30. března 2013 07:54:39 | reagovat
Matěj Šuster
L. Albert Hahn
Btw, na Mises.org jsem nedávno objevil tenhle článek L. Alberta Hahna z roku 1947 - "The Economics of Illusion", http://mises.org/daily/3497/The-Economics-of-IllusionThe Great Depression and the Great Reflation
The classical economists gathered their experience during and after inflationary periods, and their teachings reflect their reaction to inflation. The present generation of economists gathered its experience during the Great Depression of 1929–1930, and its opinion reflects its reaction to the Depression and a swinging over of the pendulum to the preclassical, Mercantilist approach that greatly overestimated the beneficial effects of inflation. This is not to say that the reaction was not in part justified. The hyper-classicism of those who in the early ´thirties sabotaged every attempt at reflation, of whom many today are the most zealous and extreme proponents of monetary and budgetary manipulation, was undoubtedly theoretically untenable and practically disastrous.
In most countries the hoarding of foreign exchange and of gold from fear of devaluation, and in the United States the hoarding of money from fear of further price reductions, deepened the Depression more and more. Wider and wider circles of the economy were ruined by deflation, until finally only the strongest enterprises survived, or those that were protected by moratoriums or subsidies. Unemployment increased. But hardly was the pressure from the money side — in most countries after the devaluation of the currency or the introduction of currency restrictions — mitigated (not because of the intelligence of the responsible persons but under the impact of the loss of foreign exchange) when suddenly the proverbial life on the ruins bloomed. The effects of the Depression vanished over night and strong recovery set in: in England after the devaluation; in the United States after numerous injections of credit; in the gold standard countries of that time — France, Holland, and Switzerland — after their devaluations, which occurred much too late; in Germany after the nonsensical Brüning-Luther deflation policy was given up and the Nazis had started their work-creation and spending measures. No wonder that faith in monetary manipulation through what one may call the Great Reflation (in contrast to the Great Depression) was strongly reinforced. The public and the experts deduced, post hoc ergo propter hoc and undoubtedly with some justification, the force of monetary reflation in overcoming crises.