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

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Central <strong>and</strong> Free <strong>Bank</strong>ing <strong>The</strong>ory 661will be unsuccessful because from the start they ignore theessential fact that the officials responsible for governmentagencies, whether state-owned companies or central banks,cannot in their daily lives escape from the bureaucratic environmentin which they work, nor can they overcome the inherentignorance of their situation. János Kornai makes the followingappropriate, critical comments concerning attempts to developan artificial incentive system to make the behavior of functionariesmore efficient:An artificial incentive scheme, supported by rewards <strong>and</strong>penalties, can be superimposed. A scheme may supportsome of the unavowed motives just mentioned. But if itgets into conflict with them, vacillation <strong>and</strong> ambiguity mayfollow. <strong>The</strong> organization’s leaders will try to influencethose who impose the incentive scheme or will try to evadethe rules. . . . What emerges from this procedure is not asuccessfully simulated market, but the usual conflictbetween the regulator <strong>and</strong> the firms regulated by thebureaucracy. . . . Political bureaucracies have inner conflictsreflecting the divisions of society <strong>and</strong> the diverse pressuresof various social groups. <strong>The</strong>y pursue their own individual<strong>and</strong> group interests, including the interests of the particularspecialized agency to which they belong. Power creates anirresistible temptation to make use of it. A bureaucrat mustbe interventionist because that is his role in society; it is dictatedby his situation. 88(b) A banking system which operates with a 100-percent reserveratio <strong>and</strong> is controlled by a central bankIn this system the distortion <strong>and</strong> discoordination whicharise from the central bank’s systematic intervention on thefinancial market would be lessened, since private bankswould no longer enjoy the privilege of functioning with afractional reserve. In this sense bank loans would necessarilyreflect economic agents’ true desires with regard to saving,88 János Kornai, “<strong>The</strong> Hungarian Reform Process,” Journal of <strong>Economic</strong>Literature 24, no. 4 (December 1986): 1726–27.

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