End the Fed

End the Fed
by Congressman Ron Paul

In this slim volume, Congressman Ron Paul lays out the basics of his opposition to the Federal Reserve and his beliefs about monetary policy. Paul is an adherent of the Austrian school of economics, led by the brilliant economists Mises, Hayek, and Rothbard.

The Austrian theory of the business cycle holds that government expansion of the money supply misleads investors into believing there is more capital available than there really is, hence leading to a boom of new projects which later have to be abandoned, causing a bust. Austrians successfully predicted both the Great Depression and the housing bubble/2008 financial crisis, which many other economists failed to foresee. Paul argues convincingly that the Fed is immoral, unconstitutional, and detrimental to average Americans.

Some of the most interesting parts of the book deal with Paul's early years and interactions with Fed chairmen Greenspan and Bernanke. This book doesn't go terribly deep into economics, but it is a good introduction to the issue of the Federal Reserve.