tc allen: prices

Showing posts with label prices. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 29, 2018

Poor on Sumner

Poor on Sumner

Thomas Allen

1. The value of an inconvertible currency depends on its amount relatively to the needs of the country for circulating medium (only to a very subordinate degree on the security on which it is based or the credit of the issuer).
2. If gold is at a premium in paper, the paper is redundant and depreciated. The premium measures the depreciation.

    According to Sumner, for “a system of even nominal convertibility, the motives of speculation and of price fluctuations lie outside of the currency in industrial and commercial circumstances. Speculation . . . controls the amount of the currency” (p. 417). Whereas, “[o]n an inconvertible system, the amount of the currency controls speculation” (p. 417). Thus, if an inconvertible currency “is not redundant, its effect is slight; if it is very excessive, it ‘floats’ every thing, and becomes the controlling consideration” (p. 417). The quantity of inconvertible paper money determines its value and prices. [Uncertainty causes inconvertible legal-tender government notes to depreciate. The excessive issue of these notes, as Sumner and the quantity theory of money claim, is not the cause of their depreciation. However, an excess of issue can influence the value of these notes by affecting uncertainty. Uncertainties that affect the value of inconvertible government notes include (1) the uncertainty of when they will be paid or even if they will be a paid, (2) the ability of the government to pay, (3) the willingness of the government to pay, and (4) the kind of coin that will be used for payment. Inconvertible paper money is what the world has had ever since 1971. However, today, much of this uncertainty has been eliminated. Almost no one now believes that governments will ever pay their notes, i.e., redeem their notes in a commodity that has intrinsic value at that intrinsic value.] However, Sumner comments that the quantity of the U.S. notes is fixed. Therefore, the answer to its value lies in its adverse foreign exchange, i.e., outflows of gold. He asks, “Is it [the gold outflow] due to the balance of payments, or to some deterioration of the currency” (p. 418)? According to the Bullion Committee, with which Sumner agrees, “the balance of imports and exports never can move the exchanges, either above or below par, more than just enough to start a movement of bullion” (p. 418). Thus, “[o]n a specie system, any outflow of bullion would bring down prices, and immediately make a remittance of goods more profitable than one of bullion; and, if the exportation of bullion was artificially continued (as, for instance, to pay the expenses of a foreign war), it would reduce prices until a counter current would set in and restore the former relative distribution all the world over” (p. 418). Continuing, Sumner writes, “If, therefore, there is an outflow of gold, serious and long continued, accompanied by an unfavorable exchange, it is a sign that there is an inferior currency behind the gold, which is displacing it. The surplus of imports of goods above the exports of goods is nothing but the return payment for this export of gold, and is not a cause, but a consequence” (p. 418). To produce an influx of gold, the inferior currency, inconvertible notes, needs to be removed. If foreign exchanges are adverse, gold will be exported; this exportation of gold is an indication that the paper money is excessive. Thus, inconvertible paper money should be issued in such quantity to prevent the exportation of gold (pp. 418-419).
    Poor disagrees with Sumner’s notions on the balance of trade. Particularly, Poor disagrees with Sumner’s notion that if a country exports gold that it necessarily receives an equal value of merchandise. Or, if it imports gold, it exports an equal value of merchandise (p. 419).
    Poor illustrates his disagreement with an analogy:

Suppose an individual possessed of a thousand dollars in coin to expend it in the purchase of the necessaries of life even, his means are reduced in like ratio. If he would reinstate his former condition, he must forego future expenditures to an equal amount. So, if a person run into debt to his shopkeeper to the amount of a thousand dollars, if he would pay it, he must forego a like amount of his future earnings. His indebtedness until paid would very properly be termed a balance of trade against him. So with a nation (p. 419).

[Sumner is closer to the truth than Poor. An exchange is only made when both parties of the exchange believe that he is receiving greater value than he is giving up. Poor has a point if the long-run consequences are considered. However, the long run is considered when an exchange is made. Unfortunately, many people do an extremely poor job of considering long-run consequences, and some give it no weight.]
Continuing, Poor writes:

If it [a country] import more in value of ordinary merchandise than it exports, its specie will have to go to make up the deficit. Now, no nation not producing gold can part with any considerable amount of it without causing embarrassment to its industries and trade; for the reason that that which it possessed and exported was a part of the machinery by which these were carried on. The tendency of the precious metals the world over is to distribute themselves according to the means and needs of those using them. If there be no movement in any direction, it is assumed that they are in proper equilibrium (p. 419).

Furthermore, Poor remarks, “The export of a large amount of coin is usually due to a vicious paper currency, and such a currency is always attended with wasteful expenditure” (p. 420). [Perhaps, politicians ought to heed Poor’s wisdom here. Could trade imbalances be caused more by “a vicious paper currency” and “wasteful expenditures” than the shenanigans of foreign countries to give their domestic industries advantages in foreign and even domestic trade at the expense of their own citizens?] When a country exports gold, it becomes weaker, “for she has parted with that which is essential to her welfare, and must be reclaimed by future accumulations” (p. 420). [The development in the use of bills of exchange reduced the need to export gold. Moreover, the elimination of gold from the monetary systems of the world today makes the exportation of gold irrelevant — at least in theory. Now a country only exports the inconvertible paper money of another country or its own inconvertible paper money, which it can replace without having to import it. Furthermore, most countries would prefer never having to import any of their currency that has been exported, except to tax it.]
Admitting that Sumner may be correct about inferior currency causing the outflow of gold, Poor asks, “may not the loss as well be described as an ‘unfavorable balance of trade’ as by any other term” (p. 420)? Then Poor remarks:

A nation that has parted with its coin, which has to be brought back again, would have been much better off had it never parted with it. That which has been received will never suffice to bring it back; and, if it would, the charges of transportation and interest would involve a large loss; so that, after all, “balance of trade” is a veritable fact, and always exists to a greater or less extent in commerce between nations, and must always exist until human affairs reach the accuracy and certainty of natural laws (p. 420).

Next, Poor asks, “[W]hat is an ‘inferior currency’” (p. 420)? He answers, “One kind is the inconvertible notes of government, issued not for the purpose of loaning capital, but to supply the lack of it” (p. 420). About inconvertible governments notes, he writes, “The demand for merchandise must increase in ratio to its amount; for it is always superadded to the existing currencies. As such notes are always made legal tender, they not only drive coin out of the country, but keep it out till they are retired. Such a currency admits of no corrective by the laws of trade” (p. 420).
“Another ‘inferior’ currency,” Poor writes, “is that issued by Banks, without a constituent” (p. 420). Initially, it acts like government notes in driving gold out of the country. However, since these bank notes are convertible to gold coin, banks must supply the gold to meet their redemption. As a result, “[t]hey must pay for the excess of imports over exports from their reserves” (p. 421). Poor writes:

It is impossible, however, for them [bankers] to tell whether all the bills discounted by them have their proper constituent: they can only determine the fact by the result. If they see gold beginning to move, they understand at once that improper bills have been discounted; that the currency has been issued in excess, and must so far be taken in by a reduction of their line of discounts. The movement of gold, therefore, is an indication of the state of the currency, as infallible as is that of the mercury of meteoric conditions (p. 421).

[Poor is describing the operation of the real bills doctrine correcting the overissue of bank notes and checkable deposits resulting from discounted faulty bills.]
Sumner’s test of an ‘inferior currency’ differs greatly from what Poor has described. Sumner’s test is that of quantity; Poor’s is that of quality. To Sumner, a currency is not “inferior” if “its amount does not exceed that required by a country in its exchanges, even if it be not backed by a single dollar of coin” (p. 421). Thus, according to Sumner, “the value of money depends upon its quantity, not upon the provision made for its convertibility, [and] ‘are not matters of opinion, but of demonstration’” (p. 421). To this, Poor replies, “If so, then it is a matter of demonstration that one and one make four” (p. 421). Poor adds “that the real or estimated value of articles, whether they be merchandise or money, is their exchangeable value. To assume otherwise, would be to say that the exchangeable value of a piece of silver having the weight and insignia of a sovereign equals the value of a sovereign. Humanity is not yet brought to so low a pitch as this” (p. 421). [The sovereign is a gold coin that contains 0.23542 troy ounces, i.e., 113 grains of gold, which was the British pound from 1816 until Great Britain left the gold standard. A century after Poor wrote, humanity, or at least mainstream economists, had reached such a low level that they fell for the pitch that a piece of paper with the government’s seal on it was the same as gold.]
Poor concludes his review of Sumner:

Even the Economists are by no means the simple race their theories would make them. In spite of the conclusions of the Bullion Committee, which, with Mr. Sumner, are the very acme of financial wisdom, he would be the last man to take a bank or government note without especial reference to the provision made for its discharge. If their creed were their law, a few days would suffice for the Economists to fool away whatever they possessed (pp. 421-422).

Wednesday, February 7, 2018

Poor on Fawcett

Poor on Fawcett

Thomas Allen

[G]eneral prices depend upon the quantity of money in circulation compared with the wealth which is bought and sold with money, and also upon the frequency with which this wealth is bought and sold before it is consumed. If more wealth is produced, and an increased quantity of wealth is also bought and sold for money, general prices must decline, unless a large quantity of money is brought into circulation. . . . In fact, if there should be an increased production of wealth, if there should be more buying and selling, or if any other circumstance should occur the effect of which is to require the circulation of a larger amount of money, the value of money must rise; or, in other words, general prices must decline, unless an increased supply of money is forthcoming, so that a larger amount may be brought into circulation (p. 377).

Next Fawcett discusses bills of exchange. If bills of exchange ceased to be used, then the money supply would have to be increased to replace the bills of exchange. Thus, “bills of exchange, in many classes of transactions, are a convenient and complete substitute for money” (p. 377). “Consequently, if it were not for bills of exchange, one of two things must happen: either the money in circulation must be increased, or the money already in circulation must become more valuable, since a greater amount of money will be required to carry on the trade and commerce of the country” (p. 377). Therefore, whether an increased issue of bills of exchange affects prices cannot be answered affirmatively or negatively. “All that can be said is this: if the buying and selling now carried on by bills of exchange were effected by money, then one of two things must occur, — either more money must be brought into circulation, or general price most decline” (pp. 377-378). Fawcett concludes, “The influence, however, which is exerted upon prices by bills of exchange is not due to any thing peculiar in the nature or form of a bill of exchange: it is not the bill which produces the influence, but the influence is produced by the credit which is given. The bill is not this credit; but is simply a testimony or record of its existence” (p. 378).
Poor responds that Fawcett errs in his example. All £60,000 of notes would be returned for redemption within 60 to 90 days of the issue for gold coin or the equivalent to coin. Explaining how this would happen, Poor writes:

If the banker discounted bills representing merchandise, his notes would be returned to him by their makers in their payment. If he discounted those that would not be paid, then the notes issued would have to be presently taken in by him, by paying out a corresponding amount of his reserve. The debts created by their issue are to be discharged by their use, or by that of coin. Every note issued, therefore, must have a provision of an equal amount of capital for its discharge, and must be discharged by such provision. Its value depends upon its capacity of being discharged, of being retired from circulation. If it could never be discharged, it could have no value. Such is the law of all convertible currencies. Notes get into circulation upon the credit of the issuer; but it is always upon the assumption that means, their equivalent in value, are first provided for their redemption. Without such confidence, no one would take them. The basis of their circulation is not credit, but capital. Credit is but another word for confidence that such capital exists, and can always be had when wanted (p. 378).

Poor continues, “The reserve is not held to meet such notes as occasionally return, such as are assumed to be issued in excess; for the reason that all will return within their appointed periods” (p. 379). Thus, “Mr. Fawcett wholly misconceived the law or nature of paper money” (p. 379). [Poor gives an excellent explanation of the operation of the real bills doctrine. If the principle of the real bills doctrine is adhered to, currency cannot be overissued. It ensures that the currency available to clear, buy, new goods entering the markets is sufficient to clear the market with little or no effect on prices. Here is where the advocates of Social Credit err. Under the real bills doctrine, new goods entering the markets produce the money needed to buy them, i.e., the bill of exchange. Without resorting to borrowing, it also provides the money to pay employees and suppliers before the goods are sold. Thus, the real bills doctrine is far superior to the Social Credit scheme, which requires the government to print and give government notes to the people to close the gap between national income and the gross domestic product. The real bills doctrine closes the perceived gap between the national income and gross domestic product more quickly, accurately, and precisely than does the Social Credit scheme. Moreover, unlike the Social Credit scheme, the real bills doctrine closes the gap without resorting to governmental force or making the people dependent on the government or leading them to believe that they are getting something for nothing. Unlike the Social Credit scheme, which requires about two years to deliver the money to the people necessary to close the gap that occurred two years earlier, the real bills doctrine does so within a few months at most. Furthermore, the real bills doctrine is far superior to the Social Credit scheme at getting the right amount of money at the right place and at the right time.]
Moreover, according to Poor, Fawcett errs with “his statement that notes can be substituted, as currency, for a corresponding amount of gold; the saving to the country being in the amount of the substitution, ‘because notes, which are simply pieces of paper of no intrinsic value, perform with equal efficiency all the purposes which were previously fulfilled by the gold which is now supposed to be dispensed with’” (p. 379). Poor remarks:

Notes which are constantly being retired from circulation cannot take the place of gold which remains, as currency, unchanged and permanently in circulation. Whether convertible or not, they cannot perform, with equal efficiency, all the purposes which are fulfilled by gold. Their value is representative, not intrinsic; that of gold is intrinsic, not representative. Notes become valueless if their constituent become valueless; the value of gold depends upon nothing but itself (p. 379).

[With today’s paper fiat money, notes have replaced gold. That paper notes and their electronic equivalent “cannot perform, with equal efficiency, all the purposes which are fulfilled by gold” explains much of the monetary and economic problems that the world now faces.]
In comparing gold with bank notes, Poor writes:

Gold can be used in the arts; notes cannot. Gold can discharge indebtedness to foreign countries; notes cannot. Gold can discharge balances arising in the domestic trade of a country; notes cannot. Gold can be held as reserves by the issuers of paper money, and by society, and for all time; notes cannot in either case, as they are necessarily speedily retired by the use, or disappearance from any cause, of their constituent. Notes are accepted within the country in which they are issued, by reason of their representative character. They can perform only one function of gold, — that of effecting domestic exchanges (p. 379).

[Poor fails to mention that gold, which is no one else’s obligation, can extinguish debt; notes cannot. Notes can only discharge debts by transferring them to another. Moreover, gold can transport value over millennia; notes cannot.]
    Also, according to Poor, Fawcett fails to see “that the less cannot include the greater. Paper discharges gold from use in one particular; but can no more be substituted for it in all the functions which the latter has to perform in the economy of society than a mere promise can be substituted for the performance, or sugar for iron” (p. 379). Poor adds, “Great advantages result from the use of paper money, and in ratio to its use, in the same way that great advantages result from the use of ships and railroad” (p. 380). [Trying to substitute completely paper for gold is the major flaw of modern-day economics and today’s monetary system that will cause their downfall. It is also the major and fatal flaw of all schemes of the fiat monetary reformers. Even worse, is the movement to reduce all money to electronic bytes, as they are even more nebulous and abstract than paper notes.]
    Next Poor comments on “Mr. Fawcett’s theory of the effect upon prices of credit in the form of paper money is singularly unphilosophic and inadequate. With him, the whole thing is a mere piece of mechanism: so much money, so much price; and the reverse. His conclusions are based upon assumptions wholly impossible in themselves” (p. 380). Contrary to Fawcett’s belief that doubling production and purchases while the amount of money remains the same will cause price to fall one-half, “production and consumption cannot be doubled, the amount of money remaining the same; both must, as a rule, proceed in ratio to the amount of money in circulation” (p. 380). Moreover, Poor adds, “Paper money is the symbol of merchandise: the one must be in ratio to the other, as the necessary condition of production and consumption” (p. 380).
    About Fawcett’s belief, Poor remarks:

He [Fawcett] might as well have assumed the commerce of a country to be doubled for the reason that the ships employed carried twice as much as they have the ability to carry. His statements and illustrations are nothing less than contradictions in terms. Credit in the form of money has an effect entirely different from that due to its quantity. ‘If,’ says Fawcett, in effect, ‘one would lift two pounds of merchandise with a one pound weight, he must double, or reduce one-half, the length of one arm of the scale.’ The true object of paper money is to raise the two pounds of merchandise without the employment of any weight whatever. So far as this can be done, can the cost of the operations of weighing be saved, and prices reduced in like ratio; and so far can the coin of a country be employed in the discharge of functions peculiar to itself, and which neither symbols nor paper money of any kind can discharge (p. 380).

        According to Poor, depending on Fawcett’s definition of currency, Fawcett may have erred in assuming that an increase in currency is followed by an increase in prices (pp. 380-381). If currency is capital or the representation of capital, then Fawcett is wrong because “prices must be in ratio to the amount of merchandise fitted for consumption, or in ratio to the perfection of the instruments for its distribution” (p. 381). However, if currency “be neither capital nor the representative of capital (merchandise); if it be that kind of currency which can be substituted for gold, like legal tender [notes],” (p. 381) then Fawcett is right because “an increase of such currency always tends to advance prices in being in excess of the means of consumption” (p. 381). [Although general prices fluctuated under the gold standard, they were much more stable than general prices have been under today’s paper fiat monetary system. {An ostensible goal of today’s monetary system used to be to maintain stable prices.} Under the gold standard, general prices trended upward for years and then downward for years; however, over a few decades, they remained fairly stable with perhaps a downward bias because of improved technology. Under today’s fiat paper monetary system, general prices have trended upward as the monetary unit loses purchasing power year after year.]
    About inconvertible currency [e.g., today’s currency], Poor writes, “People accept an inconvertible currency of government notes, as it will discharge their own debts existing at the time, by virtue of its being legal tender, and from a belief that it will speedily be redeemed by an equivalent in some form. If government be competent to issue it, it would have a high value for a time, even if it were believed that it would not be paid” (p. 384). [No one really believes that today’s currency will be paid, i.e., redeemed in gold or in anything else with intrinsic value.]
    According to Fawcett, a country can increase the issue of its currency without disturbing the finances of the country “if its issue were confined within reasonable limits” (p. 384). “If, for example, the United States, in the late civil war, had issued notes only in ratio to their increased necessity for money, the issue could have exerted no influence over prices” (p. 384). About U.S. notes issued during the war, Poor comments, “The demand for money, measured by the price of the notes issued, exceeded sixteen-fold the amount of previous expenditure” (p. 384). Then he asks, “how could the expenditures of a government be increased sixteen-fold, or even eightfold, without any increase of capital, or fund to draw upon, and prices remain at their old figures? It is the same as to say that a demand multiplied by one per cent equals a demand multiplied by eight or sixteen per cent” (p. 384). Continuing, Poor remarks, “If gold could have been supplied wherewith to meet all expenditures growing out of the war, prices would still have increased enormously, from the excess of demand over supply” (p. 384). About the rise of prices during the war, Poor writes, “Prices rose, therefore, in ratio to the demand; in other words, in ratio to the inflation of the currency” (pp. 384-385).
    In his concluding remarks about Fawcett, Poor writes:

If Mr. Fawcett had paused long enough to ask himself weather [sic] or not a sovereign to be received six months hence had the same value to the person who was to receive it as a sovereign in hand; or whether a government note having one year to run, without interest, equalled in value its note having the same time to run, bearing interest, — the answer, properly made, would have unlocked to him all the mysteries of money. Instead of this, he contented himself with a mild restatement of all the old dogmas, every one of which he accepted without reservation, and every one of which is exactly opposed to the principles upon which money is based. It must, however, be said in his favor, that his style is in agreeable contrast to the incoherent extravagance of Macleod and the fantastic nonsense of Bonamy Price (p. 385).

Saturday, November 25, 2017

Poor on McCulloch

Poor on McCulloch

Thomas Allen

Fully accepting the doctrines of [Adam] Smith, and the wide distinction which he made between the qualities of the precious metals which fit them for money and those which determine their value in exchange, he proceeds to consider the laws by which their value is determined when their movement is perfectly free; and those by which they are affected when artificial restraint is imposed upon it (p. 318).

McCulloch states that under free competition, the value of gold and silver depend on the cost of their production. The prices of commodities, i.e., their value measured in money, vary with their cost of production, supply and demand, and the cost of gold and silver to which they are compared (p. 318). When the supply of gold and silver is restricted, the supply of money is limited. He writes, “Whenever the supply of money is limited, its value varies in inverse ratio to its quantity as compared with the quantity of commodities brought to market, or with the business it has to perform” (p. 318). For that reason, if the supply of commodities doubles while the amount of currency remains the same, their price would be reduced by half. On the other hand, if the supply of commodities were reduced by half and the amount of currency remains constants, their price would double (pp. 318-319). Thus, money is merely a ticket or counter used to compute the value of property, and in transforming it from one to another. [McCulloch seems to confuse value with price. The two are different. Price measures value, but it is not value. Furthermore, some items, e.g., air, patriotism, and religious beliefs, have great value, but are not priced.] He claims “that a debased currency may, by first reducing, and then limiting its quantity, be made to circulate at the value it would bear were the power to supply it unrestricted, and were it of the legal weight and fineness; and, by still further limiting its quantity, it may be made to pass at any higher value” (p. 319). [History shows that when governments debase their currency, prices rise even if the supply is limited, which it seldom is.] He believes that nonconvertible paper money can be given a higher value than an equivalently denominated gold coin if its supply is sufficiently limited. A half-sovereign coin can be made to do the work (number of exchanges) as a one-sovereign coin if all one-sovereign coins were replaced by half-sovereign coins and no new coins were minted. [He means replacing each one-sovereign coin with a one-half-sovereign coin. He does not mean replacing each sovereign coin with two half- sovereign coins.] The same quantity of commodities would now be exchanged for the same number of coins. [This conclusion is highly unlikely. When exchanges were made under the gold standard, they were based on the gold content of the coin and not the number of coins. People compared the value of the product to the value of the gold content of the coin and not to the coin itself. Most likely, what would happen if half-sovereigns replaced all one-sovereigns, dealers who sold their products for one sovereign would now sell them for two half-sovereigns. Cutting the money supply in half as in McCulloch’s example would significantly hamper commerce and, by that, production.] He offers no example where what he suggests would happen has ever happened. McCulloch maintains that the value of inconvertible paper currency “depend[s] on the proportion which its amount bears to the commodities brought to market, or to the demand; and wherever a currency of this kind, or a limited gold currency, is in circulation, the common opinion that the price of commodities depends wholly on the proportion between them and the supply of money is quite correct” (pp. 319-320). However, “with a freely supplied currency consisting of gold and silver, . . . fluctuations in the supply and demand of such currency have no permanent influence over its value. This is determined by the cost of its production” (p. 320). [In The Value of Money, Anderson argues that the cost of production determining gold’s value is incorrect. He asserts that the “value of money is a quality of money, that quality which money shares with other forms of wealth, which lies behind, and causally explains, the exchange relations into which money enters.” “Value {of money} is prior to exchange. Value is not to be denned as ‘power in exchange.’” According to Anderson, the social value theory best explains the value of money: “the social value theory is the only way of giving a psychological explanation to the demand-curve, and a marginal value explanation of marginal demand-price.” Thus, the value of money derives from the value of the commodity of which it is made and from its services as money. The value of the commodity as money is combined with the value of the commodity in its non-monetary use. Like all other commodities, and everything else, the value of the monetary metal and of its use as money is psychological. Anderson concludes, “The physical weight in gold, which itself is an object of social value, is commonly the immediate basis of the value of the dollar to-day, but money may get its primary value from other sources than valuable bullion. Given this primary value, the dollar may get an enhancement in that value from the services which it performs in the social technology of adjustment.”]
Poor retorts:

Mr. McCulloch might as well have assumed a particular county of England to be fenced off by a wall so high that only a small amount of vital air could get into it; and that, in such case, the right to breathe would sell at an enormous price; and have inferred, therefrom, that, should the amount of money be limited, its price would rise in like ratio. One illustration is as pertinent, or rather as impertinent, as the other (p. 320).

Poor continues, “Whoever gets gold, gets it to spend. There may be quarrels between those who dig and those who rule as to who shall enjoy the product; but, whatever the result, it would immediately go into circulation” (p. 320). [Today, the rulers have resolved the quarrel by driving gold from the monetary system. They have given themselves absolute control of the monetary system. Contrary to the claims of most orthodox fiat money proponents and probably all fiat money reformers, the Federal Reserve is not an independent agency independent of the government and does as it pleases. It is just the junior partner in the scam to pillage the American people. The government is the senior partner. It created the Federal Reserve; the Federal Reserve did not create the government. It exists at the pleasure of the government, which may abolish the Federal Reserve anytime. Working together, the government and the Federal Reserve can confuse the people by blaming the other for the country’s economic problems although both are guilty.]
Poor notes that in another work of McCulloch, McCulloch claims that controlling the movement of precious metals is impossible for governments (p. 320). Poor writes:

His illustrations, however, are in keeping with those of the school to which he belonged, which is always assuming impossible instances as a means of setting forth its conclusions and beliefs. It is the way of children, not the method of men of full stature. Neither the production nor possession of the precious metals can be monopolized. Their value everywhere, under all conditions (allowing for the influence of accidental circumstances), is measured by their cost (pp. 320-321).

[Governments may not be able to prevent the movement of gold, but they can greatly hamper its movement. For example, with few exceptions, the U.S. government prohibited Americans owning gold between 1933 and 1974.]
Commenting on McCulloch’s belief that if the currency’s quantity is strictly limited, a debased currency can function as well as full-weight coin, Poor remarks that Locke had proven more than a century earlier, that a debased coin will not function as well as a full-weight coin. About the period of recoinage of English money in 1696 when Locke made his argument, Poor writes:

For a time, the amount of coin in circulation, or currency of all kinds, equaled hardly a tithe of that required for the exchanges of the country. These, for a considerable period, had to be made by means of credit or barter. Yet the necessity which then existed for a “circulating medium” did not exert the slightest influence in raising the value of the debased coins. The value of each was measured by the cost of the metal that each contained. Had their value risen greatly above their cost, supplies would immediately have flowed in from other countries. If tickets or counters were all that were wanted, these could easily have been provided, as McCulloch suggests, by cutting the pieces in circulation into a sufficient number of parts. It was capital, not counters, that was wanted, and relief came only when that was supplied (p. 320).

Poor continues:

But even admitting that, by reducing the amount of metal in coins, their value might be maintained from the necessity of their use, there was still an important link wanting to connect his premise with his conclusion. Gold gets into circulation by means of its value. It circulates at its value. If its amount were permanently decreased, its value would increase. This is palpable enough; but how is that which is valueless in itself to get into the category of values (p. 322)?

[This is the question that others also ask: How can that which has no value itself and is not the representation of value measure value?]
Poor asks how can something that has little or no value get into circulation in the first place? He answers that McCulloch would claim that some medium of exchange is needed and people agree that this worthless thing would be their medium of exchange. To this answer, Poor replies, “[I]t is useless to reply to such assumptions as these. They are the dreams or vagaries of persons bereft of all sense in reference to the subjects to which they relate, and who, unfortunately, are wholly impervious to reason” (p. 322).
Commenting on bank notes, McCulloch writes:

Notes not legal tender, and payable on demand, or at some stipulated period, are not paper money, though they serve the same purposes during the time they continue to circulate. The value of such notes is wholly derived from the confidence placed in the ability of the issuers to retire them when presented for payment, or when they become due. Whenever, therefore, this confidence ceases, their circulation necessarily ceases also (p. 322).

    About paper money, i.e., government notes, McCulloch states that “confidence in the solvency of the issuers exercises the smallest influence over the value of paper money” (p. 322). Paper money is legal tender and not legally convertible into gold or anything else. “It circulates because it is made legal tender, and because the use of a circulating medium is indispensable; and its value, supposing the demand to be constant, is, in all cases, precisely as the quantity in circulation” (p. 322). He believes that the issuer of inconvertible paper money can maintain par with gold or silver without difficulty (pp. 322-321). To maintain a constant price of gold, all that the issuer needs to do is to decrease or increase the quantity of paper money. [This is the recommendation of some supply-side economist in recent years.]
    Poor questions McCulloch’s assumption that “an inconvertible government note of the nominal value of an ounce of gold, to be of equal value, and exchangeable therefor” (p. 323). Moreover, Poor comments that according to McCulloch, inconvertible government notes circulate “not from any value it possessed, but from the necessity for its use as a ticket or counter of exchange” (p. 324). Furthermore, according to McCulloch, such money need not be made legal tender (p. 324). Poor wonders how such money would ever get into circulation and who would accept it (p. 324). Also, how would the excess be retired? [The government can get its notes into circulation by printing them and paying them to its employees, welfare recipients, and suppliers. It can further encourage the circulation of its notes by requiring them in payment of taxes and making them legal tender at the debtor’s option for payment of debts. In theory, the excess could be removed by having tax receipts to exceed expenditures enough to retire the excess — when was the last time that happened?]
    McCulloch proposes eliminating precious metal, either as bullion or coin, as money because of the excessive cost. Paper should be substituted for metal. Thus, paper would replace gold as the reserves held by banks (pp. 324-325). [In the United States between 1862 and 1879, U.S. government notes replaced gold largely as reserves for banks. Today, all bank reserves are in paper and its electronic equivalent, which is even cheaper than paper.]
    If McCulloch’s proposals were implemented, Poor sarcastically remarks, “The monetary millennium would then dawn on the world” (p. 325). [If McCulloch had lived another hundred years, he could see the results of his monetary millennium. His monetary millennium arrived in 1971 when the world divorced itself completely from gold and substituted entirely a paper and electronic monetary system in its place.]
    In response to McCulloch’s proposal, Poor writes:

But what does every one seek in exchanging that which he possesses? To better his condition; to get something which will be more valuable to him than that with which he parts; in order to have that which, when he wishes to use it, will bring to him the greatest possible amount of values in other forms. Gold and silver, therefore, are always demanded in exchange, for the reason that they are values in their highest forms. The whole effort of mankind is to convert its industries and products into such values, or into that which shall produce them; and which, till its possession be demanded, is drawing interest in kind for the benefit of the party entitled to it. The whole effort of nature is in the same direction, — to convert lesser into greater values (p. 325).

Then Poor remarks that McCulloch “would invert all this order, by converting whatever a person has to sell, not into the most valuable, but into the least valuable form” (p. 325).
In his concluding remarks on McCulloch, Poor writes, “Nothing can be more disgraceful in a man like him, — Professor of Political Economy in the university of a city which, commercially, is the very eye of the world, and standing at the very apex of his school, — than the ignorance and assurance he displayed” (p. 327).

Endnotes
1. B.M. Anderson, The Value of Money (New York: The Macmillian Co., 1917), pp. 8-9).

2. Ibid., p. 9.

3. Ibid., p. 42.

4. Ibid., p. 591.

Copyright © 2017 by Thomas Coley Allen.

More articles on money.

Saturday, October 28, 2017

Poor and Rist on Tooke

Poor and Rist on Tooke

Thomas Allen

    This article presents two views, Poor's and Rist's, on Thomas Tooke. Thomas Tooke (1774-1858) was an English merchant, economist, and historian of prices. He wrote History of Prices and of the State of the Circulation during the Years 1793–1856 (1838-1857) in six volumes and Enquiry into the Currency Principle (1844). Unlike most of the people whom Poor reviews, Tooke is not an ardent supporter of the Quantity Theory of Money. He considers the quantity of money, i.e., circulating purchasing media, to be mostly irrelevant.

Poor on Tooke
    In 1877, Henry Varnum Poor (1812-1905) wrote Money and Its Laws: Embracing a History of Monetary Theories, and a History of the Currency of the United States. He was a financial analyst and founder of a company that evolved into Standard & Poor’s. Poor was a proponent of the real bills doctrine and the classical gold-coin standard and, thus, the quality theory of money. He gave little credence to the quantity theory of money — especially if credit money, such as bank notes, were convertible on demand in species. Also, he contended that the value of money depends on and is derived from the value of the material of which it is made and with paper money, its representation of such value.
    In the latter part of his book, he discusses leading monetary theorists from Aristotle (350 B.C.) to David A. Wells (1875). Most of the economists whom he discussed were proponents of the quantity theory of money. My comments are in brackets. Referenced page numbers enclosed in parentheses are to Poor’s book.
    Tooke sought to prove “that a rise in prices always precedes, and causes an increase of money, in whatever form” (p. 313). Poor states that Tooke’s claim is like saying “that a rise of water in rivers always precedes and is the cause of rainfall.” [In other words, Poor asserts, to the extent that changes in the money supply relate to prices, that a rise in general prices follows an increase in money supply while Tooke asserts that it precedes an increase money supply. Both include all forms of credit money as part of the money supply.]
    Tooke believes that no variation in the quantity of the circulating medium affects prices. He believes “that the amount of the circulating medium, is the effect, and not the cause, of variations in prices” (p. 314). Because people have more money to spend does not mean that they will spend it. He maintains that as long as paper money is convertible to gold on demand, increasing the quantity of paper money will not affect the prices of commodities. Thus, convertible paper money cannot affect prices under any condition (pp. 314-316). [Tooke appears not to distinguish between paper money issued to discount real bills and paper money issued to discount fictitious bills like accommodation bills or financial bills like government bills. The former has little or no affect on prices whereas the latter often cause prices to rise, i.e., causes the currency to depreciate.]
    Following Adam Smith, Tooke believes that paper money is merely a substitute for gold coin. For each unit of paper money in circulation, a unit of gold coin is removed from circulation. Any excess paper money would be redeemed in gold coin. Thus, paper money is a substitute for coin and is not in addition to gold coin. [Under the real bills doctrine, paper money is not a substitute for gold coin, but is in addition to gold coin. However, if excessive paper money is issued, the excess is quickly redeemed for coin. As shown below, Rist disagrees with Poor on this interpretation of Tooke.]
    According to Tooke’s argument, convertible paper money cannot affect prices. Moreover, “[n]either could a government inconvertible paper currency affect prices, so long as it was not in excess of the wants of those using it in their exchanges” (p. 216). Also, Tooke maintains that “[v]alue was no necessary attribute of [paper money or gold coin]” (p. 316).
    Poor objects to Tooke’s claim that money, i.e., gold coin, has no value per se. Poor states, “Whatever is to serve as money, in the last resort, must always possess uniformity of value, not only for months and years, but for ages” (p. 316). [Whatever serves as money needs to be able to transport value not only through space but also through time. Before a material becomes money, it must be able to transport value through time and space or represent something that can transport value through time and space. To do that, it has to have value in itself.]
    According to Tooke, prices “depend upon cost, and the ability, not the will, of the public to consume” (p. 317). Poor remarks, “The public are able to consume a thousand things they will not” (p. 317). [As value is subjective and price reflects value, a person must have the will to consume before he consumes. Also, once he decides to consume, he must have the ability to consume. Poor is much closer to the truth on this issue than Tooke.]
    According to Poor, Tooke fails to understand “that it is possible for prices to fall enormously, even when it [money] is greatly inflated” (p. 317). Poor continues:

The effect of an inflation is to advance prices, from an increase of the instruments of expenditure, and from its tendency to excite speculation, which may be carried to such a pitch as to seize and attempt to hold all the food, for example, upon the market. In such case, it not unfrequently happens that the public can be supplied from other sources, or that, from the excessive rates charged by holders, consumption will be so much reduced that those who attempted to control prices find themselves unable to carry their purchases, and are forced to throw them upon the market; in consequence of which, prices may for a time be far below what they would have been under a metallic currency (p. 317).

[In the United States, the decades following Lincoln’s war to prevent Southern independence, general prices trended downward although the money supply was inflated. First, it was inflated with U.S. notes; then it was inflated with silver dollars. Although this inflation did not result in a rise in general prices, it did distort the economy and lead to the depression of the 1870s and the depression of the 1890s. Moreover, technological advances were driving prices down faster than the inflation could push them up.]
Tooke’s notion that prices are “wholly independent of the quantity of the circulating medium” (p. 317) comes from observations of events occurring when the Bank of England had suspended redemption of its notes. About Tooke’s notion, Poor writes in his concluding remarks on Tooke:

He might as well have attempted to prove that indulgence in liquor had no tendency to elevate one, from the exhaustion or syncope resulting from its excessive use. So, under an inflation of the currency, prices may fall in much greater ratio than the inflation, from the decreased cost of production, or from the falling off, from any cause, of the demand. None of these causes or influences were properly considered by him. He sought to erect a science from an observation of certain phenomena, without sufficient reference to their cause or law. It is as useless, however, to attempt to reason with him as it was with the philosopher in the tale of “Rasselas.” It was, probably, from an examination or an attempted examination of his works, that Mr. Gladstone declared the study of money to be a fruitful cause of insanity (p. 317).

    [In recent decades, the money supply in the United States, Japan, Europe, and other countries have been highly inflated. Yet none of the developed countries have experienced a rise in general prices of the magnitude that one would expect if the Quantity Theory of Money were correct.
    Whereas Poor is more focused on the real bills doctrine than on the Law of Reflux, Tooke focuses on the Law of Reflux and mostly ignores the real bills doctrine. {The Law of Reflux claims that banks cannot overissue bank credit money, bank notes and checkbook money, because any over issued currency quickly returns to the issuing bank for redemption. The Law of Reflux pertains to the liability side of a bank’s balance sheet while the real bills doctrine pertains to its asset side. Although the real bills doctrine depends on the Law of Reflux, the Law of Reflux does not depend on the real bills doctrine. That is, the Law of Reflux can operate when financial papers like government bills and commercial papers other than real bills of exchanges like accommodation bills are discounted. The Law of Reflux functions under the gold standard where excess credit money can be exchanged for gold, which extinguishes the credit money. However, it does not function under today’s fiat money standard where one form of credit money can only be exchanged for another form of credit money.} As shown below, Rist is more in agreement with Tooke than is Poor. However, Rist places more importance on the real bills doctrine than does Tooke.]

Rist on Tooke
    In 1938, Charles Rist (1874-1955) wrote History of Monetary and Credit Theory from John Law to the Present Day (translated by Jane Degras, New York: Augustus M. Kelly Publishers: 1966) in which he reviews several economists including Tooke. Rist was a French economist, who was of the Banking School as opposed to the Currency School. [Under the gold standard, banking philosophies generally fell into either the banking school or the currency school. The banking school “holds that as long as a bank maintains the convertibility of its bank notes into specie (gold), for which it should keep ‘adequate’ reserves, it is impossible for it to over issue its bank notes against sound commercial paper with fixed short term (90 days or less) maturities.”[1] Its position is also called the “Banking Principle” or “Principle of Fullerton.” To the banking school, bank notes are merely circulating credit instruments. Although they can be exchanged for gold, they are not intended to be warehouse receipts for gold. The currency school “maintains that all . . . changes in the nation’s quantity of money should correspond precisely with changes in the nation’s holdings of monetary metal. . . .”[2] Its position is also called the “currency doctrine.” To the currency school, bank notes are merely warehouse receipts and, therefore, should be backed 100 percent by specie. To the banking school, bank notes are claims for new merchandise offered for sale in the markets. Under the currency school, bank notes are claims for gold. Under the currency school philosophy, an elastic currency does not exist; under the banking school, it does.] Rist’s opinion of Tooke differs somewhat from Poor’s. My comments are in brackets. Referenced page numbers enclosed in parentheses are to Rist’s book.
    As an opponent of devaluation, Tooke supports making bank notes convertible to gold at the same rate that existed before suspension during the Napoleonic wars. Devaluation hurts the working class (pp. 184-185). [However, devaluation benefits debtors, most of whom are speculators, governments, and people living beyond their means, as it allows them to pay their debts with less gold.]
    Tooke does not believe that the fall of prices and the concomitant economic sluggishness resulted from returning to the gold standard at prewar parity (p. 185). About the fall in prices, Rist notes:

In all probability, the output of the gold and silver mines being what it was, the increase in the volume of goods produced would in itself have been enough, once the war was over, to bring prices down. . . . [T]he very high level to which prices in England and on the continent had been raised by the war and by paper money could not be maintained once the increase in the quantity of paper issued, which had been continuous up till then, was interrupted by the return to gold. The normal lowering of prices which would in any case have followed from a greater output of goods while the volume of currency remained the same, was intensified in England by the rise in the gold value of the pound sterling. . . . [T]he scarcity of gold was made responsible for what was in fact the obvious result of war and inflation (pp. 185-186).

    Tooke distinguishes between paper money and bank notes. Paper money is money in the proper sense of the word. Bank notes are instruments of bank credit. Moreover, bank notes should not be treated differently from checks and bills of exchange. All three are credit instruments and have the same character. Also, in the full meaning of the word, none are money (p. 187).
    Whereas Ricardo considers only the supply of paper money to explain the rise in prices when bank notes are not convertible to gold, Tooke considers both the supply of and the demand for currency (p. 187). Demand depends on the conditions of the markets and fluctuates accordingly (pp. 188-189). Fluctuation in foreign demand for the British pound has an immediate effect on domestic prices. Thus, the rise in prices is affected by “expansion of the home demand for goods due to successive increases in the amount of paper money put into circulation, and a rise in the price of goods imported due to the depreciation of the paper money on the foreign exchange market” (p. 189).
    Rist compares Tooke with Ricardo on the rise in prices under a paper money standard: “Tooke contends that the rise in English prices during the Napoleonic wars was to a large extent the effect of the depreciation of sterling on the exchange, whereas Ricardo regards that depreciation merely as a repercussion of the preceding rise in the prices of English goods” (p. 190).
    Tooke contends “that in fact that part of the rise in English prices above the rise due to exchange depreciation was the result of an excessive issue of paper money” (p. 190). However, he also believes that exchange depreciation is closely connected with the increased quantity of paper money (p. 191).
    Ricardo argues that “the only way to bring the pound back to par was to reduce the note circulation” (p. 193). However, the pound was brought back to parity with gold not by reducing the quantity of notes in circulation, but through improvements on foreign exchanges, which Tooke noted (pp. 193-194).
    Whereas Ricardo treats convertible bank notes as equivalent to paper money, Tooke notices a great deal of difference between the two. Also, Ricardo distinguishes bank notes from other credit instruments (checkable deposits and bills of exchange) while Tooke considers them the same (p. 196).
    To Tooke forced paper currency, such as the pound during the Napoleonic wars and the U.S. note until 1879, is money. Legal-tender paper money “is issued to meet the requirements and cover the expenditure of the State, it represents a final income (that is to say, not subject to repayment) for those individuals who come into possession of it, increasing their purchasing power, thus increasing their demand for goods and making prices rise. In brief, paper money acts on prices in the same way as metallic money does” (p. 197). [Examples are the U.S. note between 1862 and 1879 and the federal reserve note after 1933 domestically and after 1971 on foreign exchanges.]
    On the other hand, convertible bank notes “are credit instruments. They are only issued as advances. Far from being incorporated in the currency, they are bound to return to the bank which has issued them when the advances are repaid” (p. 197).
    Bank notes can “affect prices only provisionally, for in order to repay the advances a sum exactly equal to those advances has to be taken from the final income. An advance from the bank enables the borrower to spend to-day an income which he will in fact receive only later, but he will not spend that income since it will be used to repay the advance” (p. 198). Thus, “[b]ank-notes are claims on a defined quantity of gold. Paper money is a means of payment whose purchasing power over goods (or gold) is fixed on the market according to variations in supply and demand. It is a legal claim, and it is only the law which gives it the power to settle debts” (p. 199). [Legal-tender paper money settles a debt by passing that debt to another. However, being an obligation of the issuer, it can never extinguish debt. On the other hand, gold coin is no one’s obligation and can, therefore, extinguish debt.]
    Not only does convertibility limit the quantity of notes issued [and checkbook money], it also “gives notes legal and economic qualities which paper money does not possess, and which are independent of quantity” (p. 200).
    Unlike Ricardo, Tooke does not consider bank notes identical to metallic money, gold or silver coin. To Tooke, money is more than a medium of exchange or a common denomination of value; “it is the ‘subject of contracts for future payment,’ and ‘it is in this latter capacity that the fixity of a standard is most essential’” (pp. 200-201). “[T]the value of the convertible bank-note is derived precisely from its connexion with the metallic standard” (p. 201). Although a paper money standard is a standard, it is, however, a poor standard because it has nothing to guarantee stability (p. 201).
    Rist summarizes Tooke’s conclusion on the identity of bank notes and checkable deposits:

1. Since all credit instruments are essentially the same, it is absurd to put bank-notes in a class apart. If credit has been granted in excessive quantities, the situation cannot be remedied merely by limiting the number of bank-notes issued, as the Currency School argued, it is necessary to deal with credit as a whole.
2. The banks’ creation of credit, in all its forms, and particularly in the form of bank-notes, takes place only because the public demand credit. Banks cannot create notes at will, any more than they can create deposits. They are only created if the public demand them. That is why it is impossible to get out of a crisis by creating paper. Whereas paper money is created by the government at will in order to meet expenditure which cannot be covered by its ordinary revenue, credit instruments are created only in response to public demand. The State creates paper money at will but cannot withdraw it from circulation, the banks do not create credit instruments at will, but can withdraw them by ceasing to renew credits (p 213.).

    According to Tooke, financial crises result from the abuse of credit (p. 214). Preventing the abuse of credit is necessary to prevent financial crises. “[T]he abuse of credit is the result of the ‘spirit of speculation’” (p. 214). Moreover, “[c]redit does not give rise to speculation, but follows it; credit is always the response to a demand, and this demand is itself the result of a given economic situation” (p. 214). [The beginning of the twenty-first century bears witness to speculation abusing credit — the housing bubble for example.]
    Tooke identifies two primary price movements: (1) speculative price movements and (2) permanent or fundamental price movements (p. 215). Speculative price movements “originate not in an expansion of credit, but in a favourable price situation in certain commodity markets” (p. 215). As a result, credit expands in response to the demand for speculation. Thus, the boom begins.
    According to Tooke, “1, . . . speculation originates in the situation of the commercial or industrial market, and not in an increase in the note circulation; 2, that the steady expansion of credit is an effect, and not a cause of this speculation, for there is no expansion of credit without the demand for it; 3, that the contraction in the currency which follows a crisis is the consequence and not the cause of the slump” (p. 215).
    An economic slump (panic, depression, or recession) occurs when the income (wages, interest, dividends, profits, etc.) of consumers fails to keep up with rising prices of commodities. As a result, commodity prices must drop, which leads to an economic crisis. Prices decline to the level of the income of consumers, i.e., consumers can again afford to buy (pp. 216-217). [The world has been witnessing such an event with the collapse of the prices of real estate and commodities beginning in 2008.] Thus, according to Tooke, the aggregate of money income devoted to consumption limits the aggregate of money prices. [The Social Credits advocates hold a similar view. They believe that economic slumps result from the people lacking the money to buy the goods that have been produced. Their solution is to have the government or its central bank to print enough money, either physically or electronically, for the people to buy the excess goods and give it directly to the people.]
    Tooke does not deny that the influx of gold or the creation of paper money affects prices. However, other things also affect prices (pp. 219-220). For example, speculation can lead to an increase in the velocity of money, which can affect prices (p. 220). Also, affecting prices are the balance of trade, the capital markets, and the state of credit (p. 222).
    Rist summaries Tooke’s observation on interest:

1. A low discount rate cannot by itself stimulate the price level;
2. A low discount rate can affect prices on the stock exchange without having any effect on commodity markets.

[Tooke’s observation is seen in lowering of interest rate following the 2008 crisis. Stock markets have trended upward while commodity prices have trended downward.]
    For a fall in interest to stimulate the economy, it has to “‘coincide with a tendency from other causes, to a speculative rise of prices, and with the opening of new fields for enterprise’” (p. 223). Otherwise, any action undertaking by the central bank to stimulate the circulation of money will not affect prices (p. 223). Nevertheless, “a low rate of interest may foster and support a rise which began from other causes. ‘If there exist grounds for speculation in goods, a coincident facility of credit may, but will not necessarily, extend the range of it.’ . . .[A] low rate of interest is at the bottom of all cases of ‘overtrading’ and ‘overbanking’” (p. 223). (“Overbanking” means “advances, either on insufficient or inconvertible securities, or in too large a proportion to the liabilities” [p. 214, fn].)
    “Tooke maintained that the raising of the discount rate, coupled with a strong cash position, would enable the Bank of England to mitigate the effects of a crisis and to prevent it from developing. Mere limitation of notes will only make the crisis more acute, for it is the function of notes to provide additional temporary currency in times of crisis, which will make it possible to avoid bankruptcies and collapses” (p. 228).
    [Poor is a proponent of elasticity in the credit system. There seems to be less difference between Poor and Tooke than Poor claims. Tooke’s explanations are closer to the truth than Poor credits him.
    As shown above, Poor’s view of Tooke’s works differs significantly from Rist’s. Poor’s views Tooke unfavorably while Rist views him favorably.]

End Notes

1. Percy L. Greaves, Jr.,Understanding the Dollar Crisis (Belmont, Massachusetts: Western Islands, 1973), p. 8.

2. Ibid., p. 28.

Copyright © 2016 by Thomas Coley Allen.

More articles on money.

Tuesday, August 29, 2017

Poor on Huskisson

Poor on Huskisson

Thomas Allen

    In 1877, Henry Varnum Poor (1812-1905) wrote Money and Its Laws: Embracing a History of Monetary Theories, and a History of the Currency of the United States. He was a financial analyst and founder of a company that evolved into Standard & Poor’s. Poor was a proponent of the real bills doctrine and the classical gold-coin standard and, thus, the quality theory of money. He gave little credence to the quantity theory of money — especially if credit money, such as bank notes, were convertible on demand in species. Also, he contended that the value of money depends on and is derived from the value of the material of which it is made and with paper money, its representation of such value.
    In the latter part of his book, he discusses leading monetary theorists from Aristotle (350 B.C.) to David A. Wells (1875). Most of the economists whom he discussed were proponents of the quantity theory of money. We will look at his discussion on William Huskisson. My comments are in brackets. Referenced page numbers enclosed in parentheses are to Poor’s book.
    William Huskisson (1770-1830) was a British statesman, financier, and member of Parliament. He wrote “Question Concerning the Depreciation of Our Currency” (1810), which Poor reviews. Huskisson wrote his pamphlet during the Napoleonic wars when the English pound was not convertible into gold or silver. His and Poor’s comments reflect this condition.
    Huskisson states that in the popular sense, money is often considered to have only purely arbitrary and conventional value. Sometimes, it is defined as “the representation of all other commodities, and sometimes as the common measure of them” (p. 216). He concludes that these definitions are incomplete “because they are equally applicable to every description of currency, whether consisting of the precious metal, of paper, or of any other article” (p. 216). Huskisson continues, “It is of the essence of money to possess intrinsic value” (p. 216). Moreover, “The quality of representing commodities does not necessarily imply intrinsic value; because that quality may be given either by confidence or by authority. The quality of being a common measure does not necessarily imply intrinsic value” (p. 216). He adds, “Money, or a given quantity of gold or silver, is not only the common measure and common representative of all other commodities, but also the common and universal equivalent” (p. 216). Although paper currency has no intrinsic value, promissory notes in whatever form and from whatever source can represent value. “It does so, in as much as it is an undertaking to pay, in money, the sum for which it is issued” (p. 216) “The money, or coin of a country, is so much of its capital. Paper currency is no part of the capital of a country: it is so much circulating credit” (p. 216). Huskisson adds, “Whoever buys, gives, whoever sells, receives, such a quantity of pure gold or silver as is equivalent to the article bought or sold; or, if he gives or receives paper instead of money, he gives or receives that which is valuable only as it stipulates the payment of a given quantity of gold or silver” (pp. 216-217). Paper money remains at par with gold if it is convertible to gold coin. Both money (gold coin) and paper promissory money (bank notes) “are common measures and representatives of the value of all commodities. But money alone is the universal equivalent; paper currency is the representative of that money” (p. 217). He identifies two types of paper currency: “the one resting upon confidence, the other upon authority” (p. 217). Paper currency resting upon confidence is circulating credit. Bank notes are of this type of currency. Paper currency resting upon authority is paper money [government notes and bank notes made legal tender by the government] are of this type of currency (p. 217). [Huskisson was a Bullionist. That is, he believed that paper money ought to be a warehouse receipt for gold. For each dollar, pound, or franc of paper money in circulation, there ought to be a dollar, pound, or franc of gold stored in a vault to back that paper money.]
    Poor objects to Huskisson’s notion that confidence or authority can give quality to representing commodities. Poor remarks, “That a person believes that a note which he takes represents commodities does not make it the representative of them, any more than the belief of the Alchemists made the baser metals in combination the representatives of gold, into which they so long sought to convert them. If confidence would create values, the silliest dunce would be the Croesus of the race” (p. 217).
    Some people believe that if the government can declare the length of the foot or meter for measuring distance, it can declare that a bank note [or a government note] can measure value: “Intrinsic value is no more necessary in one case than in the other” (p. 217). To this belief, Poor replies that owners of land would not accept for their sales the instruments by which their acres are measured. To them, a surveyor’s chain is only worth its value as scrap metal. “When men buy and sell, they exchange, or intend to exchange, articles possessing equal values” (p. 217). [Actually, exchanges only take place when both parties perceive that they are receiving something of greater value to themselves than what they are giving up.]
    Poor continues citing Huskisson. According to Huskisson, if a country’s circulating currency consists exclusively of gold and if the quantity of gold in that country doubles while the quantity of gold and the demand for it remained the same in all other countries, then the value of gold in such country would fall. This loss of value would appear as a rise in the prices of all commodities. However, since gold is much cheaper in the country in which its quantity has increased, it would be bought and exported to other countries until its value is again equal in all parts of the world (p. 218). If a country’s circulating currency consists of both gold and paper and if a paper currency were doubled while the quantity gold remains the same, prices will rise. The value of gold as a commodity will rise in price and in the same proportion as other commodities; that is, its value compared with other commodities will remain the same. Such an increase in paper currency causes the exportation of gold coin because gold’s value as currency remains the same while its price in that currency has increased, i.e., the gold content of the coin is worth more than the denomination stamped on the coin. This exportation decreases the currency in circulation and thus supports the value of the currency remaining. Thus, “[a]n excess of paper has, in the first instance, the same effect upon prices as an excess of the precious metals, to the same amount, would have, in any particular country. But it does not admit of the same relief: it cannot right itself by exportation” (p. 218).
    Huskisson identifies two ways that the currency of a country can be depreciated:

1. If its standard coin contain less of gold or silver than it is certified to contain. In that case, the paper, as representing the coin, is also depreciated, and precisely in the same degree as the coin.
2. If the standard coin being of full weight, and the paper which represents that standard coin, and is, or purports to be, exchangeable for it, is not exchangeable, at the same time, for so large a quantity of gold or silver as is contained in the coin which it represents. In that case, the coin, though undiminished in value, must, as part of the currency, partake of the depreciation of the whole (p. 218).

Poor remarks that if the currency of a country consists of gold coin and paper and if the two were equal in value, then the paper must be symbolic. Contrary to Huskisson assumption, a doubling of the currency would not be inflationary. Poor writes:

Prices would, in reference to money, remain unchanged. So long as gold and paper possessed the same value, an increase, or, rather, an inflation, of the currency, would not inflate or increase the price of gold bullion, — gold as merchandise, — while it might increase the value of all other kinds of merchandise, for the very good reason that gold cannot rise in value in reference to itself; that is, a sovereign after the inflation would purchase the same amount of bullion as before” (p. 219).

    Moreover, Poor remarks, “So long as coin would purchase no more than an equal nominal amount of paper, gold would have no more tendency to go abroad than before such increase. Indeed, its tendency would be inward to provide adequate reserves for the increase of paper” (p. 219).
    He continues, “If adequate provision, either in merchandise or coin, were not made for its [paper currency’s] redemption, it [paper currency] would become depreciated: it would not be exchangeable for an equal quantity of gold, nor would it command an equal amount of merchandise with gold, no matter whether it rested upon confidence or authority” (p. 219). Moreover, he adds, “The value of gold would not be influenced in any degree by the amount or value of the paper outstanding” (p. 219).
    According to Poor, if paper currency rests on authority and was issued in large amounts, “it would, in great measure, drive the coin previously in circulation out of the country. But this fact would not tend, in any degree, to raise the value of the currency ‘resting on authority’” (p. 220). Furthermore, contrary to Huskisson’s assertion, “[t]he exportation of coin would tend to reduce the value of such currency, instead of raising it, by rendering it all the more difficult to resume, from the impoverishment of the people, which would be measured by the amount of gold — capital — that had been drawn from them” (p. 220). [Also, the government has no power to create value on which the currency must rest except to declare the monetary unit to be a specific weight of a commodity, such as gold or silver, to which paper currency is convertible on demand. Many proponents of fiat paper money do believe that government fiat can actually give value to that which has no value.]
    According to Poor, Huskisson believes that paper currency resisting on confidence or authority is equal to gold as a measure of value. A decline in the value of paper currency brings down equally the value of gold, “for the reason that one competent measure of value must be equal in potency or effect to any other competent measure” (p. 220). However, the opposite is true. Poor writes “that the paper money of the country, though declared to have a value equal to that of an equal nominal amount of gold, did not possess such value; that the values of the two, though equally supported by authority, had no necessary relation the one to the other; and that their wide divergence was well calculated to excite the most profound alarm” (p. 220).
    Poor concludes,

He [Huskisson] could not go into the market to make any purchase, without having thrust into his hand two scales of prices, — one in paper, the other in gold; yet, in the face of all this, he was so tied to tradition as to assert that money resting upon authority — the assignats of France and the Revolutionary Currency of the United States — was as competent a measure of values as gold and silver (pp. 220-221).

    [Many fiat money reformers believe that the Continental and assignat failed because the government did not follow the right scheme in issuing them. Also, the flaws of today’s paper monetary system, including its electronic equivalent, result from following the doctrines of Keynes and Friedman instead of the scheme that the fiat money reformers promote, who disagree with each other on the proper scheme. Examples of these schemes are:
    – the Social Credit scheme, which requires the government to give the people enough money to fill the gap between national income and gross domestic product (GDP);
    – the American Monetary Institute’s scheme, which has the government creating and issuing government notes directly without banks {v. “Analysis of the American Institute’s American Monetary Act” by Thomas Allen};
    – Richard Cook’s scheme, which is a combination of the Social Credit scheme and the American Monetary Institute’s scheme {v. “Analysis of Richard Cook’s Monetary Reforms as Presented in We Hold These Truths” by Thomas Allen};
    – the Money Reform Act scheme, which promotes the government issuing government notes and an end to banks converting loans to money {v. “Analysis of the Monetary Reform Act” by Thomas Allen};
    – Arnold Leese’s scheme, which is a fascist monetary scheme {v. “Analysis of Money No Mystery” by Thomas Allen};
    – Byron Dale’s scheme, which has the government printing and spending government notes to finance the construction and maintenance of roads {v. “Analysis of Byron Dale’s Monetary Reforms as Presented in Bashed by the Bankers” by Thomas Allen};
    – Charles Norburn’s scheme, which has the government creating and spending government notes into circulation and an end to issuing interest-bearing government securities {v. “Analysis of Charles Norburn’s Monetary Reforms as Presented in Honest Money” by Thomas Allen};
    – the Foundation to Restore and Educated Electorate scheme, which is similar to Norburn’s scheme {v. “Comparison of Three Monetary Systems” by Thomas Allen};
    – Gertrude Coogan’s scheme, which has a trusteeship answerable to Congress issuing government notes to match productiveness and to maintain stable general prices {v. Reconstruction of America’s Monetary and Banking System: A Return to Constitutional Money by Thomas Allen, pp. 232-233};
    – Silas Adams’ scheme, which has the government owning most of the country by buying all bonds, promissory notes, and other debt securities and corporate stock and other securities with government notes {v. Reconstruction of America’s Monetary and Banking System: A Return to Constitutional Money by Thomas Allen, pp. 233-235};
    – K.S. Kenan’s scheme, which reduces the Federal Reserve mostly to a clearing house for banks and makes the Department of the Treasury responsible for issuing the country’s currency and replacing all interest-bearing U.S. securities with non-interest-bearing government notes {v. Reconstruction of America’s Monetary and Banking System: A Return to Constitutional Money by Thomas Allen, pp. 235-238}.
For fiat money reformers, the problem is not fiat money itself; the problem is how the fiat money system is administrated.]

Copyright © 2016 by Thomas Coley Allen.

More money articles.

Monday, March 15, 2010

Analysis of Richard Cook’s Monetary Reforms Part II

Analysis of Richard Cook’s Monetary Reforms as Presented in We Hold These Truths
Part II

Thomas Allen

This paper is Part II of my analysis of Richard C. Cook’s monetary reforms as presented in his book We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform (Tendril Press, 2008–2009). His words and my paraphrases or summaries of his words, I have italicized. My commentary is in roman letters. I have provided references to pages in his book and have enclosed them in parentheses.

Mr. Cook admits that “a strong, functioning economy is required” for his system to work (p. 37). However, he fails to explain adequately how a strong, functioning economy will continue when people are paid whether they are productive or not.

He is correct in that people need leisure time to pursue spiritual, intellectual, and family activities (p. 37). (As not many people will pursue these activities, especially the first two, is the government going to force its wards to pursue these activities?) They should be relieved of perpetual grueling toil (p. 37). However, his scheme does not achieve these goals in the end. Like all collective schemes, it leads to economic stagnation and decline.

Mr. Cook advocates shifting much of credit creation from banks to the U.S. government. The U.S. government needs to lend more. More governmental lending supports “the concept that credit should really be viewed as a publicly-regulated utility . . . ” (p. 39). First, nowhere does the U.S. Constitution authorize the U.S. government to lend money or credit to anyone. Furthermore, the U.S. government will breed more corruption as it lends more. Loans will be used to pay and play political favorites. Second, if credit is a public utility and should be regulated as one, no one could lend to friends or relatives without the approval of some governmental bureaucrat. (Most likely, such loans below a specific amount would be exempted from case-by-case approval. However, such exemption is itself a bureaucratic approval that can be revoked.)

Mr. Cook supports the American Monetary Institute’s recommendations of a Monetary Control Board in the Department of the Treasury setting and overseeing monetary targets and other proposals of the American Monetary Institute (pp. 39, 55, 65, 109, 159, 262). Since Mr. Cook’s system demands injections of money into the economy to fund most of the government and to fill the “gap,” the Monetary Control Board seems superfluous. Its only purpose seems to be justifying ever-increasing governmental expenditures. As I have discussed in detail the American Monetary Institute’s proposal in “Analysis of the American Monetary Institute’s American Monetary Act,”[1] I will not go into any depth on its highly flawed despotic scheme. However, it is a good match for Mr. Cook’s proposal.

Mr. Cook presents the now-defunct Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) and Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) as examples of public credit. He recommends creating programs like these to lend at below-market interest rates to state and local governments for infrastructure projects (p. 39). Thus, he wants to make the states ever more dependent on and subservient to the U.S. government. A major cause of the political and economic problems in this country has been the subordination of the creators (the states) to the created (the U.S. government). Today, nearly all political power has been usurped and concentrated in Washington. The states can do little more than what the U.S. government allows them to do. Mr. Cook’s scheme completes this consolidation.

He also supports the U.S. government lending at below-market interest rates to banks money for banks to lend at some low rate to consumers, students, and small businesses (p. 40). According to Mr. Cook, when the Federal Reserve, which was created by and exists at the pleasure of the U.S. government, makes low interest rate loans, it distorts the economy, creates inflation, and causes all sorts of havoc. However, when the U.S. government does the same thing through another agency that it has established, it causes none of these problems. At least that is what Mr. Cook would have us to believe. It must be who gets the interest. No, it cannot be that because all the interest earned by the Federal Reserve above its operating costs goes to the U.S. Treasury. What is the difference, Mr. Cook?

Mr. Cook describes the current system with fractional reserve banking—creating money out of nothing (pp. 53ff). He remarks “that because borrowed money pays for labor, commodities, rent, etc., it becomes part of the prices that are eventually charged for goods and services. However, when the money goes back to the bank to cancel a loan, that purchasing power disappears” (p. 54). Labor, rent, etc. may become part of the price, but they do not determine the price. To the contrary, the price that the marginal buyer is willing to pay determines the cost of the product or service inputs. Furthermore, Mr. Cook condemns removing money (purchasing power) from the economy once its work is done. Apparently, once money, purchasing power, enters the economy, it should remain there forever. As noted above, this is highly inflationary.

Mr. Cook seems to believe in a “firm law of prices.” Prices do not move to meet the available purchasing media. Once the seller sets his price, it remains fixed. On the other hand, Mr. Cook seems to agree that prices rise and fall as the purchasing medium is inflated or deflated. Yet for some reason, prices do not want to adjust to meet the income, purchasing power, available for purchases. This lack of adjustment is an essential part of Social Credit. Mr. Cook seems to explain this firm law of prices with cost (p. 61). Because of the costs associated with production, prices cannot decline. What he and most other people fail to realize is that costs do not determine prices. Prices determine costs. The actual selling prices of the final products determine all the costs going into producing these products.

Mr. Cook states “the real purpose of money . . . is to serve as a ticket for the purchase by people of articles they need to survive or otherwise desire to utilize once the demand for survival has been met” (p. 55). No, it is not. The real purpose of money is to serve as a ticket for those who have produced to represent their contribution to what they have produced. Then they can exchange these tickets for things that they need and want.

Mr. Cook is correct when he remarks that the financial system does work “against what should be the real purpose of money” (p. 55). However, the real purpose is not what he claims.

Mr. Cook is hostile toward the notion that money is or should be a commodity. Money should not have value in and of itself. Gold and silver money have no intrinsic value (p. 55). If money has no value in and of itself or is not descended from money that did, how does one know the value of the money?

Whether or not gold and silver have intrinsic value is debatable even in hard money circles. If by intrinsic value, Mr. Cook means that gold and silver have no absolute value in and of themselves, independent of human thought, he is right. Neither gold nor silver nor anything else has such value. When people say that gold and silver have intrinsic value, they usually mean that they have value in and of themselves. That is, they have value in their monetary use because they have value in their nonmonetary use. The reason that federal reserve notes have value is that the dollar used to be a definite weight of gold and that the federal reserve notes were once redeemable in gold on demand. If Mr. Cook’s new notes have value, it will be because they are related to federal reserve notes, which were once related to gold.

Mr. Cook is correct when he states “money is anything that a willing buyer and a willing seller agree to exchange for something else” (p. 55). However, no sane person is going to trade a useful product for a worthless piece of paper or an electric blip. That paper or its electronic equivalent can only have value if it is or once was related to something that had value in and of itself.

Under today’s system, people accept federal reserve notes primarily because of legal tender laws. They have to accept them for payment of debt. Mr. Cook gives no hint that legal tender laws should be repealed. Without them, people would soon refuse to accept his money—except for their National Dividend stipend that cost them nothing to accept other than their independence and freedom. If no one was forced to accept his money, it would lose its value as it has no intrinsic value.

Mr. Cook errs when he writes that “unless there are goods and services available and for sale, gold and silver are totally useless” (p. 56). No, they are not. They are highly useful even if not used as money. Their nonmonetary uses are what gave them value that enabled them to be used for money. Today, neither is used as a medium of exchange, yet both are highly valuable. Mr. Cook could not have written and published his book with the equipment that he used without them.

Mr. Cook recites the old myth that gold and silver have no value because “you can’t eat them, live in them, or wear them” (p. 56). One cannot eat, live in, or wear electronic blips, which will be the form of most, if not all, of Mr. Cook’s credits. One can eat, live in, and wear gold and silver. Both are taken orally to treat certain ailments. A house can be built with gold and silver bricks. It would be expensive and highly energy inefficient, but it can be done. (I forgot. Gold and silver have no value, so any house built with them will literally be cheaper than dirt.) Clothes can be and have been made with them.

If Mr. Cook believes that gold and silver have no value whereas his electronic blips do, he should go to some poverty-stricken country like Haiti and find out which one really has value. He will have no problem spending his gold or silver coin. He will have extreme difficulty finding anyone willing to sell him something for his electronic blip.

Furthermore, if gold has no value, why do governments expend many more resources guarding their hoards of gold than they expend guarding any vault filled with paper currency? If gold and silver have no value, why do people expend their time and resources looking for, mining, and refining gold and silver?

Mr. Cook asks, “So by what right do the bankers bind the economy in such a straightjacket of debt” (p. 56)? They have the right because the U.S. government gave it to them through excessive governmental intervention. (This is the same government that Mr. Cook advocates giving even more power.) It did so through the establishment of the Federal Reserve System, excessive regulation of banking, legal tender laws, and other economic intervention. (Under the gold standard, the government allowed abusive fractional reserve banking by allowing bankers to violate their contract to redeem their notes on demand if enough banks could not do so. It should have imprisoned these bankers for fraud and failure to keep their contracts.) Mr. Cook does not object to excessive governmental intervention in the economy. His objection concerns where and how it is used. Mr. Cook even recognizes that governmentally granted privileges, i.e., licenses and regulatory requirements, e.g., minimum capital requirements, contribute to this problem (pp. 56-57).

Mr. Cook insists that money in and of itself has no value. Credit gives money its value. “Without the credit potential of a producing economy, money has no value” (p. 57). If Mr. Cook is correct, then the ancients bought and sold with valueless money. How absurd! Perhaps the most common monetary standard was the cattle standard. People bought and sold based on the value of cattle. Cattle were their purchasing power. According to Mr. Cook, these cattle had no value because the ancients had not developed an economy based on credit. Again, how absurd. People would not have used cattle in exchanges if they had no value in and of themselves. They certainly did not used cattle because of credit as most never used credit, and many would have considered such a notion ridiculous.

Mr. Cook’s concept of “credit” differs from most. To him, “credit” is the economic potential of the economy (p. 58). Money is the measure of credit (pp.58-59).

Mr. Cook believes that the government should control money. Naively, he believes that those who really control the government will control the money for the benefit of the people as a whole (pp. 59-62). That is, those who really control the government will put aside their selfish desires and act altruistically for the betterment of the people. If they would do this, they would be doing it now. History offers only a few examples of such altruism. On the contrary, those who control the government act to serve their own desires and often to the detriment of the people as a whole. Even if those who control the money under Mr. Cook’s system were purely altruistic with no selfish motivation, they would fail in their job because they are not omniscient. To provide the right amount of money, they have to know everyone’s demand preference for money, which is constantly changing, at every moment in time. No committee or individual can ever achieve this no matter how brilliant they are or how much data they have.

Mr. Cook insists that money, and therefore, credit, should be public property and not private property (p. 59). Thus, any money that a person has in his pocket belongs to the government. Since all credit is public property, i.e., it belongs to and is owned by the government, all National Dividend credit given to a person really belongs to and is owned by the government. Therefore, whatever a person buys with money and credit, which are the property of the government, must belong to the government as its property has been used to get the goods and services. Furthermore, everyone loses ownership, and by that control, of his own credit. As noted above, whenever a person borrows money from a bank, he is lending the bank his credit. Under Mr. Cook’s system, this credit now belongs to the government and not the borrower. And Mr. Cook insists that is not socialism (p. 59)! Under his system, the government surreptitiously ends up owning everything.

The founding fathers did not conceive of money and credit being public property. They were to be private property. The monetary system that they devised ensured that the money, gold and silver coins, would be private property. Then all the credit based on this money would remain private property.

Mr. Cook claims that the productive capacity of the country is credit and that credit should be publicly owned, i.e., governmentally owned, utility (p. 58). Yet he insists that this be not socialism. Under socialism, the government owns the means of production or regulates them so heavily that it is tantamount to ownership. The means of production are part of the productive capacity of the country. If the government owns the credit and if credit is the productive capacity of the country, then the government owns the productive capacity. If it owns the productive capacity, it owns the means of production. Is that not socialism?

Mr. Cook states, “It is essential to realize that the central government of a sovereign nation has the right, the ability, and the responsibility to introduce ALL new credit into existence. This is totally different from having the central bank ‘print money’ . . .” (p. 62). Since the Bank of England became a part of the British government in 1946, Great Britain should be an economic paradise instead of the economic disaster that it is. Since 1946 all the money and credit issued by the British central bank, which is an agency of the British government, have been the property of the British government. The British government has been managing the money and credit of Great Britain. Yet Great Britain is financially and economically worse off than the United States. If Mr. Cook is right, Great Britain should be much better off than the United States. It is much closer to Mr. Cook’s system than the United States. The only thing really lacking in the British system is periodically sending everyone a big check to bridge the national income-GDP gap.

Mr. Cook would counter, “Sovereign creation of credit should not be based on debt. It is and should be based on direct lending or spending of money into circulation by the government itself” (p. 63). Where this has been tried, the results have been disastrous and highly inflationary. Massachusetts did this in the first half of the eighteenth.[2] France did it in the 1790s.[3] Both experiments were failures. Whereas these schemes failed, Mr. Cook believes his will succeed by injecting more money into the economy and giving the government more control of the economy through its absolute monopolistic control of credit.

Mr. Cook claims that “it is the job of government to bring that money to where it is needed” (p. 63). How does the government know where it is needed? It has to be omniscient to know. The founding fathers knew that no government is omniscient, and it certainly should not have the power to attempt to obtain such knowledge. Therefore, they left the allocation of money and credit in the hands of the people—the only place it can be if the people are to be free.

Mr. Cook gives an outline of the principles guiding his system. The Social Credit concept discussed above is a key principle (pp. 63-64). They are a mixture of government-private partnerships. Some things are left to private initiative, and some, to government command. In reality, the government decides. In short, Mr. Cook promotes a form of fascism.

While retaining the welfare portion of the welfare-warfare state, he discards the warfare part (p. 64). Welfare and warfare go together like husband and wife in the Biblical sense: They are one flesh. One cannot for long be separated from the other. The exhilarating rush of power that the welfare state gives those who control the government will force it to lust for total power by adding the warfare state. If Mr. Cook wants to abandon the warfare state, he must also abandon the welfare state. Yet he cannot because his system depends on the welfare state mentality.

Mr. Cook advocates spending “sufficient credit into existence to supply the basic operating expenses of government at all levels without recourse to either taxes or borrowing” (p. 65). Then he provides three examples: colonial paper money, the Continental, and the greenback (p. 65). All three of the examples were highly inflationary and highly destructive to the common man’s wealth. They enriched speculators, whom Mr. Cook disdains, and the politically connected. Mr. Cook’s proposal would have the same results. Only his will be more inflationary and destructive. Like them, his new money has no relationship to new goods being offered for sale. Moreover, unlike them, his system makes no pretense of removing excess money. Apparently, he believes that under his scheme, excess money is impossible. (The U.S. note or greenback did not meet the fate of the colonial money and the Continental because Congress ceased issuing more of them and actually reduced the amount in circulation. Furthermore, it set up a mechanism to redeem them in gold. None of these are part of Mr. Cook’s scheme.) Mr. Cook does allow for the collection of some user fees(p. 65), which does nothing to remove any excess.
Unlike some fiat money reformers, Mr. Cook correctly sees that these three types of money were a form of credit money (p. 65). What he does not acknowledge is that they were interest-free, nonrepayable forced loans (although U.S. notes offered payment to the holder between 1879 and 1933).

Mr. Cook proposes a National Dividend program divided into two parts. “One would be a cash stipend paid to all citizens which would also serve the purpose of eliminating poverty by providing everyone with a basic income guarantee. The remainder of the National Dividend would consist or an overall pricing subsidy, whereby a designated proportion of all purchases, including home building expenses, would be rebated to consumers” (pp. 65-66). Mr. Cook does not explain what will prevent people who are paid whether they work or not from following the historical experience of not working. He also fails to explain why his consumption subsidies, especially when people are paid not to produce, will not lead to shortages. His program increases demand while it decreases supply.

He also sets aside part of the National Dividend to give to all citizens upon reaching the age of 18 to use for higher education, trade school, or business investment (p. 66). Is the government going to force them to undertake one of these endeavors? What happens if a person does not want to undertake one of these activities? If the government does not give him the money, it has withheld part of the National Dividend with presumably disastrous consequences. Will the government allow the students to spend their time at college parties? How will it stop it? It cannot demand the students to return the money because that would remove part of the National Dividend. The only solution is for the government to micromanage student activity at college. Giving people money for business investments presents the same problem. Risk-aversion bureaucrats must micromanage the business investments to prevent them from being spent in undesirable ways from the government’s perspective.

Mr. Cook is correct when he states that his program will not create a Utopia (p. 66). It has to have a highly intrusive government just to collect the data needed to compute the National Dividend accurately. He asserts that his program does not relieve mankind of the need to work, etc. (pp. 66-67). Perhaps, but it certainly reduces their incentive to do so.

Endnotes
1. Thomas Allen, "Analysis of the American Monetary Institute’s American Monetary Act" (Franklinton, N.C.: TC Allen Co., 2009).

2. Thomas Allen, "Massachusetts Notes: The Perfect Money" (Franklinton, N.C.: TC Allen Co., 2009).

3. Thomas Allen, "Assignat: The Nearly Perfect Money" (Franklinton, N.C.: TC Allen Co., 2009).

Copyright © 2010 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Monday, March 15, 2010

Analysis of Richard Cook’s Monetary Reforms Part II

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