In 1912, London financed sixty percent of world trade through bills of exchange: private commercial paper backed by goods in transit, settling in gold. No central bank required.
Two years later, governments killed this system in a week. What we got instead is the inflation, instability, and central bank manipulation we now consider normal.
The market had already solved the money problem. Governments unsolved it.
The Market's Money: Bills of Exchange and the Credit System Governments Killed
Bills of exchange were capitalism's self-regulating credit mechanism for seven centuries, until governments monopolized money creation and destroyed the entire system.
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