Garet Garrett's The People's Pottage: The Revolution Was, Ex America, The Rise of Empire
Everything that has happened to money was done to it by  government, beginning with the deceptive separation of people from  their own gold, then a confiscation of the gold, then making it a crime  for a private citizen to own gold, together with a law forbidding  contracts to be made in any kind of money but irredeemable paper  currency, and finally the dishonorable repudiation of the promissory  words engraved on its bonds. All of this with an air of  leave-these-things-to-the-wisdom-of-the-government, as if people could  not understand the mysteries of money. That was absurd. The controlling  facts about money are not mysterious. By contrast, in 1896, there was a  very grave monetary question to be settled. It was silver versus gold;  or inflation versus sound money. It was taken to the people, and the  people, not the government decided it. The people voted for sound  money.