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- Optimizing provision for deferred consumption - Teleology versus
causality - No usury is involved in the exchange of income and wealth - The
triple contract - Turning the stone into bread and water into wine? - Inflationary
and deflationary spirals - Double entry book- keeping - Oriental hoarding
— Occidental dishoarding - Interest
and the Reformation
Optimizing Provision for Deferred
Consumption
We have seen that whenever provision for deferred
consumption is made, it is done through converting income into wealth as the
initial step, later to be followed by the conversion of wealth back into
income as the concluding step. The question of optimizing the conversion
arises naturally. In the last Lecture we discussed how the selection of the
most hoardable good provides an answer to the
problem of optimization on condition that we are confined to direct
conversion, that is, hoarding and dishoarding. However,
further optimization will be possible as soon as indirect conversion becomes
available to augment direct conversion. Recall that indirect conversion means
the exchange of income and wealth. It appears when the prohibition on
such exchanges has been removed, making hoarding and dishoarding
obsolete. Indirect conversion is the irreducible form of credit that
represents a leap in efficiency over direct conversion. The party giving up
present wealth in exchange for future income is the supplier of credit. Interest
is seen as the measure in the increase of efficiency of conversion due to the
appearance of credit, zero interest meaning direct conversion.
As history and logic suggests, income is primary and
wealth is derived. This recognition was codified by the American economist
Frank Fetter as the Principle of Capitalizing Incomes. It states that the
value of wealth is due to the possibility of converting it into income
(deriving an income from it). Thus income is the source from which the value
of wealth flows. The capitalization of comparatively safe permanent incomes
contains within itself all the factors for the independent determination of
the rate of interest.
Teleology versus Causality
The merit of the Principle of Capitalizing Incomes
is that it puts the phenomenon of interest into its proper context. Without
it the mistaken belief may take hold that wealth is primary and income is
derived. Income is obtained by putting wealth out at interest. But how is
wealth obtained? This is a question that cannot be side-stepped, and it is
not a chicken-and-egg problem either. Wealth is obtained by capitalizing
incomes.
The theory of interest holds a very special place in
the history of human thought. Since the time of Aristotle the practice of
charging and paying interest on wealth put out in loans has been stigmatized
and, in many cases, criminalized. Even though the Reformation put an end to
the latter, much of the stigma has remained and continues to be the source of
anti-capitalistic agitation. Aristotle's mistake in ruling that taking and
paying interest is against natural law (pecunia
pecuniam parare non potest) was that he looked for the causes of
interest — finding none. Instead, he should have looked for ends
that interest might serve — in which case he could have found the
Principle of Capitalizing Incomes. Here we have a most important means of
wealth-creation: people with little or no wealth can get it by capitalizing
(part of) their income. Indeed, ever since interest was decriminalized, the
accumulation of productive capital has accelerated beyond belief, along with
the proliferation of inventions finding industrial (not to mention therapeutical and recreational) applications.
Thus the Principle of Capitalization of Incomes
exposes the teleological nature of interest. The sources of interest cannot
be determined on the grounds of causality. Nor can interest be stamped out of
existence by secular or canonical authorities as it is the result of
purposive action, being inextricably involved with the conversion of income
into wealth and wealth into income by economizing individuals, for whom it is
indispensable for survival. Proscriptions against interest may eliminate the
exchange, but never the conversion. The economizing individual may simply
bypass the exchange and fall back on atavistic forms of conversion: hoarding
and dishoarding. However, society would pay a high
price for such wrong-headed policies. Wealth-creation would suffer a setback.
Industrious and frugal people would be prevented from accumulating capital. Efficiency
would be sacrificed, and society penalized for the sake of "ideological
purity".
The right approach to understanding the phenomenon
of interest recognizes its teleological nature. It does not attempt to
explain the nature and sources of interest on the grounds of causality. As
Carl Menger has emphatically pointed out, all
voluntary exchanges, such as that of goods for goods, or goods for services,
are based on the mutual advantage of the parties. The exchange of income and
wealth is no exception. Here, too, either party gets something it wants more
in exchange for something it wants less. The Principle of Capitalization of
Incomes was originally stated by the American economist Frank A. Fetter in
his Principles of Economics.
There are two ways of looking at lending $1,000 for
ten years at 5% annual interest, although only one of the two, the loan, is
normally recognized, in spite of the fact that the other is the more
revealing. Thus the man who borrowed $1,000 for ten years at 5% annual
interest has, at that price, sold an income of $50 per annum for a period of
ten years. At the end of that period he has the right and obligation to
repurchase the same income at the same price. It is clear that both the
lender and the borrower are better off with the exchange than without. Typically,
the seller of the income is a younger man, while the purchaser is older. The
former is well able to generate the surplus income he has sold through
physical or mental exertion. With the proceeds of the sale he will buy the
necessary capital goods he needs in his enterprise to increase the efficiency
of production. The latter, the buyer of the income, could hardly put his
wealth to a better use than making a loan in order to augment his income. "He
cannot take it with him", as the saying goes. He is no longer able to
augment his income through increasing his physical or mental exertion. The
reason for his accumulating wealth earlier was precisely the recognition that
time would come when his surplus of physical and mental energy would give way
to a deficit. These are his "harvest years", and the facility of
exchanging wealth for income is his tool of harvesting. The Principle of
Capitalization of Incomes recognizes the division of labor
between successive generations. It is based on cooperation that is perfectly
voluntary, quite unlike the coercive "social security system"
sponsored by the government, whereby a shrinking number of younger workers
are coerced into supporting one older retiree, while the population of
retirees is exploding. These considerations were lost in the heated debates
about usury and other aspects of the nature and sources of interest, not to
mention the debates about the merits and demerits of governmentally enforced
“old age security”. It is time to recognize that voluntary
division of labor has always been at the source of
any act of exchange, including exchanging income and wealth.
No Usury
Is Involved in the Exchange of Wealth and Income
Contrary to the bad press it has been receiving in
this age of "scientific culture", scholastic philosophy was way
ahead of contemporary thought and, in many respects, it is also ahead of
ours. An outstanding example is scholastic thought on the subject of interest
and on the question of usury. The scholastic fathers were careful to
distinguish between usurious interest charged on
personal loans and on 'dry exchanges' on the one hand, and interest involved
in the exchange of income and wealth on the other. They did not consider the
latter usurious. The issue came to a head at the Council of Constance in 1414
that upheld the position of the schoolmen that the purchase and sale of
rent-charges and annuity contracts involved no usury. Apparently, this
decision did not satisfy the more dogmatically inclined (not to say
economically more backward) segments of the Church. They raised the question
again in Rome
some ten years later. In 1425 Pope Martin confirmed the earlier decision made
by the Council, thereby conclusively ending the debate.
Scholastic philosophy was on solid grounds with
regard to its stand on the narrowing the definition of usury to exclude
interest on the exchange of income and wealth. According to the Jesuit
economist Istvan Muzslay,
Thomas of Acquinas (1225-1274) determined that a
modest interest (in our terminology, discount) was justifiable on short-term
commercial credit as a risk-premium (damnum
emergens), as well as compensation for lost
income (lucrum cessans).
We shall return to this point in a future course on the bill of exchange.
The Triple Contract
In Lecture 2 I have examined "rent charge"
as an important historical example of the exchange of income and wealth. A
second example is the Triple Contract or contractus
trinus that was popular in the Middle Ages and
in the Renaissance. As its name indicates, it was a combination of three
contracts in one as follows: (1) a partnership contract between the 'lender'
and 'borrower' sharing the profit or loss in the borrower's business, (2) an
insurance contract through which the borrower promised the lender
compensation for any possible loss in the business, and (3) another insurance
contract through which the borrower guaranteed the restitution of his share
of the capital to the lender after a stated number of years, regardless of
the fortunes of the enterprise, provided that the lender gave up his claim to
the full share of profits. It can be readily seen that the triple contract
rationalized interest as an insurance premium. Economically, capital stock in
the enterprise has been legally converted into a bond paying interest to the
owner of the bond at a fixed rate.
This construction is most revealing. It exposes the
point of contact between the marginal productivity of capital and pure
interest. It reveals that every investment is an exchange of wealth for
income. It also reveals the character of pure entrepreneurial profit as an
insurance premium that the entrepreneur must collect in order that his
business may survive the vicissitudes of an uncertain economy. Comparing the
triple contract to triple-entry accounting (mentioned in Lecture 2) we see
that the lender is the capitalist and the borrower is the entrepreneur. It
does not matter whether a manager is hired, or whether the entrepreneur acts
as his own manager. The substance of the contract is the underlying exchange
of wealth and income. The triple contract was also considered as an
admissible use of credit that escaped proscription on grounds of the usury
laws. The problem of exchanging wealth and income, and its relevance to
the problem of interest, has also been treated by the British economist
Philip Wicksteed.
Turning Stone into Bread and Water
into Wine?
As discussed above, the point of departure in this
study of the phenomenon of interest is the recognition that an inexorable
need exists, second only to the need for food and shelter, urging the
economizing individual to convert income into wealth in order that later,
when past his prime, he may convert his wealth back into income. For him,
income is an ultimate end, insofar as without it he may have no other ends in
this “valley of tears”. Since wealth is an indispensable means to
that end in the twilight years of his life, his need for conversion is beyond
doubt. The theory of private property ought to take full account of the fact
that the conversion of income into wealth is the rational and
characteristically human manifestation of the law of the biosphere where all
living things can only survive by hoarding their substance in one form or
another. In case of the economizing individual this substance, as we have
just seen, is the “most hoardable”
commodity, gold, which is in demand even as it is offered in the smallest
practically realizable quantities, and can be traded with the smallest
possible exchange losses.
In passing we may touch upon a paradox that
utilitarian philosophy has failed to solve. An apparent contradiction exists
between the needs of the individual and society. There is a time in the life
of every individual when he needs to draw on his savings accumulated earlier.
Yet dishoarding (no less than hoarding) is being
looked at with disapprobation, as an anti-social activity. It is unsettling
as it allegedly affects supply unfavorably, possibly
at a time considered inopportune from the point of view of society. (By the
same token, hoarding allegedly affects demand unfavorably.)
The utilitarian philosophers could not clarify how the market provides for
the conflicting demands of society and its ageing
members. Utilitarian philosophy has failed to solve the problem of hoarding
and dishoarding. In particular, it has failed to
explode the arguments of Silvio Gesell, John
Maynard Keynes, and other inflationists, according
to which the contractionist and deflationary
pressures inherent in a metallic monetary system can be the source of poverty
and chronic economic distress. In particular, the gold standard admits
hoarding of the monetary metal which, according to inflationist doctrine, is
deflationary and the chief cause of depression. At the same time these
authors talk about the inflationist paradise, where the miracle of
“turning stone into bread and water into wine” would be routinely
performed by monetary technicians in the service of governments.
I refute the inflationist argument in the spirit of
utilitarian philosophy, removing an obstacle that had for a hundred years
blocked the advancement of monetary science, as follows. One must distinguish
between two kinds of dishoarding. It is the dishoarding of marketable goods other than gold that is
deflationary. Dishoarding gold does, on the
contrary, ease the (real or imagined) shortage of purchasing media. To the
extent gold is hoarded occasionally, if is offset by occasional dishoarding. The gold standard is far from being contractionist as asserted by the inflationists.
Quite to the contrary: gold is the chief prophylactic that protects the
economy against deflation. When the banks or the government sabotage the gold
standard, they spawn a cycle known as the Kondratieff long-wave cycle. The
hoarding instincts of the people are channeled away
from gold, a natural conduit (as gold is not essential for human
consumption), to other marketable goods, an unnatural conduit and a dangerous
agent when hoarded (as they could be indispensable for human consumption). The
cycle manifests itself through the destabilization of the price structure as
hoarding (dishoarding) marketable commodities
results in rising (falling) prices. The cycle of high and low prices gives
rise to a resonating cycle of high and low interest rates, as further
analysis shows. The Kondratieff long-wave cycle consists of inflation
alternating with deflation. Resonance ultimately causes a “runaway
vibrator” effect that is capable of destructing the economy.
Inflationary and Deflationary
Spirals
I define an inflationary spiral as the phenomenon of
a rising price level causing people to hoard marketable
goods which, in turn, causes further price rises forcing a repetition
of the process. The definition of a deflationary spiral is analogous. It is a
statistical fact, first observed by the Soviet economist N.D. Kondratieff
(1892-1930) that, for the past two hundred years or so, inflationary and
deflationary spirals have alternated, each lasting for a period of 25-35
years. I shall discuss the Kondratieff long-wave cycle in greater details
later in these Lectures.
The most ominous consequence of the deliberate
destruction of the gold standard is that the Kondratieff long-wave cycle is
getting out of hand, becoming a runaway vibrator and threatening the world
economy with a depression more devastating than any previously experienced. When
gold is banned, people will not refrain from hoarding. On the contrary, their
attention will forcibly be focused on the urgency of hoarding as they fully
expect prices to rise in the wake of the government and the banks defaulting
on their gold obligations. This triggers an inflationary spiral that must
come to a violent end when prices over-react and threaten the value of
hoarded goods with an imminent collapse of prices (in other words, the
principle of declining marginal utility finally asserts itself). At that
point hoarding gives way to dishoarding, and a
deflationary spiral is triggered. As prices fall, more dishoarding
occurs since owners of hoarded goods scramble to cut their losses. Producers
go bankrupt in droves, and unemployment soars.
Many a book has been written on the microeconomic
damage that the destruction of the gold standard by government sabotage has
caused (such as damage to savings, capital accumulation and maintenance). Yet
authors have not given sufficient attention to the macroeconomic
damage for which the destruction of the gold standard is also responsible,
such as the deflationary spiral, bankruptcies, debt repudiation on a massive
scale, falling production, and growing unemployment. Paradoxically, the gold
standard is blamed for causing depressions when, in fact, the sabotaging
of the gold standard is the culprit.
At the present juncture the world economy is
threatened by a treacherous deflationary spiral that could end in the worst
depression ever. It is not possible to understand this development without
realizing that the removal of the gold standard has destabilized the interest
rate structure and, hard on the heels of the Japanese, American interest
rates are inexorably plunging to zero. Falling interest rates decimate the
balance sheet of the producers, forcing many into bankruptcy. Later in these
Lectures I shall give a more detailed analysis of this hidden process in
terms of failure in accounting practice. For the time being I confine myself
to reiterating that the disaster is a direct, although much delayed,
consequence of the deliberate destruction of the gold standard some thirty
years ago.
Double-entry
book-keeping
The invention of double-entry book-keeping in Italy
of the Trecento was a momentous landmark in
economic history. Göthe called it “one
of the finest produced by the human mind” in his Wilhelm
Meister’s Apprenticeship. Double-entry book-keeping is of utmost
economic importance second only to the much earlier appearance of indirect
exchange, making direct exchange (better known as barter) obsolete. The new
invention has made indirect accumulation of capital via the instrument
of contract possible, thus making direct accumulation of capital via
hoarding obsolete. Previously, there was only one way for the economizing
individual to convert income into wealth outside of family bonds: hoarding
(for much of the Orient, which was slower in developing the institutional
framework to protect contractual rights, it is still the only way). This
immobilized large amounts of gold, and made capital accumulation an arduous
and protracted process, in which reward was far removed from effort,
dampening incentive.
The invention of double-entry book-keeping made
possible a heretofore unprecedented increase in the efficiency of gold as
catalyst for capital accumulation. Gold’s physical presence was no
longer necessary in every conversion. From then on gold could work by proxy
as its role in the conversion has become residual. Thanks to the
breakthrough, partnerships could now be formed representing exchange of
income (of the junior partner) for wealth (of the senior). Later, with the
gradual acceptance of “sleeping partners” in the firm, the
formation of a joint-stock company has become possible. Shares in the
joint-stock company could be traded as fixed-income securities (see the
triple contract above). Indeed, this they were in all but name, in order to
avoid censure by canonical and secular authorities under the usury laws. It
is clear that without double-entry book-keeping a departing partner could not
be bought out, nor would balance-sheets, income statements, and stock
markets, have been possible. There would be no precise and objective way of
attaching value to the assets and liabilities of a firm, short of
liquidation.
Oriental hoarding —
Occidental dishoarding
The new development released huge amounts of gold
from private hoards as people began to accumulate and carry wealth in the
form of securities disguised as partnership equity, instead of gold. By
contrast in the Orient, where the social and institutional arrangements were
far more inimical to the individual and his freedom to choose, the demand for
gold and silver for hoarding purposes continued unabated. During the Quattrocento gold disgorged by the Occident flowed
to the Orient in payment for exotic goods. Spices, silk, and satin enjoyed
exceptional marketability in the Occident where all great banking houses
engaged in financing this lucrative trade. The world was treated to a curious
spectacle. The Occident was thriving while trading its gold with the Orient
for frankincense and myrrh — as it could use more of the latter, and it
had learned to get by with less of the former. It was this migration of gold
from West to East that gave the edge of industrial power to the Occident, an
advantage it still has over the Orient.
This shows that gold is merely the whipping boy at
the hand of the inflationists. Gold is not scarce,
though it quickly goes into hiding the moment the government and the banks
conspire to tamper with credit. There is no conflict between the welfare of
society and that of its ageing members. Very little if any gold is needed to
complete all the exchanges of income and wealth in the course of normal
business, provided that the government does not interfere with the free
choices of individuals and the banks do not engage in borrowing short to lend
long. Only when such interference by the government and illicit arbitrage by
the banks take place does the demand for gold become sizeable. The correct
policy for the government is “hands off” — to let the
market decide what is best for its participants, and to blow the whistle when
banks are caught red-handed indulging in illicit interest arbitrage.
Interest and the Reformation
The next advance came with the Reformation, during
which canonical and secular strictures on interest were eased, the definition
of usury narrowed and, later, the prohibition against both repealed. Whereas
the partnership contract had originally been designed with the concealment of
interest in mind, now it became possible, for the first time in history, to
engage openly in the exchange of income and wealth with the rate of interest
freely quoted. The bond market was born as a result of these historic
changes. The right to income reserved by the bondholder could now enjoy the same
legal protection as the right to rent-charges (discussed in Lecture 2)
enjoyed during the prohibition era. Thus it remained for the Reformation to
crown the great economic advances of the Renaissance, and to free the
exchange of income and wealth from its former fetters. For the first time in
history the rate of interest could manifest itself as a market phenomenon.
References
Carl Menger, Principles
of Economics, New York:
N.Y.U Press, 1981 (originally published in German in 1871 under the title Grundsatze der Volkswirtschaftlehre)
John Fullarton, On the
Regulation of Currencies, New York: A.
M. Kelley, 1969 (originally published in London, 1844)
Frank A. Fetter, The Principles of Economics,
New York,
1905
Philip H. Wicksteed, The
Common Sense of Political Economy, vol. I, London: Routlege
& Keagan Paul, 1933 (originally published in
1910)
A Message to the Friends of Gold Standard
University
Last year I was, for personal reasons, forced to
suspend publication of these Lectures in the course Monetary Economics 102: Gold
and Interest. I am happy to have a chance to resume the series with
Lecture 4. I shall do my best to avoid any further interruption. My Lecture
series will continue at the rate of one Lecture per month.
I welcome my audience, wishing everyone a Happy New
Year. It may turn out to be year of historical importance. 2004 may see the
return of the discussion of the gold standard from the “lunatic
fringe”, where it has been exiled, to the center
of academic interest.
Let me take this opportunity to remind you that I
have developed my theory of interest in the spirit of Carl Menger, the founder of the Austrian school of economics. Still,
my theory is flatly rejected not only by establishment economists but,
curiously enough, by latter-day Austrians as well. Their antipathy is
presumably due to their belief that any criticism of Ludwig von Mises, whom I also respect greatly, is sacrilege calling
for excommunication. My theory of interest rests on the thesis that the
marginal utility of gold is constant (while that of all other commodities is
declining). This is the very property that imparts to gold its quality of
“moneyness”.
However, in the Gospel according to Mises we read that constant marginal utility implies
infinite demand which is contradictory (I agree); ergo gold cannot
have constant marginal utility (I disagree). Mises
simply missed the interrelation between gold and interest. The demand for
gold is not infinite because interest acts as an obstruction to gold
hoarding. (For other goods, obstruction is provided by declining marginal
utility). Coming to grips with this fact is the key to the understanding of
the predicament in which anti-gold propaganda has landed the world. Tampering
with interest ipso facto means tampering with gold, and vice versa.
The two cannot be separated, and it does not matter whether the country is on
the gold standard or not. If you ban gold, then people will start hoarding
other marketable commodities, which brings in its wake great economic
dislocation such as the destabilization of the interest-rate structure, the
Kondratieff long-wave cycle, and the runaway vibrator of extreme swings in
prices and interest rates.
I would like to draw your attention to the
discussion in my Lecture 4 (see section under the caption “Inflationary
and Deflationary Spirals”) of the so far unrecognized macroeconomic
damage that the deliberate destruction of the gold standard has caused, in
addition to the well-known microeconomic damage. The gold standard is
blamed for causing depressions when in reality it is the best prophylactic
against economic contractions. It was in fact the removal of the gold
standard that has turned the Kondratieff long-wave cycle into a runaway
vibrator programmed to self-destruct.
I believe what we are discussing in this course is
very timely: we may be witnessing the turning of deflation into depression. The
inflationary spiral that ended in 1980 was characterized by the hoarding of
marketable commodities such as crude oil (incredibly, with the government of
the United States
as the greatest hoarder), grains, lumber, sugar, to
mention but a few. 1980 also marked the beginning of the deflationary spiral
of the Kondratieff long-wave cycle, characterized by dishoarding.
It manifests itself as a slowing of price increases and outright price
declines as producers are losing their pricing-power — the latter being
so typical of the inflationary spiral. But the deflationary spiral is not
over yet, as the plunge of interest rates to zero is still continuing. If American
interest rates follow in the foot-steps of the Japanese, then we shall see
the ugly face of depression, complete with bankruptcies, defaults, and
wide-spread unemployment. Contrary to conventional wisdom, falling interest
rates are not helpful to business: they are lethal. A more detailed analysis
of this hidden mechanism is one of the tasks of this Lecture series, so
please stay tuned. Another danger is that the Federal Reserve, in an effort
to check deflation, will run the printing press overtime. The paper mill
churning out unlimited amounts of new dollars may cause runaway inflation as
foreign holders of dollar-denominated assets are frightened into dumping
their holdings. It is not possible to predict whether the economy will
succumb to depression or to runaway inflation. Ultimately, the issue will be
decided by the bond-speculators and their risk-tolerance of carrying the
burgeoning debt of the United
States government in the face of the
danger of a collapsing dollar.
There is still time for the United States government
to steer clear of these dangers and, at the same time, to retain its monetary
leadership in the world, provided that President Bush opens the U.S. Mint to
the free and unlimited coinage of gold.
It will not be easy to admit that the Federal
Reserve has pursued the wrong monetary policy for seventy consecutive years,
cheered on by Big Government, Big Business, Big Labor,
and Big Academia. Politicians, businessmen, labor
leaders, and economists must swallow their pride, and accept history’s
verdict that (whether they like it or not) gold is an integral part of the
world economy and cannot be shunted into irrelevance. Gold will have a role
to play in saving the nation and the world from a great disaster that is
staring us in the face.
January 1, 2004
Antal E. Fekete
Professor Emeritus
Memorial University
of Newfoundland
St.John's, CANADA A1C5S7
e-mail: aefekete@hotmail.com
GOLD UNIVERSITY
SUMMER SEMESTER, 2002
Monetary
Economics 101: The Real Bills Doctrine of Adam Smith
Lecture
1: Ayn Rand's Hymn to Money
Lecture 2: Don't
Fix the Dollar Price of Gold
Lecture 3: Credit
Unions
Lecture 4: The
Two Sources of Credit
Lecture 5: The
Second Greatest Story Ever Told (Chapters 1 - 3)
Lecture 6: The
Invention of Discounting (Chapters 4 - 6)
Lecture 7: The
Mystery of the Discount Rate (Chapters 7 - 8)
Lecture 8: Bills
Drawn on the Goldsmith (Chapter 9)
Lecture 9: Legal
Tender. Bank Notes of Small Denomination
Lecture 10: Revolution
of Quality (Chapter 10)
Lecture 11: Acceptance
House (Chapter 11)
Lecture 12: Borrowing
Short to Lend Long (Chapter 12)
Lecture 13: The
Unadulterated Gold Standard
FALL SEMESTER, 2002
Monetary
Economics 201: Gold and Interest
Lecture
1: The
Nature and Sources of Interest
Lecture 2: The Dichotomy of Income versus Wealth
Lecture 3: The Janus-Face of Marketability
Lecture 4: The Principle of Capitalizing Incomes
Lecture 5: The Pentagonal Structure of the Capital Market
Lecture 6: The Definition of the Rate of Interest
Lecture 7: The Gold Bond
Lecture 8: The Bond Equation
Lecture 9: The Hexagonal Structure of the Capital Market
Lecture 10: Lessons of Bimetallism
Lecture 11: Aristotle and Check-Kiting
Lecture 12: Bond Speculation
Lecture 13: The Blackhole of Zero
Interest
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