Randall Wray on the History of Money

There is a new working paper by L. Randall Wray on the history of money here:

L. Randall Wray, “Introduction to an Alternative History of Money,” Working Paper No. 717, Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, May 2012.

From p. 4 onwards there is a very useful discussion of the origins of money. One minor thing that strikes me is that the remarks on what mainstream theory says about the goldsmiths and the origin of fractional reserve banking could have used the critique of George Selgin:

Selgin, G. “Those Dishonest Goldsmiths,” revised January 20, 2011
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1589709

But otherwise this is an excellent paper.

Unrelated Note

Just glancing at the sidebar, I noticed that my blog has just hit 100 members! Thanks to everyone concerned!