Understanding the Dollar Crisis Percy L. Greaves, Jr. In the
year that President Nixon closed the gold window forever and the
US government removed the last vestiges of the gold standard,
nonstop dollar turmoil was unleashed. In that same year, Percy
L. Greaves, a student of Ludwig von Mises's, released a
blockbuster of a book that sought to explain the crisis. It was
a huge seller and taught a generation to think like Austrian
economists, who, after all, were the only ones offering a
coherent explanation of events. Percy Greaves's widow, Bettina
Bien Greaves, gave her permission for a republication of this
book, on the occasion of the current dollar crisis. What's
remarkable is how Percy's analysis holds up in nearly every way,
after all these years. He begins by clarifying that in order to
understand the dollar crisis, one must understand much more:
What is economics? What is the difference between price and
value? What is money, and how did it originate? How and why did
the gold standard come about? What a