I started Ron Paul's End the Fed, which is about the Federal
Reserve. According to Ron Paul, a big reason that a national bank and
(later) the Federal Reserve were established was so that money could be
pumped into the economy, through printing money and also loans. Without
a national bank, banks are taking a risk when they loan money for
people to start businesses, for there is a chance that the businesses
would not be able to pay the banks back, and where would banks be then?
Consequently, the Federal Reserve exists to save banks were this to
happen. That encourages the banks to loan money for businesses, which
supposedly helps the economy.
But Ron Paul does not care for the
Federal Reserve. He argues that its printing of more money devalues the
dollar (whereas Paul contends that the purchasing power of gold has
been high). But what about banks that might go under when businesses
are unable to pay them back? Ron Paul says that banks should be more
careful about who receives a loan in the first place! Paul also says
that the money that the Federal Reserve puts into the economy creates an
illusory prosperity. For Paul, it's better for people to save money
and then to buy things and invest, and he states that this can bring
down interest rates. When the Federal Reserve lowers interests rates
"on a whim" and thus encourages banks to make loans, when people have
not been saving, then the result is that "goods that come to production
can't be purchased[, b]usinesses fail, homes are foreclosed upon, and
people bail out of stocks or whatever is the fashionable investment of
the day" (page 30).
I'll stop here. I was initially reluctant to
read this book because I feared that it would be Ron Paul repeating over
and over that printing more money creates inflation. But it's more
than that, because Paul seeks to explain the rationale for the Federal
Reserve, and then to rebut that rationale.