The Curse of Cash by Kenneth Rogoff
This comes from The E-Sylum, the weekly email from the Numismatic Bibliomania Society. (Their print journal is The Asylum.) (http://coinbooks.org/club_nbs_esylum_...)
NEW BOOK: THE CURSE OF CASH
While non-numismatic, this book by the former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund argues that the world would be better off without paper money. -Editor
The Curse of Cash
Kenneth S. Rogoff
Hardcover | 2016 | $29.95 | £22.95 | ISBN: 9780691172132 296 pp. | 6 x 9 | 30 line illus
The world is drowning in cash—and it’s making us poorer and less safe. In The Curse of Cash, Kenneth Rogoff, one of the world’s leading economists, makes a persuasive and fascinating case for an idea that until recently would have seemed outlandish: getting rid of most paper money.
Even as people in advanced economies are using less paper money, there is more cash in circulation—a record $1.4 trillion in U.S. dollars alone, or $4,200 for every American, mostly in $100 bills. And the United States is hardly exceptional. So what is all that cash being used for? The answer is simple: a large part is feeding tax evasion, corruption, terrorism, the drug trade, human trafficking, and the rest of a massive global underground economy.
As Rogoff shows, paper money can also cripple monetary policy. In the aftermath of the recent financial crisis, central banks have been unable to stimulate growth and inflation by cutting interest rates significantly below zero for fear that it would drive investors to abandon treasury bills and stockpile cash. This constraint has paralyzed monetary policy in virtually every advanced economy, and is likely to be a recurring problem in the future.
The Curse of Cash offers a plan for phasing out most paper money—while leaving small-denomination bills and coins in circulation indefinitely—and addresses the issues the transition will pose, ranging from fears about privacy and price stability to the need to provide subsidized debit cards for the poor.
While phasing out the bulk of paper money will hardly solve the world’s problems, it would be a significant step toward addressing a surprising number of very big ones. Provocative, engaging, and backed by compelling original arguments and evidence, The Curse of Cash is certain to spark widespread debate.
Kenneth S. Rogoff, the Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University and former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is the coauthor of the New York Times bestseller This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly (Princeton). He appears frequently in the national media and writes a monthly newspaper column that is syndicated in more than fifty countries. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Author Rogoff will be speaking about his book at the Museum of American Finance in New York Wednesday, November 30 from 6-8pm. Doors open at 5:30. The talk will be followed y Q&A, book signing, and a reception. Reservations are required. Admission is $15, but MoAF members and students are free. -Editor
For more information, or to register, see:
Kenneth Rogoff on "The Curse of Cash" (www.moaf.org/events/general/evt_20161...)
For more information, or to order:
The Curse of Cash (http://press.princeton.edu/titles/107...)
And it would be easy enough to dismiss this as the power-grabbing of an insider, but Rogoff took Joseph Stiglitz to task in an "Open Letter" that was quite clear.
"Let's look at Stiglitzian prescriptions for helping a distressed emerging market debtor, the ideas you put forth as superior to existing practice. Governments typically come to the IMF for financial assistance when they are having trouble finding buyers for their debt and when the value of their money is falling. The Stiglitzian prescription is to raise the profile of fiscal deficits, that is, to issue more debt and to print more money. You seem to believe that if a distressed government issues more currency, its citizens will suddenly think it more valuable. You seem to believe that when investors are no longer willing to hold a government's debt, all that needs to be done is to increase the supply and it will sell like hot cakes. We at the IMF—no, make that we on the Planet Earth—have considerable experience suggesting otherwise. We earthlings have found that when a country in fiscal distress tries to escape by printing more money, inflation rises, often uncontrollably. Uncontrolled inflation strangles growth, hurting the entire populace but, especially the indigent. The laws of economics may be different in your part of the gamma quadrant, but around here we find that when an almost bankrupt government fails to credibly constrain the time profile of its fiscal deficits, things generally get worse instead of better." -- An Open Letter to Joseph Stiglitz here: http://www.imf.org/external/np/vc/200...
I had two undergraduate (2005, 2006) and two graduate classes (2009, 2010) in economics. It was not a weekend at the Mises Institute, but it was not Marxist, or even (strictly) Keynesian. Our textbooks literally put Milton Friedman and John Maynard Keynes in the center with Marx and Von Mises in the margins (literally). What I did find was that the mixed-premise limited enterprise model of Milton Friedman held great sway. So, I came to appreciate some of the calculations of Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen, even as it was painfully easy to see their errors.
NEW BOOK: THE CURSE OF CASH
While non-numismatic, this book by the former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund argues that the world would be better off without paper money. -Editor
The Curse of Cash
Kenneth S. Rogoff
Hardcover | 2016 | $29.95 | £22.95 | ISBN: 9780691172132 296 pp. | 6 x 9 | 30 line illus
The world is drowning in cash—and it’s making us poorer and less safe. In The Curse of Cash, Kenneth Rogoff, one of the world’s leading economists, makes a persuasive and fascinating case for an idea that until recently would have seemed outlandish: getting rid of most paper money.
Even as people in advanced economies are using less paper money, there is more cash in circulation—a record $1.4 trillion in U.S. dollars alone, or $4,200 for every American, mostly in $100 bills. And the United States is hardly exceptional. So what is all that cash being used for? The answer is simple: a large part is feeding tax evasion, corruption, terrorism, the drug trade, human trafficking, and the rest of a massive global underground economy.
As Rogoff shows, paper money can also cripple monetary policy. In the aftermath of the recent financial crisis, central banks have been unable to stimulate growth and inflation by cutting interest rates significantly below zero for fear that it would drive investors to abandon treasury bills and stockpile cash. This constraint has paralyzed monetary policy in virtually every advanced economy, and is likely to be a recurring problem in the future.
The Curse of Cash offers a plan for phasing out most paper money—while leaving small-denomination bills and coins in circulation indefinitely—and addresses the issues the transition will pose, ranging from fears about privacy and price stability to the need to provide subsidized debit cards for the poor.
While phasing out the bulk of paper money will hardly solve the world’s problems, it would be a significant step toward addressing a surprising number of very big ones. Provocative, engaging, and backed by compelling original arguments and evidence, The Curse of Cash is certain to spark widespread debate.
Kenneth S. Rogoff, the Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University and former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is the coauthor of the New York Times bestseller This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly (Princeton). He appears frequently in the national media and writes a monthly newspaper column that is syndicated in more than fifty countries. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Author Rogoff will be speaking about his book at the Museum of American Finance in New York Wednesday, November 30 from 6-8pm. Doors open at 5:30. The talk will be followed y Q&A, book signing, and a reception. Reservations are required. Admission is $15, but MoAF members and students are free. -Editor
For more information, or to register, see:
Kenneth Rogoff on "The Curse of Cash" (www.moaf.org/events/general/evt_20161...)
For more information, or to order:
The Curse of Cash (http://press.princeton.edu/titles/107...)
And it would be easy enough to dismiss this as the power-grabbing of an insider, but Rogoff took Joseph Stiglitz to task in an "Open Letter" that was quite clear.
"Let's look at Stiglitzian prescriptions for helping a distressed emerging market debtor, the ideas you put forth as superior to existing practice. Governments typically come to the IMF for financial assistance when they are having trouble finding buyers for their debt and when the value of their money is falling. The Stiglitzian prescription is to raise the profile of fiscal deficits, that is, to issue more debt and to print more money. You seem to believe that if a distressed government issues more currency, its citizens will suddenly think it more valuable. You seem to believe that when investors are no longer willing to hold a government's debt, all that needs to be done is to increase the supply and it will sell like hot cakes. We at the IMF—no, make that we on the Planet Earth—have considerable experience suggesting otherwise. We earthlings have found that when a country in fiscal distress tries to escape by printing more money, inflation rises, often uncontrollably. Uncontrolled inflation strangles growth, hurting the entire populace but, especially the indigent. The laws of economics may be different in your part of the gamma quadrant, but around here we find that when an almost bankrupt government fails to credibly constrain the time profile of its fiscal deficits, things generally get worse instead of better." -- An Open Letter to Joseph Stiglitz here: http://www.imf.org/external/np/vc/200...
I had two undergraduate (2005, 2006) and two graduate classes (2009, 2010) in economics. It was not a weekend at the Mises Institute, but it was not Marxist, or even (strictly) Keynesian. Our textbooks literally put Milton Friedman and John Maynard Keynes in the center with Marx and Von Mises in the margins (literally). What I did find was that the mixed-premise limited enterprise model of Milton Friedman held great sway. So, I came to appreciate some of the calculations of Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen, even as it was painfully easy to see their errors.
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- 0Posted by khalling 7 years, 5 months agoisn't the whole point to constrict supply and therefore hedge inflation? I mean, if people had to take their paper back to the bank and turn it in for "new" less valuable cash, that angers people. But if one day the value is less on your debit card, easier to fool you.| Mark as read | Best of... | Permalink
