ABSTRACT
Hostility to outside inspection and regulation of the products people make and trade rarely extends to the instruments with which they are paid. Governments continue to regulate debt and equity markets, underwrite banking sectors and monopolise currency issue. The resultant power to plunder what they are meant to protect, through seignorage and inflation ‘tax’, has inspired numerous proposals for financial self-deregulation and money de-monopolisation. All have run into the problem of malfunctioning money and credit systems putting all other economic activity at risk. In their place, institutional efforts have been made to stop the public servant stealing the silver, by giving it an interest in monetary stability and tying the free fiscal hands that once put it at risk.
