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

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

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14 <strong>Money</strong>, <strong>Bank</strong> <strong>Credit</strong>, <strong>and</strong> <strong>Economic</strong> <strong>Cycles</strong>rights are transferred in the irregular deposit, unlike the loancontract, where complete availability of the loaned good istransferred for the duration of the contract’s term. <strong>The</strong>refore,even given the one feasible “similarity” between the irregulardeposit <strong>and</strong> the monetary loan (the supposed “transfer” ofownership), it is important to underst<strong>and</strong> that this transfer ofownership has a very different economic <strong>and</strong> legal meaning ineach contract. Perhaps, as we explained in footnote numberfive, it would even be wisest to hold that in the irregulardeposit there is no transfer of ownership, but rather that thedepositor at all times maintains ownership over the tantundemin an abstract sense.FUNDAMENTAL ECONOMIC DIFFERENCESBETWEEN THE TWO CONTRACTSThis variation in legal content stems from the essential differencebetween the two contracts, which in turn derives fromthe distinct economic foundation on which each is based. Thus,<strong>Ludwig</strong> <strong>von</strong> <strong>Mises</strong>, with his habitual clarity, points out that ifthe loanin the economic sense means the exchange of a present goodor a present service against a future good or a future service,then it is hardly possible to include the transactions in question[irregular deposits] under the conception of credit. Adepositor of a sum of money who acquires in exchange for ita claim convertible into money at any time which will performexactly the same service for him as the sum it refers to,has exchanged no present good for a future good. <strong>The</strong> claimthat he has acquired by his deposit is also a present good forhim. <strong>The</strong> depositing of the money in no way means that hehas renounced immediate disposal over the utility that itcomm<strong>and</strong>s.He concludes that the deposit “is not a credit transaction,because the essential element, the exchange of present goodsfor future goods, is absent.” 1414 <strong>Ludwig</strong> <strong>von</strong> <strong>Mises</strong>, <strong>The</strong> <strong>The</strong>ory of <strong>Money</strong> <strong>and</strong> <strong>Credit</strong> (Indianapolis, Ind.:Liberty Classics, 1980), pp. 300–01. This is the best English edition of H.E.Batson’s translation of the second German edition (published in 1924) of

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