Deflation is not inherently bad. It creates winners and losers. It also puts a temporary break on the concentration of power in the hands of government and in particular the executive branch. In short, inflation is potentially a great liberating force.

LARGE PRINT EDITION! More at LargePrintLiberty.com This monograph addresses a critically important issue: the prevailing view that deflation (falling prices and/or falling money stock) is a catastrophe that must be stopped. Jorg Guido Hulsmann shows that deflation is nothing to fear. The government should permit it to happen as a path to economic recovery and even as a tool to reform. Institutions that are liquidated in deflation need to be liquidated, and that includes banks and other financial institutions as well.The essay covers a surprisingly vast theoretical territory in a short space, including the nature of money and interest, the boom and bust, the impossibility of stabilization measures, and the economic trends of the recession. He goes further than any previous writer in arguing that no measures of any kind should be undertaken to cure the bust through money creation, even under conditions of falling prices and falling money stock. His rationale is both economic and political.

Deflation is not inherently bad. It creates winners and losers. It also puts a temporary break on the concentration of power in the hands of government and in particular the executive branch. In short, inflation is potentially a great liberating force.

"Originally delivered as a lecture at Princeton University, October 1958, at the 9th meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society"--Page 7. Includes bibliographical references.

Economic Freedom and Interventionism is both a primer of the fundamental thought of Ludwig von Mises and an anthology of the writings of perhaps the best-known exponent of what is now known as the Austrian School of economics. This volume contains forty-seven articles edited by Mises scholar Bettina Bien Greaves. Among them are Mises's expositions of the role of government, his discussion of inequality of wealth, inflation, socialism, welfare, and economic education, as well as his exploration of the "deeper" significance of economics as it affects seemingly noneconomic relations between human beings. These papers are valuable reading for students of economic freedom and the science of human action. Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) was the leading spokesman of the Austrian School of economics throughout most of the twentieth century. Bettina Bien Greaves is a former resident scholar and trustee of the Foundation for Economic Education and was a senior staff member at FEE from 1951 to 1999.