Interestingly, Amazon's list of best sellers in the "monetary policy" category is a veritable parade of anti-Fed and anti-central bank books.

Having not read all of them, I certainly can't endorse all of them, and many of them surely contain questionable economics and fanciful claims about central banks. (Jim Grant's great new book is in there, though.)

On the other hand, the fact that such books dominate the book sales in this category tells us a thing or two about how the near consensus of approval once enjoyed by the Fed (and other Western central banks) is long gone — thanks largely to Ron Paul's 2008 campaign.

Had we a list like this from 10 or 15 years ago, it probably would have been dominated by books like Bob Woodward's Maestro, which basically made the case that Alan Greenspan was an inimitable genius.

(You can pick up a hardback copy of Maestro for one cent, by the way.)

Perhaps perfectly combining the two phrases "A penny for your thoughts" and "You get what you pay for"

Source: The Mises Institute

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And Ben Bernanke's not-released-yet Memoir is already discounted by 29%...