Rating: 
Summary: Gold obsession or paper fetish?
Review: While Peter Bernstein is an engaging writer, his perspective on gold and silver is in many ways quite superficial. The subtitle of the book - "The History of an Obsession" - betrays his real agenda, which is to subtley pooh-pooh gold's historic monetary role as being the result of a kind of psychological disorder. Bernstein's anti-precious metals bias becomes especially apparent in his discussion of the monetary history of Asia and in his discussion of the world-wide abandonment of the gold standard in the 20th Century.From reading the Asian chapter, one would scarcely realize that much of Asia was effectively on a silver standard for hundreds of years, and that at least in China this situation was brought about because of repeated failures of paper money experiments. Asians learned through bitter experience that a natural commodity whose stock is beyond the control of politicians is essential for preserving purchasing power in the face of social upheavals. Likewise, Bernstein's tale of the alleged deflationary tendencies of gold causing the Great Depression and eventually necessitating the fiat paper money we have today is utter nonsense. For one thing, prices were very stable during the heyday of the gold standard (and throughout much of the rest of history for that matter); far from being deflationary, numerous studies have documented that the purchasing power of gold has been extraordinarily stable over many centuries. For another thing, the instability of the post-World War I financial system was strictly a banking phenomenon; both the expansion of the money stock in the 1920's and the rapid collapse of the money stock in the early 1930's was almost entirely due to the irresponsible manner in which central banks mismanaged the creation and destruction of money substitutes, especially bank and savings accounts. Rather than stabilize the financial system by getting rid of fractional reserves, Franklin Roosevelt and his successors have chosen instead to continually bail it out by inflationary means. The institutionalization of inflation, not any monetary defects of gold itself, is the real reason why governments tried to minimize gold's monetary role during the 20th Century. The sad truth is that our current ruling class has a vested interest in the continual depreciation of the dollar. It also has a vested interest in risking a hyperinflationary collapse of the global economy, replicating on a world-wide scale what happened to Germany in 1923 and to many other countries throughout the thousand-year history of the paper money fetish. It is too bad that Bernstein's readers won't learn the real lessons of monetary history from him, otherwise they might learn to trust paper less and develop a healthy "obsession" with gold too.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: With such a rich subject matter I thought he could have done much better with this book. I am having to force myself to finish it.
Rating:
Summary: Don't waste your time
Review: Written with minimal thought and a bare command of the language, and obiously published without the benefit of a competent editor, this mediocre book is irritating to read at best. Here's my favorite sentence so far (p.50 & I don't think I'm going to make it much farther): "What with everything, Diocletian was exhausted by the burdens of being emperor." Never mind the power of gold; if you value your time you won't waste it on this book.
Rating: 
Summary: don't bother
Review: you've read 'agains the gods' and know of mr bernsteins superb reputation as an investor, so you're excited about what will surely be an interesting and informative read . . . well, we all make mistakes, and this is clearly his. it's dull, dense and messy. i had to force myself to keep reading even though i was stuck in an airport . . .
Rating:
Summary: don't bother
Review: you've read 'agains the gods' and know of mr bernsteins superb reputation as an investor, so you're excited about what will surely be an interesting and informative read . . . well, we all make mistakes, and this is clearly his. it's dull, dense and messy. i had to force myself to keep reading even though i was stuck in an airport . . .
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