Free banking and monetary reform /

Glasner, an economist with impressive credentials, argues for the reestablishment of free banking in the US. Under a free banking regime, individual banks not only would have the authority to create deposits as they do now, but would also be permitted to issue bank notes, as they were permitted to do before the National Banking Act of 1864. The Federal Reserve has not compiled a good record of providing monetary stability through its control of high-powered money--Federal Reserve notes and bank reserves. According to Glasner, requiring issuing banks to redeem their monies in a stipulated amount of some other asset, such as gold or a market basket of frequently traded commodities, would prevent an overissue of bank notes under a free banking regime. Preceding his final proposals for monetary reform, Glasner provides an excellent review of monetary history, insightful discussions of such monetary innovations as the development of the Eurocurrency market and money market mutual funds, and incisive analyses of recent monetary problems like the deregulation of savings and loan associations and the insurance of bank deposits. This timely and lucid book on such a controversial issue deserves a wide audience. Recommended for academic and public library collections. -W. W. Howard, Phoenix College