I've just finished reading this book, and although lacking in several respects I found it interesting enough to finish it.
Ferdinand Lips was a real gold fanatic it seems. According to him, all current ills of society would be cured by reintroducing the gold standard. The explosion of debt in the last decades and the resulting crises were possible only through the current fiat money system. He denounces fiat money as fraudulent and makes other sweeping claims, e.g. the morals of society are corrupted by fiat money, the EU is akin to feudalism, etc. However, the questions at the heart of the matter are never really examined. The value of gold when used as currency is no more real than the value of a fiat currency, disregarding the small commodity value of gold. The difference lies purely in the fact that gold is inherently limited in supply. This of course prevents inflation due to money-printing, but using gold as money has other disadvantages that he does not mention. Lips assumes that the temptation to print money and thereby confiscate the wealth of the holders of that money will always be too great for any government or institution to resist. He does not even discuss the prospects of a stable currency regime through independent central banks. He also claims that current price indices to measure inflation do not reflect the true extent of inflation, without going into why this is so.
The book is also biased in other ways. Lips seemingly cherishes the (now eroded) secrecy of the Swiss banking system, that allows tax evaders to hide their money out of governments reach.
The reason I found it worth reading was mainly that it gave me some new insights into how and why the gold price is and has historically been manipulated by central banks and bullion banks (gold trading banks), in order to keep the price artificially low. This has enabled some banks to reap huge profits by borrowing gold from central banks and going short to further suppress the price and reinvest the money at higher rates of return. However, should the gold price rise this could of course have devastating effects for the financial system (I haven't read anything more up to date so I don't know if something has happened since the gold price has indeed risen in recent years).
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