Good money is stable money : a barter economy vs. a money economy -- Hard money and soft money : currency around the world from the 7th century BC to the 21st century AD -- Supply, demand, and the value of currency : how the circulation of money is regulated by central banks -- Inflation, deflation, and floating currencies : their effect on prices, wages, taxes, and debt -- The gold standard : a benchmark of the value of money that creates a free market -- Taxes : how they diminish productivity, trade, the stability of money, and overall economic health -- Money in America : from colonial silver and paper to the turmoil of 1929 -- A history of central banking : from ancient Egypt and Rome to the bank of England and the US federal reserve -- The 1930s : bad capitalism and a failure of monetary and fiscal policy -- The Bretton Woods gold standard : 30 years of hard currency destroyed by taxes in the 1970s -- Volcker and Reagan : monetarism fails, but the tax cuts succeed : the 1980s boom -- The Greenspan years : the 1987 stock market crash, a recession, deflation, and a slow economic recovery -- Japan's two great periods of economic success based on a gold standard/hard currency and low taxes -- The Asia crisis of the late 1990s : worldwide currency turmoil and economic disaster caused by a mismanaged US dollar -- Devastating currency devaluations in Russian, China, Mexico, and Yugoslavia -- A return to hard currencies : good government leads to good money.