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- Corruption of the Gold Standard -
- The Haberler-Pigou Effect -
- Critique of the Quantity Theory -
- The Gold Standard and its Relevance to Capitalism -
Corruption of the Gold Standard
The gold standard is a monetary system which, unlike
the regime of irredeemable currency, is free of coercion. Its main
significance is not to be found in the stabilization of prices, which is
neither possible nor desirable, but in the stabilization of interest rates.
A gold standard is established when the unit of
currency, or standard of value, is defined by the Constitution as a definite
weight of gold of definite fineness. All other forms of currency are then
redeemable in gold on demand at the statutory rate. To be effective, a gold
standard must have a paraphernalia such as the standard gold coin, minted
free of charge (exclusive of the cost of refining) at the Mint in unlimited
quantities on the account of anyone tendering the metal. Furthermore, owners
of the gold coins of the realm may hoard them, melt them, export
them freely without penalty or the threat thereof. This right is part of the
right to own property which cannot be curtailed, abrogated, or summarily
suspended without due processes of law. It should be noted that, although the
right of owning property in general may be subject to limitations and could
be suspended temporarily in case of extreme emergency (a typical example is
the ownership of grain in a town under enemy siege), gold is explicitly
exempted from this provision. A shortage of gold, unlike a shortage of grain,
never gives rise to an emergency. The consumption of gold is mostly in the
arts and jewelry, and is never for the satisfaction
of the most urgent needs of society. A shortage of gold is always a symptom
of mismanagement of the credit system by the banks, usually under the
sponsorship of the government. If gold is in short supply, it simply means
that individual citizens and creditors of the government are dissatisfied
with credit policy. Hoarding gold is the only way they can protest
effectively. They will release gold in their control as soon as they have
been persuaded that the banks and the government mend their ways and they
will keep their promises to pay. They will keep their sight liabilities within
the limits of their quick assets. They will create no debts without seeing
clearly how these debts can be paid. A shortage of gold, therefore, is not a
real shortage and can be ended quickly through corrective measures in bank
and government credit policies. The Constitution and the legal system should
recognize this by specifically exempting gold from arbitrary seizure under
sections of the legal code governing eminent domain.
The gold standard has been criticized for reasons of
variation in the exchange value of gold. Critics have charged that gold is
not sufficiently stable to serve as the standard of value. To assess this
charge we must observe that variations in the exchange value of gold during
the past 500 years were the result of the over-issue of fiduciary media
redeemable in gold. In the absence of this abuse the exchange value of gold
would have conformed to its intrinsic value governed by gold's marginal
utility. Gold was promoted to the status of a monetary metal by the markets
over thousands of years of evolution that has made the marginal utility of
gold as nearly constant as possible (while the marginal utility of other
goods is subject to steep decline, more or less. No other commodity would be
more stable when used as money. Least stable is the irredeemable currency
based on debt. We may therefore conclude that if the exchange value of gold
appears undermined, the culprit is to be found in the unwarranted issue of
fiduciary media by the banks under the sponsorship of the government. Moreover,
this abuse takes the form of illicit interest arbitrage as we have seen in
this course (Lectures 11 and 12). The criticism must be re-directed from gold
to the legal system of the country, which has failed to outlaw illicit
interest arbitrage and borrowing short to lend long.
There is, therefore, need to re-define a gold
standard in such a way that these credit abuses by the banks under the
protection of the government are eliminated. In particular, the exemption of
banks from the full penalty under contract law for breach of contract
(including the right of creditors to sue for liquidation), and the double
accounting standard aiding and abetting banks guilty of understating
liabilities and overstating assets, must be abolished. The definition of the
unadulterated gold standard must stipulate the removal of all special
privileges for the banks. It was these privileges that allowed banks to carry
on business as usual after they have defaulted on their promises to pay gold
to their depositors. It was these privileges that have let banks borrow short
to lend long. It was these privileges that made it possible for them to milk
society through the practice of illicit interest arbitrage. The very idea
that banks may be allowed to suspend payments in gold coin and continue in
business is preposterous. The gold coin is there, in the first place, to
protect the bank's creditors against unsound credit practices. Legalizing
suspension is tantamount to condoning the practice of declaring bankruptcy
fraudulently, and to confirming the thief in the possession of stolen goods. At
any rate, legal protection of banks against the legitimate claims of
creditors rewards incompetence and fraudulent behavior
while penalizing competence and integrity. With such a code, problems will
never be solved, only compounded.
Arbitrage versus Speculation
Critics who argue that the gold standard is
inherently unstable confuse the instability of a metallic monetary standard
with that of the credit of government. They also betray their ignorance of
the difference between arbitrage and speculation. No government per se can
keep the value of the currency stable, except by the good offices of the
arbitrageur. If he is persuaded about the good faith behind the promises of
the government, then he will step in every time there is a deviation between
the nominal and the market value of paper currency in order to restore
parity. It is well-understood by students of metallic monetary standards that
arbitrage is the catalyst whereby the value of paper currencies is
maintained. But the arbitrageur will carry on his beneficial activities only
if he is fully convinced of the good faith of the government. He will support
the value of the government's promise only if it is worth supporting, the
judgment being based on past performance, present policy, and future
intentions. A government that has a record of periodic lapses into bad faith,
that makes promises frivolously, that has inclination to declare bankruptcy
fraudulently (more commonly known as devaluation) is inviting the arbitrageur
to stop supporting its currency.
In actual fact, conditions influencing the credit of
government can be even more precarious. Not only may arbitrageurs, whose
support alone maintains the value of government paper, withdraw their
services en masse and without notice. Worse yet, speculators would be
happy to step into the shoes abandoned by the arbitrageurs, and cause massive
harm to the credit of the government. The behavior
of the speculators is as different from that of the arbitrageurs as night is
different from day. The speculators are specialists in making a market in
paper of dubious or uncertain value. They make it their business to study
which currency is the weakest and is most likely to fall next. They are
totally immune to double talk and the siren song appealing to
"patriotism". Speculators treat paper currency most
disrespectfully. They sell it short. They buy it only at a deep discount.
They are very strong: they can make governments eat their words. They know
exactly how to respond to the government's loud declaration that "the
national currency will never ever be devalued". In this cat-and-mouse
game, the role of the mouse appears to have been assigned to the government.
Currency speculation, just as bond speculation, was
virtually unknown under the gold standard. There was only beneficial
arbitrage. The sycophant chorus of financial writers and economics professors
has never been able to grasp this fundamental fact governing the gold
standard. The strength of the gold standard is not grounded in mythology. It
is grounded in the superb confidence that arbitrageurs have in the
government's promises to pay gold. Once the government destroys the basis for
this confidence, arbitrageurs vacate the field which is subsequently occupied
by a new breed, the currency and bond speculators. With arbitrage gone,
speculators have a field day. They dictate currency values unopposed. They
ratchet down the value of all irredeemable currencies, one after another,
going after the weakest first. This may make the false impression that the
strongest currency is indeed a strong currency. Well, it is not. In no way is
it strong in the absolute sense of the word. One can only talk about relative
strength: even the strongest currency is losing its value over time, albeit
more slowly than the others, but losing it nevertheless.
The Tyranny of Gold
Things are very different under a gold standard. If
the government has a record of performing punctiliously on its promises to
pay gold, if there is no reason to question its good faith, if it has a
policy to balance its budget and it can show the revenue that will retire its
outstanding debt, then gold comes out of hiding and will flow to government
coffers in exchange for paper promises to pay gold. The only competitor gold
money may have, and that is a formidable competitor indeed, is the promise of
the government to pay gold. If the promise can be trusted, then the value of
paper will be kept on a par by the arbitrageurs through thin and thick. Here
is what Benjamin M. Anderson had to say about the tyranny of gold.
"Gold is an unimaginative taskmaster. It
demands that men, banks, and the government be honest. It demands that they
create no debt without seeing clearly how these debts can be paid. If a
country will do these things, gold will stay with it and come to it from
other countries. But when a country creates debt light-heartedly, when a
central bank makes interest rates low and buys government securities to feed
its money market, and permits an extension of credit that goes into slow and
illiquid assets, then gold grows nervous. There comes a flight of capital out
of the country. Foreigners withdraw their funds from it, and its own citizens
send their liquid funds away for safety." (Op.cit.,
Chapter 64.)
Legal Tender
Under a gold standard the gold coin is the only
legal tender. This means that only the gold coin is acceptable in unlimited
quantities in discharge of debt, not by coercion but by the free choice of
the contracting parties. Other means of payments are acceptable within legal
limits or at the risk of the receiver. It is important to realize that the
original concept of legal tender has nothing to do with coercion as it does
today. It is a corollary of the principle of the sanctity of contracts. A
search of financial annals fails to reveal an instance of a creditor ever
protesting payment in gold coin as contracted. Originally, legal tender
legislation referred to tolerance standards of circulating coins (see Lecture
9). Commerce is greatly facilitated if gold coins circulate by tale rather
than by weight, thus bypassing the cumbersome and time-consuming process of
weighing. But then a practical problem arises: creditors may refuse to accept
at face value coins that are worn more or less, thus undermining the
efficiency of the gold standard. The problem is solved by introducing legal
tolerance standards regulating the minimum weight of a gold coin that is
still allowed to circulate by tale, while making substandard coins circulate
by weight. There is no coercion involved. Creditors are not coerced into
accepting at face value gold coins with impaired weight. Legal tender
legislation, as conceived originally, obliges the government to cover losses
caused by wear and tear of coins in circulation. The Mint will accept at face
value worn gold coins within the limits of tolerance, and will replace them
with newly minted ones. The government absorbs the loss. This is comparable
to its function of maintaining public roads in good repair. This wise
provision is enacted to facilitate commerce. It is unfortunate that the
meaning and purpose of legal tender legislation was later distorted and made
an instrument of coercion. Today legal tender laws are a travesty of justice.
They pretend to protect the public; in actual fact, they protect special
interests. Today legal tender means that creditors are coerced into accepting
dishonored promises to pay in final discharge of
debt, and no amount of sophistry can change that fact. Everybody who accepts
and holds an irredeemable bank note is a creditor of the government holding
evidence of indebtedness that cannot be validated as a consequence of legal
tender legislation. The general public stands to be victimized by this piece
of chicanery changing the original meaning of the term legal tender, as the
90 percent loss in the purchasing power of the dollar during the 1970's has
forcefully demonstrated.
Unadulterated Gold Standard
Under a gold standard the stock of circulating
medium has three components: (1) the gold component, (2) the clearing
component, and (3) the fiduciary component. The gold component
consists of the gold coins of the realm in the hand of the general public plus
that part of bank notes and deposits which are covered by reserves in the
form of gold. The clearing component consists of maturing bills of
exchange in the hands of the public plus that part of bank notes and deposits
which are covered by assets consisting of such bills. The fiduciary
component consists of that part of bank notes and deposits which belong
neither to the gold not to the clearing component. The gold standard is
called unadulterated if the stock of circulating medium has no
fiduciary component. This means that the banks issue no bank notes and create
no bank deposits except when buying gold or discounting a bill of exchange. Bills eligible for discounting is strictly limited to
those drawn on merchandise on its way to the final cash-paying consumer, with
maturity no longer than 91 days. In particular, the banks are not in the
business of discounting finance bills, anticipation and accommodation bills,
treasury bills, and they buy no stocks, bonds, or mortgages in excess of
their liabilities on capital account.
The Haberler-Pigou Effect
The most important consequence of establishing an
unadulterated gold standard is that an across-the-board increase in the
prices of consumer goods is no longer possible. Such an increase would
immediately trigger the Haberler-Pigou effect as
follows. The consumer controlling the gold coin could effectively resist
higher prices by delaying his purchases, buying alternative products, or by
patronizing outlets selling at the old price. This consumer action would roll
prices back, should an across-the-board increase in prices ever occur. The
fact is that such an increase would inflict capital losses on the consumer,
which would show up in the consolidated balance sheet of the nation. He would
have to recoup the loss by restraining consumption. This restraint is the
driving force behind the roll-back of prices. Note, however, that the Haberler-Pigou effect does not operate on the fiduciary
component of the stock of circulating media. To the extent that fiduciary
media are in circulation, the effectiveness of the protection that the gold
coin provides to the consumers is undermined. The consumers may, if they
care, try to combat higher prices by delaying or limiting purchases or by
shifting custom. It is still true that they have suffered a capital loss but,
because they are creditors to the extent of their holdings of fiduciary
media, another group of people ¾ their debtors ¾ will
experience capital gains equal to their capital losses. The effect of the
stepped-up spending of the latter offsets that of the spending restraint of
the former, thus validating the price advances. The consolidated balance
sheet of the nation shows no change, hence
individual resistance to higher prices remains ineffective. The price level
under the adulterated gold standard and, for the stronger reason, under the
regime of irredeemable currency, is no longer stable. If a country wants a
stable price level for consumer goods, it will have to adopt the
unadulterated gold standard.
The Quantity Theory of Money
Detractors of the gold standard argue that
fluctuations in gold production influence the price level adversely. In
particular, a decline in gold production causes deflation, economic
contraction, and unemployment. This is false. In deflation prices fall and in
response marginal gold mines go into production. The quantity theory is a
very crude device which would be valid only in the antiseptic world where
credit is non-existent, and all payments for consumer goods are made in gold
coin, where merchandise is always consumed upon purchase and never re-sold. In
reality, a large part of payments in a modern economy are for future
delivery, often for products not yet in existence. Even if payments are for
immediate delivery, the goods can be sold and re-sold several times before
they disappear in consumption. As we have seen, the theory of social
circulating capital is the exact opposite of the quantity theory. It
demonstrates that the supply of consumer goods is determined by demand. Moreover,
the mechanism that makes the adjustment of supply to demand operates, not on
prices, but on the discount rate.
A second, even more serious objection to the
quantity theory of money is that, as its name suggests, it is completely
blind to the quality of circulating media, the stock of which has many
components each of different quality. This is especially important in the
case of components consisting of credit instruments. The government can, of
course, make the quality of purchasing media uniform by centralizing credit. However,
this can never improve the quality of the currency, but can make it
deteriorate. It is well-known that credit instruments of inferior quality go
to a discount in the markets. It is disingenuous to explain away currency
depreciation by quantitative arguments. First, there are obvious examples
showing that credit instruments of inferior quality can lose all their market
value even if their quantity is constant or decreasing. Second, even
if it were true that historically all currencies losing their purchasing
power showed a simultaneous increases in their
quantity, this would not establish a causality relation between the quantity
and the purchasing power of money. The chain of causation may well run in the
opposite direction. Several qualified observers noted that in hyperinflation
an acute shortage of the circulating medium develops owing to the
accelerating decline in the purchasing power of the monetary unit, and the
central bank is under pressure to put more bank notes into circulation than
originally intended, in order to alleviate the shortage.
This means that in fact there is no unambiguous
causality relation between the quantity and the purchasing power of the
circulating medium. The only way to get to the crux of the matter is to study
the quality of the circulating media or, if they have been made
homogeneous by the centralization of credit, then to analyze the history and
the marketability of the assets on the books of the monetary authority
balancing its note and deposit liabilities. Several authors argue that the
quality of credit is of no significance because, thanks to legal tender
legislation, creditors are obliged to accept irredeemable currency in
discharge of debt in any amount without demur. This is a shallow, not to say
cynical, answer to a problem that deserves a deeper and more earnest
analysis.
Basically there are two sides to the problem: the behavior of domestic and foreign creditors. As the writ
of the government stops at the border, the latter are not bound by legal
tender legislation. Foreign creditors are not in the habit of giving advance
notice of their intention to dump the paper of a government to which they owe
no allegiance. This shows that the quantity theory puts the country's
resources embodied in its foreign credit into jeopardy. This is a very
serious matter even if the country in question is self-sufficient in
essential raw materials. Considering the behavior
of domestic creditors, the problem boils down to the question whether the
producers of goods and services will indefinitely keep exchanging real goods
and services for irredeemable promises to pay which, by their very nature,
constantly depreciate in value. If history is any guide, then these merchants
and workers will not allow the government to victimize them indefinitely. They
can do something about it. They could re-invent bill-circulation.
The World without Banks
People who handle the social circulating capital
have, without realizing it, a most potent instrument in their hand, namely,
the bills they still keep drawing on one another. Presently the movement of
goods to the consumer is financed by bank credit of questionable quality. However,
as in Argentina and Brazil for
example, banks are progressively discrediting themselves in the eyes of the
population. When the payment system breaks down, there will be starvation
amidst plenty and, rightly or wrongly, the banks will be made scapegoats. At
that point bills drawn on merchandise in urgent demand will start to
circulate, replacing irredeemable paper issued by the government.
It is futile to speculate about the future course
that history may take. But it appears that the rise of an international bill
market on merchandise in most urgent demand is ultimately inevitable, if an
all-out trade war is to be averted. Such a bill market would be the most
potent force in the preservation of international division of labor. It would be a precision-instrument activating
instant changes in the direction, size, and composition of the flow of short-term
capital to countries that need it most urgently. No time would be lost in
negotiating government credits, doing legal work and other formalities. Moreover,
short-term capital would be dispatched to the country in need in the form of
consumer goods which were in most urgent demand. If the discount rate in a
country rose above the level prevailing elsewhere in the world, consumer
goods would be dispatched on the same day to that country, since it was a
good place on which to draw bills. It would be the discount rate that would
direct the flow of short-term capital world wide, rather than political
considerations. The nimbleness of the discount rate, and the instantaneous
response to its changes by drawers and acceptors of bills,
would be the guarantee of each and every country adhering to the
international gold standard that the full complement of international
division of labor stood by in the hour of its need
to help solve its problems quickly and efficiently. Far more quickly and
efficiently than autarky or politically motivated inter-governmental
assistance ever could.
The Mistake of Sound-Money Advocates
This marvelous instrument,
the bill market based on the international gold standard, was the first
casualty of the guns of August in 1914. The governments of the garrison
states that emerged after the cessation of hostilities did not allow the bill
market to make a come-back. There has been no bill-trading on a world-scale
for the past eighty-eight years. In spite of prodigious increases in world
trade, it took eighty years to surpass the volume prevailing in 1913. Today
foreign trade and relief is the business of the governments (i.e., none of
your business). The direction, the size and composition of foreign trade is
determined by political considerations, rather than by need. People who
control liquid funds are intimidated. If they send their funds abroad in
search of better returns, those funds may be frozen by foreign exchange
controls, and may be subject to capital losses due to currency devaluation. Foreign
trade is at the pleasure of the governments which could slam on tariffs,
quotas, or punitive embargo without notice. Even in countries that tolerate
import and export on private account, trade is subject to lengthy licensing
procedures and other government controls. By the time the permit is issued,
the opportunity to import or export profitably may well be lost. Profits are
impossible to calculate due to the daily (or hourly) variation in foreign
exchange rates. International division of labor and
individual self-reliance are reduced to insignificance, while everybody is
made utterly dependent on government largesse and ukase.
Advocates of sound money made a grave mistake at the
end of hostilities in 1918 when, in demanding a return to the gold standard,
they failed to call for a full rehabilitation of the international bill
market. They allowed the banks to hijack the social circulating capital,
thereby disenfranchising the producers and the savers. Instead of an
unadulterated gold standard, the politicians set up an international gold
standard of a most adulterated kind: the gold bullion and the gold exchange
standard. In the 1920's there was much talk about the shortage of gold. In
actual fact the shortage was caused by the deliberate policy to withdraw gold
coins from circulation and to replace them with bank notes of small
denomination. When people see that the government is out to grab the gold
coin, their natural reaction is to clutch theirs ever so tightly. The correct
policy should have been to place gold coins in the hand of the consumers, and
trade should have been financed by bill circulation. The gold shortage would
have disappeared as if by magic, facilitating reconstruction. Instead, an
orgy of debt pyramiding, commodity, real estate, and stock market speculation
followed. The debt pyramid collapsed at the end of the 'Roaring Twenties'
giving way the Great Depression. Ever since the international monetary system
is "on a 24-hour basis", meaning that it is a non-system based on
constant government meddling. The gold standard was doomed, as it was no
longer reinforced by a bill market linking the flow and ebb of circulating
media to the flow and ebb of newly emerging merchandise in the markets.
These mistakes must not be repeated now. The Mint
should be opened to gold at once. If the U.S.
government refuses to do that, it will run the risk that the regime of the
irredeemable dollar will collapse, causing enormous economic pain to the
American people, similar to the pain the people of Argentina are now put through. As
a solution to the problem, gold coins should be placed directly in the hand
of the consumers, and trade should be financed by bill circulation. There
is no need to give blood transfusion to the banks. Let them die in peace.
The Relevance of the Gold Standard to Capitalism
This is the last Lecture of the course entitled The
Real Bills Doctrine of Adam Smith. I conclude with a brief preview of the
next course in our series entitled Gold and Interest.
Let us raise the question: what is capitalism? In
its simplest form capitalism is an economic system which is based on the
conception that individuals should and would produce as generously as
possible and live on something less than they produce, in order that they may
posses a residue in the form of property to insure the education of the
young, the support of the elderly, and other future projects. However, in
order to achieve these ends we must have a facility to exchange income for
wealth and wealth for income. Interest, in this view, is not a premium on
present goods as opposed to future goods, but the indicator of the efficiency
of converting wealth into income and income into wealth. In particular, zero
interest marks the least efficient way of converting, namely, the conversion
of income into wealth by hoarding gold, and of wealth into income by dishoarding it.
Capitalism is an economic system that makes the
spontaneous capitalization of incomes possible. In more details, capitalism
means unobstructed and uninhibited capital formation through the voluntary
partnership of the annuitant (typically an elderly man drawing an annuity)
and the entrepreneur (who pays the annuity income from the return to capital
put at his disposal in the form of wealth of the annuitant). Capitalism means
a gold bond market where the residual savings of the people are pooled, parceled, and allocated. In the gold bond market the
marginal producer is free to perform his function as arbitrageur between two
types of earning assets: capital goods and gold bonds. It is this arbitrage
that validates the marginal productivity of capital in fixing the ceiling
for the rate of interest. Capitalism means a gold standard without which the
marginal bondholder would be unable to perform his function as arbitrageur
between present goods (gold) and future goods (the gold bond). It is this
arbitrage that validates the marginal time preference of the saving public in
fixing the floor for the rate of interest. Capitalism means a bill
market where the marginal shopkeeper is free to perform his function as
arbitrageur between the two forms of social circulating capital: fast-moving
merchandise and bills drawn on them. It is this particular arbitrage that
validates the marginal productivity of the social circulating capital, in
fixing the discount rate.
Insofar as gold is the indispensable catalyst of
spontaneous capitalization of incomes, the government's deliberate
destruction of the gold standard is to be considered a major step towards the
destruction of capitalism. Government intervention in the bill and bond
markets may bring no possible benefit to society, and is likely to make
conditions for human welfare worse. Intervention in the bill market falsifies
the discount rate, and intervention in the bond market falsifies the interest
rate. The falsification of these important indicators causes serious
misallocation of resources and paralyzes the regenerative faculty of the
economy. It will, little-by-little, destroy our distinctively human
symbiosis: the peaceful and voluntary cooperation of individuals under the
system of international division of labor. This
symbiosis was the vision of the greatest practitioners of our science: Adam
Smith, Carl Menger, and others. The invisible hand
of the market, through the signal system of prices, discount and interest
rates, guides the 'selfish' pursuits of individuals, and harnesses their
efforts for the greater benefit of the commonweal. In the words of the Bard:
"One for all, all for one we gage."
And this shall remain the best hope for mankind.
Reference
Economics and the Public Welfare, a Financial and
Economic History of the United States, 1914-1946, by Benjamin M.
Anderson; Princeton, 1949.
October 7, 2002
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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