The book to teach yourself free-market economics in two hours

How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes

Writing in the UK Telegraph about Peter Schiff’s new book, MEP Daniel Hannan reckons it’s just the book to “teach yourself free market economics in two hours.”

If you want to understand what’s happening to the world economy, read Peter Schiff’s new book (co-written with his brother Andrew): How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes. You don’t need any background in economics to understand it; an intelligent child could follow its arguments…
    “As a general rule, if experts cannot explain an idea simply, we should be suspicious. The Schiffs explain their model very simply indeed, which is what makes it so convincing. If you feel that you want to get a decent grasp of free market economics, but you don’t have the time to tackle the complete works of Mises and Rothbard, this book is the perfect place to start. And if you find the Schiff thesis compelling, have a look at the Cobden Centre, which is working to apply Austrian economics to British political conditions.”

Naturally, this made the good folk at the Cobden Centre very happy.  And for their own part, they reckon you should add the Schiff book to the “two [other] standard economics primers that the aspiring Austrian student could get started with, i.e.,

• Economics in One Lesson
• Economics for Real People

And one final point Hannan answers:

Why should we pay attention to Peter Schiff? Well, here’s one pretty convincing reason: he accurately and exactly predicted the recent crash. I don’t just mean that he said that there were bad times coming. A man who constantly predicts downturns will necessarily be correct every ten years or so. No, I mean that he foresaw the collapse in sub-prime mortgages, that he was right about when it would happen and that he explained why it would happen. He has, in short, earned the right to be listened to…”