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.Murray told a lot of stories about his time in the Ayn Rand cult and his association with Greenspan.Greenspan did acknowledge to me inprivate conversation his acquaintance with Murray.But think of the different outcomes.Both started as followers of Ayn Rand.Neither became anobjectivist.Greenspan went the wrong way.Rothbard went the right way, always perfecting the truth regarding money and the Federal Reserve.Greenspan became a monetary tyrant who sowed the seeds of the greatest financial bubble in all of history.During this period of searching for the answers about money and Austrian economics, I also met Henry Hazlitt, who was a friend of Mises s, aboard member of FEE, and a close associate of Leonard Read s.Like so many others looking for answers, I read his famous Economics in OneLesson.Mr.Hazlitt, shortly after the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement was signed, predicted it would not work, and he lived well past the time to seeits breakdown in 1971.Like many Austrian economists, he lived to an old age (ninety-eight); he died in 1993.All his books, of which there aremany, are worth reading.Hazlitt was instrumental in securing a position at New York University for Mises.He had befriended Mises on his arrival to the United Statesafter Mises escaped from Europe as World War II erupted.Although he was for years known as a journalist for Newsweek, the New York Times,and the Wall Street Journal, Hazlitt was in reality a philosopher and economist.His greatest compliment to me was after Leonard Read s death in 1983; he called and asked if I might consider becoming president of FEE.Whether anyone else on the FEE board shared this thought, I don t know, but it was something I never seriously considered, simply because I hadchosen a different educational path.Another interesting tidbit of history was that Henry Hazlitt introduced Ayn Rand to all the free-market scholars in New York, which included hisclose friends Leonard Read and Mises.The period between the Depression and the end of Bretton Woods in 1971 was a time of much activity by many very smart, libertarian, and oldright constitutionalists and noninterventionists.They lamented the destruction of the Republic, but their writings laid the foundation of the emergingfreedom movement that became so energized during the Republican primary elections of 2008.And there were many others I read that kept the spirit of the Republic alive.Some were much more interested in monetary policy, while otherstalked about personal liberty and foreign policy as well as economic liberty.Having read the books of John T.Flynn, Isabel Patterson, Rose WilderLane, Garet Garrett, Ayn Rand, Richard Weaver, Albert J.Nock, H.L.Mencken, and Frank Chodorov, I was not only influenced but convinced that aphilosophy that embraced personal liberty, private property, and sound money was the only political philosophy worth championing.To understand the need for sound money and no central bank, one must fully understand the principles of liberty.There were also severalmembers of Congress during this period who held their ground and voted in keeping with the Constitution: Dr.Smith of Ohio, Howard Buffett, andH.R.Gross.We all owe a great deal of gratitude to the men and women who did such a superb job of presenting the moral case for liberty and refuting allthe monstrous lies, ignorance, and arrogance of those who spent their lives promoting authoritarianism, statism, and universal use of aggressive force.Although Ayn Rand never spoke kindly of libertarians and I never contemplated becoming a supporter of objectivism as a total philosophy, I didread all her novels and received her objectivist newsletter essentially the whole time it was published.She challenged many of my beliefs that I hadtaken for granted and forced me to understand and defend them better.However, she never convinced me of her definition and application ofaltruism.Equating voluntary Christian charities with Communism made no sense to me.But she also built up my excitement for championingfreedom.I have in my library a copy of the original 1957 hardbound edition of her huge Atlas Shrugged.The price listed on the cover flap is $6.95.There s no doubt she influenced a lot of people over the decades and forced them to reassess their premises, and most came away being moredevoted to liberty. CHAPTER 4 CENTRAL BANKS AND WARFollowing the creation of the Fed, the government would discover other uses for an elastic money supply aside from keeping the banking systemfrom defaulting on its obligations.It would prove useful in funding war.It is no coincidence that the century of total war coincided with the century ofcentral banking.When governments had to fund their own wars without a paper money machine to rely upon, they economized on resources.Theyfound diplomatic solutions to prevent war, and after they started a war they ended it as soon as possible
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