Today’s national money regimes bear no resemblance to Mises’s sound-money principle. The quantity and quality of money is no longer a free-market phenomenon; it is determined by government-controlled central banks. To prevent governments from misusing their coercive power in monetary affairs, two “institutional arrangements” have been put into place. First, central banks have been made politically independent to prevent politicians from trying to trade off benefits resulting from an inflation-induced, short-term, cyclical upswing against the medium- to long-term costs resulting from the debasing of the means of payments.

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I am just back from the annual paper money show in Memphis. It is the premier paper money event each year and experiences there tend to inform my editorial decisions in the following months. If you are a veteran of the coin market from the mid 1980s, what is currently going on in the paper money field will be familiar to you. Slabbing is affecting the business in a big way. Third-party authenticators and graders are slugging it out for market share.

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BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - The European Union on Tuesday gave Cyprus and Malta final approval to start using the euro next year, raising to 15 the number of countries sharing the currency.

The two Mediterranean nations will join the currency zone on Jan. 1.

Finance ministers also set an exchange rate of one euro to 0.585274 Cypriot pounds and 0.4293 Maltese lira when the two countries swap their existing coins and bank notes for the euro.

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(Newport Beach, California) – The award-winning, number one PCGS Set Registry sets of circulation strike and proof Buffalo nickels will be displayed by Professional Coin Grading Service at the American Numismatic Association World’s Fair of Money® convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, August 8 – 12, 2007. The sets include a total of 16 coins that are the single finest ever submitted for certification including 1913-S Type One (PCGS MS68) and 1920-S (PCGS MS66).

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