trending_down Currency Debasement
Reduction of a currency's value through inflation or dilution
format_quote Quotes
"In countries where money is plentiful, all other things being equal, a greater quantity of money is given for goods and services than where money is scarce. Whence it follows that money itself, like any other commodity, is worth more where it is scarce than where it is abundant."
menu_book Comentario Resolutorio de Cambios (Commentary on Exchange)
View Full Quote"We see by experience that in France, where money is scarcer than in Spain, bread, wine, cloth, and labour are worth much less. And even in Spain, before the discovery of the Indies, goods and labour were much cheaper than they are today, for the reason that there was then much less money."
menu_book Comentario Resolutorio de Cambios (Commentary on Exchange)
View Full Quote"Paper money has never been introduced through voluntary cooperation. In all known cases it has been introduced through coercion and compulsion, sometimes with the threat of the death penalty."
menu_book The Ethics of Money Production
View Full Quote"What difference does it make whether a man is despoiled of his fortune openly and by force, or secretly, by stealth, whether through a bandit on the road or through a prince who debases the currency by which all things are measured?"
menu_book De Rege et Regis Institutione (On the King and the Royal Institution)
View Full Quote"If two kinds of money of different value are current in a kingdom, the better will inevitably be hoarded or exported, and the lesser alone will remain in circulation."
menu_book Treatise on the Origin, Nature, Law, and Alterations of Money
View Full Quote"Such mutation is more unjust and harmful to the whole community than usury; indeed, it amounts to manifest robbery and fraud."
menu_book Treatise on the Origin, Nature, Law, and Alterations of Money
View Full Quote"Money is not the private property of the prince. It was invented for the sake of the community, and belongs to that community."
menu_book Treatise on the Origin, Nature, Law, and Alterations of Money
View Full Quoteauto_stories Books
Comentario Resolutorio de Cambios (Commentary on Exchange)
Martín de Azpilcueta's 1556 treatise on monetary exchange, containing the earliest clear statement of what would become the quantity theory of mone...
Read MoreDe Rege et Regis Institutione (On the King and the Royal Institution)
Juan de Mariana's major work of political theory, published in 1599. Mariana argues that political power originates in the community and is held in...
Read MoreTreatise on the Origin, Nature, Law, and Alterations of Money
Medieval treatise criticizing currency debasement and government manipulation of money, one of the earliest works in monetary economics
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