Monetary Policy, The Federal Reserve System, And Gold
January 29, 1980 - Morgan Stanley

Lewis E. Lehrman

This essay by Lewis E. Lehrman, a brilliantly successful businessman turned scholar speculator, is long but lucid. We are publishing it because it explains so much of what is happening now in the complex interrelationship between Fed policy, inflationary expectations, the financial markets, and the price of gold. Its message is of ultimate importance. This essay presents among other things what could be the economic and political issue of the 19805 -- why the world must return to the disipline of the gold standard.

In any case, whether they agree with its conclusions or not, I hope all serious investors and concerned citizens will be stimulated by the analysis and the ideas presented in this work. Obviously, the opinions expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of Morgan Stanley.

Barton M. Biggs


About the Author

Lewis E. Lehrman is president of the Lehrman Institute, an organization dedicated to economic research and public policy studies. He was formerly president of Rite Aid and is currently chairman of that corporation's executive committee. Born on August 15, 1938, Lehrman graduated in 1960 from Yale University with a B.A. in history and spent the following year at Yale as a Carnegie Teaching Fellow. He was awarded a M.A. in history and government from Harvard University in 1962 where he was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow.


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