Recycling Monetary History Shows Need for Gold

More than two centuries ago Edmund Burke wrote, “Those who do don't know history are destined to repeat it.” Nearly 70 years ago the great economist Ludwig von Mises described the cycle of monetary debasement which could have been written for our own time. The new prime minister of Japan was elected largely by campaigning for debasing his own country's currency, thus recycling a previously failed policy still in vogue elsewhere. He said, “Countries around the world are printing more money to boost their export competitiveness. Japan must do so too.” Link   He called for more aggressive action along the lines of the Fed and the ECB.

And it is hard not to think of President Obama when Mises says, “It is a great comfort to every administra­tion to be able to make its citizens happy by spending. For public opinion will then attribute the resulting boom to its current rulers. The inevitable slump will occur later and burden their successors.... We are destined to spend decades paying for the easy money orgy of a few years.”

It is difficult, too, not to think of Obama's goal of redistributing wealth and increasing taxes on the rich when Mises writes that inflation creates winners and losers: “The creditors are the losers; it is their loss that is the profit of the debtors.”

The following is an abridged version of Chapter 11 of Mises' book Omnipotent Government, published in 1944:

The gold standard was an international standard. It safeguarded the stability of foreign exchange rates. It was a corollary of free trade and of the international division of labor. Therefore those who favored statism and radical protectionism disparaged it and advocated its abolition. Their campaign was successful.

The gold standard put a check on governmental plans for easy money. It was impossible to indulge in credit expansion and yet cling to the gold parity permanently fixed by law. Governments had to choose between the gold standard and their—in the long run disastrous—policy of credit expansion. The gold standard did not collapse. The governments destroyed it. It was as incompatible with statism as was free trade. The various governments went off the gold standard because they were eager to make domestic prices and wages rise above the world market level, and because they wanted to stimulate exports and to hinder imports. Stability of for­eign exchange rates was in their eyes a mischief, not a blessing.

All governments are firmly resolved not to relinquish inflation and credit expansion. They have all sold their souls to the devil of easy money. It is a great comfort to every administra­tion to be able to make its citizens happy by spending. For public opinion will then attribute the resulting boom to its current rulers. The inevitable slump will occur later and burden their successors. It is the typical policy of après nous le déluge. Lord Keynes, the champion of this policy, says: "In the long run we are all dead." But unfortunately nearly all of us outlive the short run. We are destined to spend decades paying for the easy money orgy of a few years.

The days are gone in which most persons in authority considered stability of foreign exchange rates to be an advantage. Devaluation of a country's currency has now become a regular means of restrict­ing imports and expropriating foreign capital. It is one of the methods of economic nationalism. Few people now wish stable foreign exchange rates for their own countries. Their own country, as they see it, is fighting the trade barriers of other nations and the progressive devaluation of other nations' currency systems. Why should they venture to demolish their own trade walls?

Some of the advocates of a new international currency believe that gold is not fit for this service precisely because it does put a check on credit expansion. Their idea is a universal paper money issued by an international world authority or an international bank of issue. The individual nations would be obliged to keep their local currencies at par with the world currency. The world authority alone would have the right to issue additional paper money or to authorize the expansion of credit by the world bank. Thus there would be stability of exchange rates between the vari­ous local currency systems, while the alleged blessings of inflation and credit expansion would be preserved.

These plans fail, however, to take account of the crucial point. In every instance of inflation or credit expansion there are two groups, that of the gainers and that of the losers. The creditors are the losers; it is their loss that is the profit of the debtors. But this is not all. The more fateful results of inflation derive from the fact that the rise in prices and wages which it causes occurs at different times and in different measure for various kinds of commodities and labor. Some classes of prices and wages rise more quickly and to a higher level than others. While inflation is under way, some people enjoy the benefit of higher prices on the goods and services they sell, while the prices of goods and services they buy have not yet risen at all or not to the same extent. These people profiteer by virtue of their fortunate position. For them inflation is good business. Their gains are derived from the losses of other sections of the population. The losers are those in the unhappy situation of selling services and commodities whose prices have not yet risen at all or not in the same degree as the prices of things they buy for their own consumption. Two of the world's greatest philosophers, David Hume and John Stuart Mill, took pains to construct a scheme of inflationary changes in which the rise of prices and wages occurs at the same time and to the same extent for all commodities and services. They both failed in the endeavor. Modern monetary theory has provided us with the irrefutable demonstration that this disproportion and nonsimultaneousness are inevitable features of every change in the quantity of money and credit.

Under a system of world inflation or world credit expansion every nation will be eager to belong to the class of gainers and not to that of the losers. It will ask for as much as possible of the ad­ditional quantity of paper money or credit for its own country. As no method could eliminate the inequalities mentioned above, and as no just principle for the distribution could be found, antago­nisms would originate for which there would be no satisfactory solution. The populous poor nations of Asia would, for instance, advocate a per capita allotment, a procedure which would result in raising the prices of the raw materials they produce more quickly than those of the manufactured goods they buy. The richer nations would ask for a distribution according to national incomes or ac­cording to the total amount of business turnover or other similar standards. There is no hope that an agreement could be reached.