On the Minting of Money (2026)
This 500th Anniversary edition of On the Minting of Money – Monetae Cudendae Ratio – is a modern translation of Nicolaus Copernicus’s groundbreaking essay which proposed solutions to the effects of currency debasement and inflation. Copernicus’s treatise famously anticipated Sir Thomas Gresham’s 1558 economic principle that “bad money drives out good” and Sir Isaac Newton’s 1717 de facto gold standard which he proposed as Master of the Royal Mint of Great Britain, making this essay a fundamental cornerstone to modern economic theory and a fundamental basis for understanding the current affordability crisis dominating American political discourse.
Ralph Benko, editor
Gerald Malsbary, translator
“I think it was McLeod who said that the study of monetary questions is one of the great causes of insanity.”
Senator Nelson Aldrich
Chairman of the National Monetary Commission (1908-1912)
Quote from a speech before the Economic Club of New York, New York, Nov. 29, 1909.
LATEST POSTS
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Stop blaming corporate greed — The real reason you can’t afford anything is fake money
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From the Washington Examiner: Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) recently, and quite uniquely, nailed the true cause of the affordability issue. It isn’t corporate price gouging or other standard, conventional scapegoats — such as greedy corporations, or deregulation, or heavy regulation, or environmental restrictions on “drill, baby, drill.” It’s about the money.
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“On the Minting of Money” Featured in The Independent Review
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Liberty Fund senior fellow and writer for The Independent Review, Leonidas Zelmanovitz contributed a review of our recently published modern translation of On the Minting of Money, Nicolaus Copernicus’s groundbreaking essay. From his review… The short volume under review, which presents Copernicus’s treatise alongside essays by contemporary commentators, and the entire text in Latin, succeeds…
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Jim Puplava Talks Copernicus with Ralph Benko
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Financial Sense Newshour’s Jim Puplava speaks with Ralph Benko, editor of 500th Anniversary edition of On the Minting of Money by Nicolaus Copernicus, about the ongoing dangers of currency debasement and its impact on society.
AND FROM THE ARCHIVE
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Tom Paine’s Dissertation on Paper Money
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Paine was a great humanitarian. He was an influential force in the formation of the political character of the United States of America. And, if he lived today, Tom Paine certainly would not have refrained from indicting the fiduciary nature of Federal Reserve Notes — or in demanding that the dollar be defined as a…
“In 1922, at the little-known post–World War I Monetary Conference of Genoa, the gold-exchange standard was officially embraced by academic and political elites. It was there that the dollar and the pound were confirmed as official reserve currencies, so that these national currencies might substitute for what was said to be a “scarcity” of gold. But there was no true scarcity—only overvalued national currencies caused by the inflation of World War I. The overvaluation, relative to the gold monetary standard, was maintained after World War I despite a doubling and tripling of the general price level in national currencies during the war. The greatest economist of the twentieth century, Jacques Rueff, warned in the 1920s of the dangers of this flawed official reserve currency system, designed “in camera” by the experts. Rueff predicted a collapse of this newly rigged official reserve currency system. And it did collapse, in 1929–1931, with catastrophic effects.”
Lewis E. Lehrman
Fall 2011 issue of The Intercollegiate Review