Podcasts

Patrick Barron on the eurozone’s future

Episode 86: Professor Patrick Barron is an Austrian School economist who teaches courses in banking and economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Iowa. He also writes regular pieces for Mises.org.

Professor Barron has put forward the idea that the only route out of the ongoing euro crisis for Germany is an initial return to the Deutschmark, followed preferably by a subsequent move to a golden Deutschmark. He discusses this idea with GoldMoney's Andy Duncan, along with the three major obstacles to his desired outcome, which include a lack of current party-political support in Germany for this idea, along with outside political influences over Germany's monetary policies, and the growing uncertainty over Germany's access to its own physical gold supply.

As well as exploring the current financial situation in Europe, Professor Barron also comments upon the recent fiscal cliff event in the United States, and mentions the recent article in The New York Times, by Paul Krugman, on the subject of a special trillion dollar platinum coin. He explains why eventually he believes the US dollar will go back to a link with gold, and why he thinks the price of gold may then reach $38,000 dollars an ounce. Professor Barron runs his own website, which GoldMoney subscribers can find at www.patrickbarron.blogspot.com/.

The book mentioned heavily in the interview, The Tragedy of the Euro, by Professor Philipp Bagus, can be downloaded for free from this link.

This podcast was recorded on 11 January 2013.