Richard Timberlake, is Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Georgia  and an expert on the Federal Reserve, monetary policy, and the history of central banking. 

He is one of a handful of libertarian economists who have helped challenge the myth that the free market caused the Great Depression, and that President Franklin Roosevelt and his big-government "New Deal" programs saved the nation from disaster.  Timberlake has spent his professional life pointing out the dangers of powerful government banks. He is perhaps best known for Monetary Policy in the United States: An Intellectual and Institutional History (1993).

He is  editor (with Kevin Dowd) of the book, Money and the Nation State: The Financial Revolution, Government, and the World Monetary System.