12.07.2015 Views

Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles - The Ludwig von Mises ...

Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles - The Ludwig von Mises ...

Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles - The Ludwig von Mises ...

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.

522 <strong>Money</strong>, <strong>Bank</strong> <strong>Credit</strong>, <strong>and</strong> <strong>Economic</strong> <strong>Cycles</strong>production process. Individuals’ different plans regarding thespecific capital goods they may decide to create <strong>and</strong> employ intheir production processes are not even considered. In shortClark <strong>and</strong> Knight assume that the course of events flows “byitself” <strong>and</strong> that the future is an objective given which followsa set pattern <strong>and</strong> is not influenced by individual agents’microeconomic actions <strong>and</strong> decisions, which they deem fullypredetermined. Kirzner concludes that the view of Clark <strong>and</strong>Knight ignores “the planned character of capital goods maintenance,”adding that their model requires acceptance of thenotion thatthe future will take care of itself so long as the present“sources” of future output flows are appropriately maintained.. . . <strong>The</strong> Knightian approach reflects perfectly theway in which this misleading <strong>and</strong> unhelpful notion of“automaticity” has been developed into a fully articulated<strong>and</strong> self-contained theory of capital. 18A CRITIQUE OF THE MECHANISTIC MONETARIST VERSIONOF THE QUANTITY THEORY OF MONEYMonetarists not only overlook the role time <strong>and</strong> stagesplay in the economy’s productive structure. <strong>The</strong>y also accepta mechanistic version of the quantity theory of money, a versionthey base on an equation which supposedly demonstratesthe existence of a direct causal link between the totalquantity of money in circulation, the “general level” of prices<strong>and</strong> total production. <strong>The</strong> equation is as follows:MV = PTwhere M is the stock of money, V the “velocity of circulation”(the number of times the monetary unit changes h<strong>and</strong>s onaverage in a certain time period), P the general price level, <strong>and</strong>T the “aggregate” of all quantities of goods <strong>and</strong> servicesexchanged in a year. 1918 Kirzner, An Essay on Capital, p. 63; italics deleted.19 This is the transaction version of the equation of exchange. Accordingto Irving Fisher (<strong>The</strong> Purchasing Power of <strong>Money</strong>: Its Determination <strong>and</strong>

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!