In The Pocket Money Book: A Monetary Chronology of the United States, John H. Wood provides a brief chronology of some of the major events in our country’s monetary history. Although many changes have shaped the Nation’s monetary system since its inception, it should be noted that the present regime of fiat money provides no restraint on the politicians’ and monetary authorities’ powers to debase the currency—and in this respect represents an exceptional period in the history of the dollar. John H. Wood explains that today’s monetary system is precisely what the founding fathers feared most and sought to prohibit constitutionally.
John H. Wood was an economist for the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks of Chicago, Philadelphia, and Dallas. He taught economics at the University of Birmingham in England, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and most recently retired from Wake Forest University as a Reynolds Professor of Economics. He earned his B.S. in commerce from Ohio University in 1955, his M.A. in economics from Michigan State University in 1959, and his Ph.D. in economics from Purdue University in 1964. He was a visiting scholar and faculty associate at the American Institute for Economic Research from 1998-2010.
The American Institute for Economic Research in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, was founded in 1933 as the first independent voice for sound economics in the United States. Today it publishes ongoing research, hosts educational programs, publishes books, sponsors interns and scholars, and is home to the world-renowned Bastiat Society and the highly respected Sound Money Project. The American Institute for Economic Research is a 501c3 public charity.
