Gold Wars: The Battle Against Sound Money As Seen From A Swiss Perspective

by Ferdinand Lips

Gold Wars deals with gold's history, and especially the abandonment of gold-as-money under the modern welfare/warfare state. It shows how governments, fearing the affinity of free people for gold, fight it, thereby helping to destroy countries and the gold-mining industry.

Genres: Economics, History, Politics, Money, Finance

308 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2002

Reviews

[Loren Picard]

Published in 2001, during the dotcom crash, but well before the 2007-2008 financial crisis and more than another decade before Covid, the book is eerily accurate on the problems that have accumulated due to abandoning hard money; in this case gold. A lot of the characteristics of gold apply to Bitcoin, with Bitcoin being a second chance for people to have hard money which is applicable to the digital age. Of particular interest in the book is how the Swiss blindly followed the dictates of the fiat governments and voluntarily gave up their special status as the last great holdout with a strong currency.

[Pedro Jorge]

I'd say 4 for financial experts and strategists, and 3 for the curious layman. I stand in the middle, in a 3.5

The book gets quite interesting when the author starts talking about backstage plots to demonetize gold in the 90's

Mr Lips should get more attention from the Austrian community.

[Sandeep]

A good book on the history of gold prices in the last 100 years. These topics are also and better covered into some other books on central banking, Fed which are there in my reading list hence I have given an OK rating.

However, if you have not read those books, this will be more interesting.

[Feroz Hameed]

The Gold war continues silently.....
A must read for people to understand , how fiat currency in circulation widely is nothing but a piece of paper and doesn't hold any value compared to gold standard...

[Jack Hudson]

Normally wouldn’t write a review but thought I would for this as I found it to be a great interpretation of what sound money is in a historical sense going back to 4000 BC (Egypt to Ancient Greece, Rome, to the Renaissance and British Empire) as well as in the context of the modern Keynesian monetary system and movement away from Bretton Woods. Great exposure to these sorts of discussions and a great entrance into the concepts around gold and the importance of hedging against reckless debt spending trends of central banks. Perhaps slightly dated now and lost me slightly when discussions revolved around Switzerland, but otherwise definitely 4-5 stars.