Wednesday, March 30, 2011

The Gold Standard and Monetary Freedom by Richard M. Ebeling

(This talk was delivered at a debate on whether “American Should Adopt the Gold Standard,” sponsored by the Atlas Economic Research Foundation and the Forum for Citizenship and Enterprise, held at Northwood University on March 29, 2011)



The severity of the current economic crisis has been serving as a catalyst for reconsideration of some fundamental questions about economic policy. This has included the size and role of government in society, the national debt burden and the unsustainability of various entitlement programs, and the relevancy of fiscal “stimulus” for economic recovery.


It has also thrown up into sharp relief some crucial flaws in the nature and workings of the prevailing monetary system. The central question, I would argue, is whether or not we should continue to leave monetary and banking policy in the discretionary hands of central banks and the monetary central planners who manage them.


Central Banking as Monetary Central Planning

And make no mistake about it. Central banking is monetary central planning. The United States and, indeed, virtually the entire world operate under a regime of monetary socialism. Historically, socialism has meant an economic system in which the government owned, managed, and planned the use of the factors of production.


Modern central banking is a system in which the government, either directly or through some appointed agency such as the Federal Reserve in the United States, has monopoly ownership and control of the medium of exchange. Through this control the government and its agency has predominant influence over the value, or purchasing power, of the monetary unit, and can significantly influence a variety of market relationships. These include the rates of interest as which borrowing and lending goes on in the banking and financial sectors of the economy, and therefore the patterns of savings and investment in the market.


If there is one lesson to be learned from the history of the last one hundred years – during which the world and the United States moved off the gold standard and onto a government-managed fiat, or paper, money system – is the fundamental disaster of placing control of the money supply in the hands of governments.


Government Abuse of Money and the Benefits of the Gold Standard

If is worth recalling that money did not originate in the laws or decrees of kings and princes. Money, as the most widely used and generally accepted medium of exchange emerged out of the market transactions of a growing number of buyers and sellers in an expanding arena of trade. Commodities such as gold and silver were selected over generations of market participants as the monies of free choice, due to their useful characteristics to better facilitate the exchange of goods in the market place.


And for almost all of recorded history, governments have attempted to gain control of the production and manipulation of money to serve their seemingly insatiable appetite to extract more and more of the wealth produced by the ordinary members of society. Ancient rulers would clip and debase the gold and silver coins of their subjects. More modern rulers – whether despotically self-appointed through force or democratically elected by voting majorities – have taken advantage of the monetary printing press to churn out paper money to fund their expenditures and redistributive largess in excess of the taxes they impose on the citizenry. Today the process has become even easier through the mere click of a “mouse” on a computer screen, which in the blink of an eye can create tens of billions of dollars out of thin air.


Thus, monetary debasement and the price inflation that normally accompanies it have served as a method for imposing a “hidden taxation” on the wealth of the citizenry. As John Maynard Keynes insightfully observed in 1919:


By a continuous process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method, they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The process engages all of the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner that not one man in a million can diagnose.


It is the corrosive, distortive, and destructive effects from monetary manipulation by governments that led virtually all of the leading economists of the nineteenth century to endorse the “anchoring” of the monetary system in a commodity such as gold, to prevent governments from using their powers over the creation of paper monies to cover their budgetary extravagance. John Stuart Mill’s words from the middle of the nineteenth century are worth recalling:


No doctrine in political economy rests on more obvious grounds than the mischief of a paper currency not maintained at the same value with a metallic, either by convertibility, or by some principle of limitation equivalent to it . . . All variations in the value of the circulating medium are mischievous; they disturb existing contracts and expectations, and the liability to such changes renders every pecuniary engagement of long date entirely precarious . . .


Great as this evil would be if it [the supply of money] depended on [the] accident [of gold production], it is still greater when placed at the arbitrary disposal of an individual or a body of individuals; who may have any kind or degree of interest to be served by an artificial fluctuation in fortunes; and who have at any rate a strong interest in issuing as much [inconvertible paper money] as possible, each issue being itself a source of profit. Not to add, that the issuers have, and in the case of government paper, always have, a direct interest in lowering the value of the currency because it is the medium in which their own debts are computed . . . Such power, in whomsoever vested, is an intolerable evil.


Under a gold standard, it is gold that is the actual money. Paper currency and various forms of checking and other deposit accounts that may be used in market transactions in exchange for goods and services are money substitutes, representing a fixed quantity of the gold-money on deposit with a banking or other financial institution that are redeemable on demand.


Any net increases in the quantity of currency and checking and related deposits are dependent upon increases in the quantity of gold that depositors with banking and financial institutions add to their individual accounts. And any withdrawal of gold from their accounts through redemption requires that the quantity of currency notes and checking and related accounts in circulation be reduced by the same amount. Under a gold standard, a central bank is relieved of all authority and power to arbitrarily “manage” the monetary order.


Many critics of the gold standard consider this a rigid and inflexible “rule” about how the monetary system and the quantity of money in the society is to be determined and constrained. Yet, the advocates of the gold standard have long argued that this relative inflexibility is essential to discipline governments within the confines of a “hard budget.”


Without the “escape hatch” of the monetary printing press, governments either must tax the citizenry or borrow a part of the savings of the private sector to cover its expenditures. Those proposing government spending must either justify it by explaining where the tax dollars will come from and upon whom the taxes will fall; or make the case for borrowing a part of the savings of the society to cover those expenditures – but at market rates of interest that tell the truth about what it will cost to attract lenders to lend that sum to the government rather than to private sector borrowers, and therefore, at the social cost of private sector investment and future growth that will have to be foregone.


In other words, it prevents the government from “monetizing the debt” to cover all or part of its budget deficits. The borrowed sums cannot be created out of thin air through central bank monetary expansion. The government, under a gold standard, can no longer create the illusion that something can be had for nothing.


As Austrian economist, Ludwig von Mises, expressed it:


Why have a monetary system based on gold? Because, as conditions are today and for the time that can be foreseen today, the gold standard alone makes the determination of money’s purchasing power independent of the ambitions and machinations of governments, of dictators, and political parties, and pressure groups. The gold standard alone is what the nineteenth-century freedom-loving leaders (who championed representative government, civil liberties, and prosperity for all) called “sound money.”



Milton Friedman’s “Second Thoughts” About the Benefits of Paper Money

It must be admitted that even some advocates of economic freedom and limited government have been advocates of paper money. The most notable one in the second half of the twentieth century was Milton Friedman. Over most of his professional career he argued that maintaining a gold standard was a waste of society’s resources. Why squander the men, material and machinery digging gold out of the ground to then simply store it away in the vaults of banks? It is better to use those scarce resources to produce more of the ordinary goods and services that can enhance the standard and quality of people’s lives. Control the potential arbitrary recklessness of central banks, Friedman proposed, by setting up a monetary “rule” that says: Increase the paper money supply by some small annual percent, with no discretion left in the hands of the monetary managers.


But it less well known is that in the years after Friedman won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1976, he had second thoughts about this monetary prescription. In a 1986 article on, “The Resource Costs of Irredeemable Paper Money,” he argued that when looking over the monetary mismanagement and mischief caused by governments and central banks during the twentieth century, it was “crystal clear” that the costs of mining, minting and storing gold as the basis of a monetary system would have been far less than the disruptive and destabilizing costs imposed on society due to paper money inflations and the booms and busts of the business cycle brought about by central bank manipulations of money and interest rates.


In his 1985 presidential address before the Western Economic Association on “Economists and Public Policy,” he said that Public Choice theory had persuaded him that it would never be in the long-run self-interest of governments or central bankers to manage the monetary system according to some hypothetical “public interest.” Those in government or holding the levers of the monetary printing press will always be susceptible to the temptations and pressures of short-run political gains that monetary expansion can fund. He admitted that it had been a “waste of time” on his part to try to get governments and central banks to follow his idea for a monetary rule.


And in another article in 1986 (co-authored with Anna Schwartz) on, “Has Government Any Role in Money?” Friedman said that while he was not ready at that time to advocate a return to the gold standard, he did conclude that “that leaving monetary and banking arrangements to the market would have produced a more satisfactory outcome than was actually achieved through government involvement."


Monetary Mismanagement versus Markets and Gold

But it is not only the political dangers arising from government mismanagement of paper money that justifies the establishment of a gold standard. It is also and equally the fact that monetary central planning is unworkable as a means to maintain economy-wide stability, full employment, and growth.


Especially since the 1930s, many economists and policy makers influenced by Keynes and the Keynesian Revolution have believed markets are potentially unstable and susceptible to wide and prolonged fluctuations in employment and output that only can be prevented or reduced in severity through “activist” monetary and fiscal policy.


But in reality, the causation runs the in the opposite direction. It is central bank manipulations of money, credit and interest rates that have generated the instability and periodic swings in economy-wide production and employment.


The fact is financial institutions and interest rates have important work to do in the market economy. Banks and other financial intermediaries are supposed to serve as the “middlemen” who bring together those who wish to save portions of their earned income with others who desire to borrow and invest that savings in profit-oriented productive ways that generate capital formation, technological improvements, and cost-efficient production of new, better and more goods and services to satisfy consumer demands in the future.


Market-determined interest rates are meant to bring those savings and investment plans into coordination with each other, so the amount of invested capital and the time-shape of the investment horizons undertaken are consistent with the available real savings to support them to maintainable completion.


Monetary expansion by central banks creates the illusion that there is more actual investable savings in the economy than really exists. And the false interest rate signals generated in the banking system by the monetary expansion not only misinforms potential investment borrowers about the amount of real savings available for capital projects, but creates an incorrect basis for determining the present value calculations that influence the time horizons for the investments undertaken.


It is these false monetary and interest rate signals that induces the misdirection of resources, the mal-investment of capital, and the incorrect allocation of labor among employments in the economy that sets the stage for an inevitable and inescapable “correction” and readjustment that represents the recession stage of the business cycle that follows the collapse of the artificial boom.


The monetary central planners can never be more successful in determining a “optimal” quantity of money or the “right” interest rates to assure savings-investment coordination than all other socialist planners were when they tried to centrally plan agricultural production or investment output for an entire society. All such attempts at monetary planning and management by central bankers are instances of what Friedrich A. Hayek called in his Nobel Lecture a, “pretense of knowledge,” that they can know better and do better than the outcomes generated by competitive interactions of the market participants, themselves. And as Adam Smith warned, nowhere is such regulatory power “so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had the folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.”


There is no way of knowing the optimal amount of money in the economy other than allowing market participants in the competitive exchange process to decide what they want to use as money – which has historically been a commodity such as gold or silver. And there is no way of knowing what interest rates should be other than allowing the market forces of supply and demand for lending and borrowing to determine those interest rates through the process of private sector financial intermediation, without government or central bank interference or manipulation.


The Return to the Gold Standard as a Monetary Constitution

Finally, how do we return to a functioning and workable gold standard? Under the current government and central bank-controlled monetary system the simplest method might be for the monetary authority to stop creating and printing money and credit. Over a short period of time a fairly reasonable estimate could be made about the actual quantity of a nation’s currency and checking and related deposits that are in existence and in circulation. A new legal redemption ratio could be established by dividing the estimated total quantity of all forms of these money-substitutes into the quantity of gold possessed by the government and the central bank.


A country following this procedure would then, once again, be on the gold standard. Its long-run maintainability, of course, would require the government and the central bank to follow those “rules of the game” that no increase in the quantity of money-substitutes may be created and brought into circulation unless there have been net deposits of gold in people’s accounts with banking and other financial institutions.


Can we trust governments and central banks to abide by these rules of the game? The temptations to violate them will still remain strong in a political environment dominated by ideologies of wealth redistribution, special interest favoritism, and numerous “entitlement” demands.


It is why the real long-run goal of monetary reform should be the denationalization of money. That is, the separation of money from the state by ending of central banking, altogether. In its place would emerge private, competitive free banking – a truly market-based money and banking system.


But nevertheless, in the meantime, a gold standard can serve as a form of a “monetary constitution” setting formal limits and imposing restraints on those in government who would want to abuse the monetary printing press, similar to the way political constitutions, however imperfectly, are meant to limit the abuses of power-lusting monarchs and the plundering majorities in functioning democracies.


If it fails, it should not be for want of trying. And a gold standard can be one of the positive institutional reforms in the attempt and on the way to a fully free market monetary system.

23 comments:

  1. Excellent as usual. I do not understand one critical point. How can anyone read this and not understand what damage state interference in markets cause. The blindness to the logic of Austrian market explanations continues to baffle me,going on 55 years now.
    Thanks for another in a long line of learning experiences for me.
    Roger sends his best to both of you.
    Roger Bloxham and Lynn Atherton Bloxham.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I would rather see something more modern like BitCoins being used instead of gold. Gold is an entirely arbitrary choice of fixed commodity, and has no more inherent value than any other lump of metal.

    Why not then use something that doesn't require holes to be dug in the earth, and a potentially useful metal stored away in bank vaults, but is guaranteed fixed in quantity by the laws of mathematics?

    Other than that: no disagreement. A monetary system not in the hands of government is a great idea.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Onus Probandy misses the point. The free market has chosen holes in the in the earth. Per Ebeling, "Commodities such as gold and silver were selected over generations [ET: Eons, actually] of market participants as the monies of free choice, due to their useful characteristics to better facilitate the exchange of goods in the market place."

    ReplyDelete
  4. And has the market lost its magic? Why a gold standard by government fiat? Why not take money away from government altogether and allow the market to determine what is or isn't satisfactory money. My guess is that gold would immediately become the money of choice. History demonstrates that a nation will go off and on a gold standard as politics dictate and politics should have nothing to do with a commodity as important as money.

    ReplyDelete
  5. @Ed Thompson.

    Since BitCoins (and computers, and modern cryptography) didn't exist when that competition was being held; I don't see a major problem with having another round.

    You miss the point that we don't have a free market in currencies so the "market" hasn't selected holes in the ground. Governments have mandated bits of paper with their signature on.

    I'm more in favour of a plethora of currencies (including gold) and letting the market sort it out as Ned recommends. If that be gold -- so be it; I have no particular stake in BitCoins; I just think they are less effort to produce than gold coins, don't bestow any geographical benefit (if you happen to live on a gold mine), and are finite in supply.

    ReplyDelete
  6. The article discusses government creating money out of thin air through the printing presses or the click of a mouse so they don't have to tax the citizens or have to borrow money. This is not accurate. In the US it is all debt all the time. What I mean by this is that government currently prints no money debt free. Any money printed is turned over to the Federal Reserve at 4.2 cents per note no matter the denomination and had to be paid back plus interest. Any money created is borrowed by government, business or consumers and loaned into circulation and the money to pay the interest is never created. Money backed by gold will not solve the problem because the crux of the problem is not who creates the money but how it's created. Money can be loaned into circulation like it works now (clearly not a sustatinable solution because the money to pay the interest is never created so we have a money system based on a mathematical impossibiltiy of exponentially increasing debt with no hope of ever paying it back because all money is borrowed and one cannot borrow ones' way out of debt), we can give the money away (not a good solution because people won't work), or we can spend the money into circulation based on the production that everyone needs and everyone can benefit from. This way we would not need any taxes because the government or private state chartered banks which is our solution in Minnesota under HF610 would simply create the money debt free and interest free to fund transportation projects at all levels of governemnt which would benefit everyone as equally as possible because everyone benefits in some way from a good transportaion system. We would then have debt free money in circulation which would simply circulate to carry on commerce and this money would not be extinguished like now when loans are paid off.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Wow i like it this article discuses government creating money. Keep it up.............

    ReplyDelete
  8. Hewlett-Packard Gucci Borse il Martedì

    annunciato che l'azienda ha nominato Davide Carlesi, senior vice president e general manager

    delle operazioni di rete, con effetto immediato. Meyer aveva precedentemente servito come

    Bumen capo ad interim fino al tempo di 4 mesi, è il principale responsabile per la rete

    globale di HP delle operazioni aziendali, Gucci

    Scarpe
    di vice presidente esecutivo e server aziendali, storage e di rete e servizi

    tecnici general manager Dave - Duonataili (Dave Donatelli) reporting. Meyer ha appena

    completato con successo una serie di piani di rilascio del prodotto, comprese le piccole e

    medie imprese per l'introduzione di nuove soluzioni di rete, soluzioni di rete, e Gucci uomo di virtualizzazione HP TippingPoint

    rete prodotti di sicurezza. Inoltre, Meyer inoltre di consolidare ulteriormente la rete

    globale di mercato, HP mantiene la seconda posizione, e di diventare una rete globale di HP

    a doppia cifra quota di mercato Gucci 2011 di

    soli due aziende.

    ReplyDelete
  9. "Great holiday, and had thought that Ugg Boots his

    son and students in the MMS it, while he did not think I glanced at the toilet of his cell

    phone, God, turned out to see the child pornography!" These days, the citizens of Nanjing

    Wang get bored. The reporter learned that Mr. Wang's son just this year on the first two

    days, the class a lot of students like to use the mobile Internet, send multimedia messages

    to each other like hair. "My father saw that picture, but also the students sent to me,"

    Wang told reporters that the students, "These pictures are in the mobile site, distributed

    to students to download, very popular." So, download these pictures mobile website in the

    end what is site? Reporters can be described as "do not check the do not know, an

    investigation surprised": the original, with a wap mobile phone users as long as the

    Internet, you can enter to pornographic UGG

    Australia
    websites.

    ReplyDelete
  10. there should be reconsideration at economic crisies

    ReplyDelete
  11. My guess is the truth that gold would quickly grow to be the bucks of choice.
    When we play the WOW, we need to try get the Cheap WOW Gold,thst's to say, spend less money, do we have any good way to Buy World Of Warcraft Gold from trust friends or some way else? When we have that we can play the game becomes more quickly and update the levels more easy.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Easily, the publish is really the greatest on this laudable topic. I concur with your conclusions and will thirstily look forward to your future updates. Saying thanks will not just be sufficient, for the fantastic lucidity in your writing. I will instantly grab your rss feed to stay privy of any updates. Solid work and much success in your business enterprise!

    ReplyDelete
  13. The Gold Standard and Monetary Freedom by Richard M. Ebeling...here I gain a better understanding of economy among the first and most important virtues both the size and role of government in society.And also know other advancement about economy.

    Outdoor

    ReplyDelete
  14. Hi,
    Great Shared.... Very interesting blog post.

    Thanks for the share....
    generic viagra

    ReplyDelete
  15. The United States and, indeed, virtually the entire world operate under a regime of monetary socialism. Historically, socialism has meant an economic systemBuy LOL Elo Boost
    Buy League of Legends Coaching

    ReplyDelete
  16. Outstanding article I like your own article; really like how we described as much as possible, your are performing a terrific work many of other folks just like you as a result of that will kind of useful websites supply understanding to help all of us relevant to many things. My spouse and i go through a few other exciting websites from a web sites and I will be a great deal curious along with your blogging expertise, We also begun to generate write-up which type talk definitely assist me personally out there. My spouse and i witout a doubt added your page and distributed ones websites to help my personal fellow workers not merely us however all of them similar to ones running a blog expertise, hope an individual create much more exciting weblogs similar to this one particular and also enjoy for the future sites.

    Jimmy Wilson-Bane Halloween Coat

    ReplyDelete
  17. I was verifying consistently this web blog and I’m impressed! Extremely details specifically the last part I care for such information and facts much. I was searching for this certain details for some time
    hardsten keukenblad

    ReplyDelete
  18. Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.

    ReplyDelete
  19. على الرغم من أن استئجار افضل شركات نقل العفش بالقاهرة قد يكلفك بعض المبالغ إضافية، إلا أنه قد يكون أقل تكلفة من تكاليف شراء المواد اللازمة لعملية النقل بمفردك والتي قد تكون مكلفة على المدى الطويل يمكن للشركات المتخصصة في نقل العفش تقديم النصائح والاستشارات المفيدة لك حول كيفية تنظيم وتنظيف الأثاث في المنزل بشكل أفضل، مما يساعد في تجنب المشاكل المستقبلية.

    ReplyDelete
  20. رولات استرتش الغذائية أن تكون بديلاً جيدًا وصديقًا للبيئة على حزام التغذية، حيث يُقال إنه يُقَاسِى من 500 إلى 1000 سُقْىً قابِلاً لإعادَّةِ التَّصْنِيعِ، كُلاًّ فى سُقْىٍّ قابِلىٌّ لإِعادَّةِ التَّصْنِيعِ وهي حفظ المواد غير المستهلكة: يمكن استخداممصانع شرنك في مصر لحفظ المواد غير المستهلكة مثل صابون السائل أو مستحضرات التجميل، لضمان عدم تسربها أو جفافها.
    حفظ المستندات: يمكن استخدام رولات استرتش لحفظ المستندات أو الورق من التآكل أو التسخين، خصوصًا إذا كان هناك خطر من تعرضها للسوائل.

    ReplyDelete