Book: Honest Money by Gary North

The book explores the principles of sound money, arguing that its value is subjective and derived from its function as the most marketable commodity, possessing characteristics like scarcity and divisibility, a concept illustrated through both the isolation of Robinson Crusoe and the famine in ancient Egypt. The author contends that government-created or state-monopolized currency inevitably leads to corruption, citing historical instances of debasing currency as a violation of honest weights and measures. Critically, the text frames fractional reserve banking and state inflation as forms of legal counterfeiting and multiple indebtedness, resulting in destructive boom-and-bust cycles that unjustly benefit political insiders while harming citizens. To restore stability, the ideal monetary system must be a Biblical monetary system requiring 100 percent reserve banking where assets fully back liabilities, thus removing the government's ability to manipulate the money supply.