MONEY AND THE NATION STATE

edited by Kevin Dowd and Richard Timberlake, Jr.

Are monetary and banking problems due to a few misguided policies or incompetent policymakers? Or are they due to fundamental flaws in monetary and financial institutions---principally, central banks and the legal and monetary frameworks that accompany them? This book examines the history of modern monetary and banking arrangements, their major problems, and possible solutions. The authors explain how monetary nationalism---the promotion of monetary goals of the nation state---necessarily invites economic discoordination because it interferes with the free, equilibrating operation of market forces. They also outline the reforms needed to create monetary, financial, and banking systems free of the episodic inflation, devaluation, debt crises, and exchange rate volatility that have plagued the twentieth century. This is a breakthrough study pointing the way to a vastly more efficient world financial system.