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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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A Proposal for <strong>Bank</strong>ing Reform:<strong>The</strong> <strong>The</strong>ory of a 100-Percent Reserve Requirement 743market economy, institutions which would facilitate sustainableeconomic development <strong>and</strong> the accumulation of wiselyinvested capital, while preventing the maladjustments <strong>and</strong>crises which the current, rigorously controlled <strong>and</strong> centralizedfinancial system causes.WHAT WOULD THE FINANCIAL AND BANKING SYSTEMOF A TOTALLY FREE SOCIETY BE LIKE?We agree with Israel M. Kirzner that it is impossible toknow today what information <strong>and</strong> institutions entrepreneurswho participate in the financial <strong>and</strong> banking system of thefuture will freely <strong>and</strong> spontaneously create tomorrow, assumingthey suffer no institutional state coercion <strong>and</strong> are subjectmerely to the legal framework of substantive rules required bythe operation of any market. As we know, the most importantof all such rules in banking is the principle of a 100 percentreserve. 41Despite the above, we can conjecture with F.A. Hayek 42that under these circumstances a variety of mutual fundswould spontaneously emerge, 43 in which people would invest41 We are not able to chart the future of capitalism in any specificity.Our reason for this incapability is precisely that whichassures us . . . the economic future of capitalism will be one ofprogress <strong>and</strong> advance. <strong>The</strong> circumstance that precludes ourviewing the future of capitalism as a determinate one is thevery circumstance in which, with entrepreneurship at work,we are no longer confined by any scarcity framework. It istherefore the very absence of this element of determinacy <strong>and</strong>predictability that, paradoxically, permits us to feel confidencein the long-run vitality <strong>and</strong> progress of the economyunder capitalism. (Israel M. Kirzner, Discovery <strong>and</strong> the CapitalistProcess [Chicago <strong>and</strong> London: University of Chicago Press,1985], p. 168)42 Hayek, Denationalisation of <strong>Money</strong>, pp. 119–20.43 On the development of this network of mutual funds, see the articleby Joseph T. Salerno, “Gold St<strong>and</strong>ards: True <strong>and</strong> False,” pp. 257–58. <strong>The</strong>perception that shares in these mutual funds would eventually becomemoney is incorrect, since such shares are merely titles to real investments<strong>and</strong> would not guarantee the recovery of the nominal value of suchinvestments, which would always be subject to trends in the market

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