s compulsory monopoly of coinage came first, defended by fears of private fraud that the long record of official debasement makes hollow. He answers the Gresham’s Law objection, then traces how the royal stamp shifted emphasis from a coin’s weight to its name.

]]>noGold Standard, Legal System, Money and Banking4http://mises.org/podcasts/case-100-percent-gold-dollar/decline-weight-name-encouraging-bank-inflationMurray N. RothbardWed, 05 Aug 2026 11:45:39 -0500145710Why governments prefer money creation to taxation: the benefits are plain to whoever receives the new money first, while the losses stay hidden from everyone else. Rothbard traces how the two natural checks on a bank—redemption by outsiders and a run by its own clients—were widened by central banking, by suspensions of specie payment, and by campaigns to shame the public out of using gold day to day.

]]>noBooms and Busts, Inflation, Money and Banking5http://mises.org/podcasts/case-100-percent-gold-dollar/100-percent-gold-bankingMurray N. RothbardWed, 05 Aug 2026 11:51:39 -0500145711The cardinal difference between Rothbard and most other gold advocates. He rejects the Chicago School’s view of 100 percent reserves as a convenient tool for managing the money supply, grounding his case instead in property rights: notes and deposits are warehouse receipts, and issuing more than the goods on hand is legalized counterfeiting. He answers Spahr’s bridge analogy and weighs the attractions of free banking.

]]>noLegal System, Money and Banking, Other Schools of Thought6http://mises.org/podcasts/case-100-percent-gold-dollar/objections-100-percent-goldMurray N. RothbardWed, 05 Aug 2026 12:02:43 -0500145712The standard objections, taken in turn. If banks could not profit under 100 percent reserves, they may charge for their services as every other useful business does. And the fear of an inadequate money supply misses the classical lesson that any change in the quantity of money adjusts itself in purchasing power—leaving population, trade volume, and a stable price level as arbitrary criteria.

]]>noMoney and Banking, Prices, Value and Exchange7http://mises.org/podcasts/case-100-percent-gold-dollar/professor-yeager-and-100-percent-goldMurray N. RothbardWed, 05 Aug 2026 12:15:30 -0500145713Leland Yeager, an advocate of freely fluctuating fiat money, concedes that a 100 percent gold standard would end reserve drains, forced contraction, and balance-of-payments anxiety—problems he attributes to fractional reserves rather than to gold. Rothbard quotes him at length, asks why he rejects what he has just praised, and pushes the reductio further: where exactly is the geographical boundary of a money?

]]>noGlobal Economy, Gold Standard, Money and Banking8http://mises.org/podcasts/case-100-percent-gold-dollar/100-percent-gold-traditionMurray N. RothbardWed, 05 Aug 2026 12:24:33 -0500145714Rothbard places the 100 percent program in the classical economists and the currency school, and in the Jeffersonian and Jacksonian political tradition—figures he argues historians have miscast as economically ignorant agrarians. He credits Condy Raguet with seeing before the British that deposits are money substitutes too, and recovers the neglected Charles H. Carroll and Isaiah W. Sylvester.

]]>noGlobal Economy, Money and Banking, Other Schools of Thought, U.S. History9http://mises.org/podcasts/case-100-percent-gold-dollar/road-aheadMurray N. RothbardWed, 05 Aug 2026 12:29:43 -0500145715The transition problem. Rothbard weighs forcing deflation down to the existing gold stock against raising the gold price to match the dollar supply, defends deflation against its reputation, and sets out a six-point program. He parts with Mises and Hazlitt on sequencing, and closes by insisting that scholars must argue for what is true rather than for what is currently expedient.

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