DEAD END OF THE WORLD PAPER-MONEY UNION

The Ethics of Money Production, JÖRG GUIDO HÜLSMAN:

"As we have seen, there is a strong tendency for the formation of currency blocks around the paper monies used in the countries with the largest capital markets. The driving force in this process is the quest of foreign governments for additional revenue. The governments that control the large capital markets have little incentive to adopt the currencies controlled by other governments. But governments that control only a small tax base and cannot tame their appetite for more money must at some point turn to international capital markets; and this sooner or later forces them to adopt a foreign paper money, or to merge its paper money with the paper monies controlled by other governments.

We have also seen that the connectivity between international capital markets creates an incentive for competing standard paper-money producers to cooperate and, eventually, to merge. This consolidation and centralization process is at present far from being completed. Today’s international monetary order is an order in transition. (...)

There would then be just one paper money for the entire world, possibly with a few remaining national paper currencies that serve as money certificates for the global money. The great project that Lord Keynes unsuccessfully promoted at the 1944 Bretton Woods conference would then finally have come true.

We have already pointed out all essential implications of such an event. Even a national paper money is a powerful engine of economic, cultural, and spiritual degradation. How much more would this be the case with a global paper money? Such a monetary regime would provide the economic foundation of a totalitarian nightmare.

It is true that we are still far away from this scenario. Great obstacles stand in its way, because it would require no less than a political unification of mankind.

But let us assume for the moment that these problems could be overcome in the near future. And let us also assume that fears of totalitarianism could be dispelled by an appropriate moral education of political leaders, who would then excel in the art of selfrestraint.

Would this solve the problem of monetary constitution? Would it give the world a true monetary order that did not bear in its very bosom a tendency for self-destruction, a tendency inherent in all fiat monetary systems?

In light of our general discussion of paper money, the answer is patent. All paper-money systems, be they national or international, labor under the presence of moral hazard. In the long run, therefore, a global paper money cannot evade the fate of national paper money. It must either collapse in hyperinflation or force the government to adopt a policy of increasing control, and eventually total control, over all economic resources. Both scenarios entail economic disruptions on a scale that we can barely imagine today. The inevitable result would be death for many hundreds of millions of human beings.

There is hope, however. Mankind is free to return at any time to the natural production of money, which is in fact the only ethically justifiable and economically viable monetary
order."

O estado de arte da civilização

Portanto, os Bancos compram a sua própria dívida agora isenta de risco porque tem adicionada uma garantia do Estado, e com dinheiro .... criado pelo próprio Banco Central. E a crise assim passa, sem problemas.

A minha veia anarquista diz-me que o presente Regime civilizacional de grandes Estados sociais-democratas já não sabe o que faz, entrou em pânico, e está acompanhado por esse grandes feiticeiros misticistas (acreditam no Crédito sem poupança prévia, que a simples criação de dinheiro induz a sua própria procura e que o consumo é a origem do bem estar) que dão pelo nome de economistas e banqueiros centrais. Temo que o fim do Regime (embora desejável) não seja coisa bonita de se ver. Até porque o Regime vai mostrar que é capaz de tudo antes de implodir.

1. Treasury Announces $1 Trillion Plan to Buy Banks' Bad Debt

2. "El 70% de la deuda emitida con aval se la quedan los propios bancos

Compran los bonos avalados y los usan como garantía para obtener liquidez en las subastas del BCE. No les consume capital y sacan un margen sustancioso.

Los bancos están devorando las emisiones de deuda con aval del Estado colocadas por otras entidades. Y es que lo tienen todo. Con el mismo riesgo que la deuda pública, ofrecen una rentabilidad más elevada; no les consume capital o recursos propios, uno de los parámetros que más se miman en medio de una de las peores crisis financieras de la historia; y el Banco Central Europeo (BCE) les permite utilizar estos activos como garantía para obtener liquidez en las subastas rutinarias que realiza.Los bancos españoles han emitido ya 13.500 millones de euros con garantía estatal desde enero, de los que las propias entidades han comprado el 68% de media, es decir, 9.180 millones de euros. "

A regulamentação bancária e monetária que falta

... para prevenir mais bolhas especulativas seguidas de crises bancárias:

- impôr 100% de reservas nos depósitos à ordem
- restringir o crescimento da massa monetária pelos Bancos Centrais.

Claro que tudo isso seria natural com a liberalização do uso do ouro e prata como moeda, acabando assim a sua proibição.

The inflationists' dream

"Clearly, the inflationists' dream is some sort of world paper money, manipulated by a world government and Central Bank, inflating everywhere at a common rate. This dream still lies in the dim future, however; we are still far from world government, and a national currency problems have so far been too diverse and conflicting to permit meshing into a single unit. Yet, the world has moved steadily in this direction" What Has Government Done to Our Money?, Murray N. Rothbard em 1980

O "Primeiro Tratado" de Locke

Porquê ler o "Primeiro Tratado" de Locke? Por Miguel Morgado.

Leitura complementar: Locke e a Escola de Salamanca.

Nomos

Norma e intencionalidade em F. A. Hayek. Por Rodrigo Adão da Fonseca.

Matemática em Economia?

"Mathematical equations, says Rothbard, are appropriate and useful where there are constant quantitative relations among unmotivated variables; they are inappropriate in the field of conscious behavior. In a few brilliant lines he demolishes the main device of mathematical economists, viz., the fallacious idea of substituting the concepts of mutual determination and equilibrium for the allegedly outdated concept of cause and effect. And he shows that the concepts of equilibrium and the evenly rotating economy do not refer to reality; although indispensable for any economic inquiry, they are merely auxiliary mental tools to aid us in the analysis of real action.

The equations of physics describe a process through time, while those of economics do not describe a process at all, but merely the final equilibrium point, a hypothetical situation that is outside of time and will never be reached in reality. Furthermore, they cannot say anything about the path by which the economy moves in the direction of the final equilibrium position. As there are no constant relations between any of the elements which the science of action studies, there is no measurement possible, and all numerical data available have merely a historical character; they belong to economic history and not to economics as such. The positivist slogan, "science is measurement," in no way refers to the sciences of human action; the claims of "econometrics" are vain."

Mises Reviews Rothbard's Man, Economy, and State, by Ludwig von Mises

Peter Schiff - the great comunicator

História do crescimento da massa monetária (M2 USD YOY, desde 1960)

Observações:

* medido pelo agregado monetário, M2

* podemos verificar como o período de estagflação nos anos 70 foi já "preparado"" por inflação monetária nos anos 60 - o que conduziu ao "default" por Nixon impossibilitado de cumprir a entrega de ouro contra dólares.

* Os anos 80 foram um período de desinflação monetária e de preços

* os anos 90 depois do emagrecimento anterior, retomaram a inflação monetária que em vez de se materializar em pressão nos preços ao consumidor, é encaminhada para a expansão de crédito - o que não se traduz em inflação de preços no consumidor, mas sim no crescer de uma bolha económica visível nas "Internet stocks".

* Com o 11/9 e a queda da bolsa observa-se a continuação da inflação monetária que alimenta o "imobiliário" cujo rebentamento despoleta uma crise bancária que sem "intervenção" teria levado à falência de uma parte do sistema bancário (o que seria bem feito).

* Mas agora, pode observar-se que a criação monetária está a conduzir o crescimento do M2 para cima dos 10% anuais novamente.

* Para onde irá toda esta pura criação de moeda? Dado a recessão e crise bancária, parece-me que iremos voltar à "inflação de preços" a ser observada via commodities novamente, sendo o ouro e prata uma classe de commodities à parte dado o seu valor monetário (e por isso, tem os perigos de potenciais de intervenções agressivas, quer por novas vendas por parte de Bancos Centrais e FMI, quer quem sabe por intervenções mais violentas de controlar o mercado de compra/venda de ouro.. .ainda assim, acho que é válido como "seguro").

Nota: A inflação monetária tem duas componente de materialização:

1- uma que tem tradução mais rápida nos preços do consumidor. Exemplo: o Banco Central cria moeda para pagar directa ou indirectamente (Banco Central compra ou financia dívida pública) despesas do Estado.

2- via expansão do crédito no sistema bancário, que tem menor consequência directa na subida de preços no consumidor mas dá lugar às bolhas económicas ao descer artificialmente a taxa de juro para o investimento que está a ser realizado e que faz subir os preços de activos (como as acções, imobiliário, bens de equipamento, etc). Dando mais tarde lugar a crises bancárias.

O monetarismo deu conta do primeiro efeito, só a escola "austríaca" tem há muito tempo uma linha de investigação e explicação do segundo efeito (e consistente com a sua teoria de estrutura de capital, o juro como preferência temporal, etc).

Austrian Scholars Conference

Audio:

Peter Schiff:
Why the Meltdown Should Have Surprised No One
The Henry Hazlitt Memorial Lecture. Recorded 13 March 2009 at the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama. [1:15:31]

George A. Selgin:
The Private Supply of Money
F. A. Hayek Memorial Lecture. Recorded 14 March 2009 at the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama. [1:00:13]

Subsidiar a AIG (ou o BPN, ou o BPP, ...) é ajudar as contrapartes

"AIG Says $105 Billion Flowed to Goldman, SocGen, U.S. States

March 16 (Bloomberg) -- American International Group Inc., under pressure to reveal how it spent billions of dollars in taxpayer funds since its September bailout, said $105 billion flowed to U.S. states and banks including Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Societe Generale SA and Deutsche Bank AG.

Banks that bought credit-default swaps or traded securities with AIG got $22.4 billion in collateral, $27.1 billion in payments from a U.S. entity to retire the derivatives, and $43.7 billion tied to the securities-lending program, AIG said yesterday in a statement. States led by California and Virginia got $12.1 billion tied to guaranteed investment contracts. (...)

AIG Reversal

Goldman Sachs led beneficiaries, with $12.9 billion, followed by SocGen, France’s No. 3 bank, with $11.9 billion, and Deutsche Bank, Germany’s biggest lender, with $11.8 billion. New York-based AIG and the Fed had previously refused to reveal the counterparties, saying the contracts were confidential and that the information could damage AIG’s business prospects. "

MIT Climatologist Richard Lindzen on the Politics of Global Warming

Pão, sal e liberdade

Viva o pão saudável. Por Michael Seufert.

Ignoring the Austrians

Ignoring the Austrians Got Us in This Mess. Por Randall Forsyth.

Austrian economists assert the current crisis is the inevitable result of the Fed's successive efforts to counter each previous bust. As the credit expansion pumped up asset values to unsustainable levels, the eventual collapse would result in a contraction of credit as losses decimate banks' balance sheets and render them unable to lend. That sounds like an accurate diagnosis of the current problems.

Freedom Alert: World (statist) Currency

"Nobel-prize winner backs world currency: KAZAKH President Nursultan Nazarbayev has won backing for his plan for a single world currency from an intellectual architect of the euro currency, Nobel-prize winner Professor Robert Mundell."

Robert Mundell, autor da estapafúrdia noção de zonas monetárias óptimas (whatever that means) agora parece achar o mundo uma "zona óptima".

Curioso, porque o mundo já teve uma moeda única (o ouro, e também a prata ... ainda que com a habitual deturpação de reservas parciais), essencialmente adoptada voluntariamente em todas as culturas e regiões e religiões do mundo, tendo a mesma clique acabado com essa moeda mundial, pela força.

Agora querem impor uma moeda única (a deles, de forma aos economistas poderem fantasiarem sobre a sua própria importância em que pretendem saber que sabem "calibrar" políticas monetárias, decidindo taxas de juro...).

E porquê? Para anularem a última forma de punição via taxas cambiais.

E conseguir o quê? Ainda uma maior capacidade de praticarem a sua religião pagã de misticismo inflacionista: uma espécie de "Money creates its own demand".

Reforma tranquila das Freguesias em (muito) poucas palavras

A propósito desta notícia: "Associação Nacional de Freguesias processa hoje o Estado - A Associação Nacional de Freguesias (ANAFRE) deverá hoje entregar uma acção contra o Estado pelo incumprimento da legislação na remuneração dos presidentes de junta que exercem a tempo inteiro."

Tal como o vejo, as freguesias deviam ser directamente financiadas pelo IMI liquidado pelos proprietários locais, os quais deviam constituir uma Assembleia Geral onde fosse eleito um "Presidente da Junta" e a sua equipe, e fosse aprovado um orçamento e actividades (como cuidar do espaço comum, limpeza, seguranças, etc).

Tal Reforma não deve ser imposta, deve ser adoptada pelas Frequesias quando e se o quiserem.

Tira poder ao Município? Claro, e ainda bem. Na verdade devem ter as freguesias também a capacidade de veto sobre algumas coisas, como o licenciamento de lugares nocturnos ou a aprovação de projectos com volumetrias consideradas de impacto (e potencialmente descaracterizadoras), a gestão da sua segurança, etc.

Gold Watch

World mints report soaring demand for gold coins

"(...) The United States Mint said sales of its one-ounce American Eagle gold bullion coins rocketed to 710,000 ounces in 2008, from 140,000 ounces a year before.

"The demand for gold and silver has been unprecedented," a spokesman for the Mint told Reuters.

The chairman of the French Mint, Christophe Beaux, said sales roughly doubled last year in value terms and are expected to rise by another 50 percent this year."

Re: O multiplicador keynesiano

http://oinsurgente.org/2009/03/13/o-multiplicador-keynesiano/

Ver aqui como Rothbard ridiculariza (gostava de usar outro termo, mas acho demasiado grave que isto tenha sido considerado "ciência" durante tanto tempo ... e na verdade ainda é) o conceito de “multiplicador” no seu tratado de economia:

C. The Multiplier

The once highly esteemed “multiplier” has now happily faded in popularity, as economists have begun to realize that it is simply the obverse of the stable consumption function. How­ever, the complete absurdity of the multiplier has not yet been fully appreciated. The theory of the “investment multiplier” runs somewhat as follows:

Social Income = Consumption + Investment

Consumption is a stable function of income, as revealed by statistical correlation, etc. Let us say, for the sake of simplicity, that Consumption will always be .80 (Income).[76]

In that case,

Income = .80 (Income) + Investment..20 (Income) = Investment; orIncome = 5 (Investment).

The “5” is the “investment multiplier.”

It is then obvious that all we need to increase social money income by a desired amount is to increase investment by 1/5 of that amount; and the multi­plier magic will do the rest. The early “pump primers” believed in approaching this goal through stimulating private investment; later Keynesians realized that if investment is an “active” vola­tile factor, government spending is no less active and more cer­tain, so that government spending must be relied upon to pro­vide the needed multiplier effect. Creating new money would be most effective, since the government would then be sure not to reduce private funds. Hence the basis for calling all government spending “investment”: it is “investment” because it is not tied passively to income.

The following is offered as a far more potent “multiplier,” on Keynesian grounds even more potent and effective than the in­vestment multiplier, and on Keynesian grounds there can be no objection to it. It is a reductio ad absurdum, but it is not sim­ply a parody, for it is in keeping with the Keynesian method.

Social Income = Income of (insert name of any person, say the reader) + Income of everyone else.

Let us use symbols:

Social income = Y
Income of the Reader = R
Income of everyone else = V

We find that V is a completely stable function of Y. Plot the two on coordinates, and we find historical one-to-one correspond­ence between them. It is a tremendously stable function, far more stable than the “consumption function.” On the other hand, plot R against Y. Here we find, instead of perfect correlation, only the remotest of connections between the fluctuating income of the reader of these lines and the social income. Therefore, this reader’s income is the active, volatile, uncertain element in the social income, while everyone else’s income is passive, stable, de­termined by the social income.

Let us say the equation arrived at is:

V = .99999 Y

Then, Y = .99999 Y + R

.00001 Y = RY = 100,000 R

This is the reader’s own personal multiplier, a far more pow­erful one than the investment multiplier. To increase social in­come and thereby cure depression and unemployment, it is only necessary for the government to print a certain number of dol­lars and give them to the reader of these lines. The reader’s spending will prime the pump of a 100,000-fold increase in the national income.[77]

Adenda: Science Is as Science Does - "(...) Austrian economists don't claim to be doing empirical science. Keynesians do. What is ironic to me as an empirical scientist, is that it is the Austrians who get their predictions right, while Keynesians seem to have been caught like deer in the headlights.

This pattern is nothing new to the current crisis. It was Ludwig von Mises who predicted the Great Depression, while Irving Fisher, still highly revered by the Keynesians, proceeded to lose his fortune.

It was the Keynesians who assured us that we were headed for a severe recession (which never materialized) after World War II if the government cut back on its spending.

It was Fed chairman Arthur Burns who assured Murray Rothbard that a continuation of the inflationary recession was impossible.

Time after weary time, it is the mainstream and Keynesian economists (who ridicule and ignore Austrian economics as unscientific) whose predictions are utterly refuted by the events of history. Yet they continue to propound their eternal nonsense and use government coercion to force their bankrupt ideology on everyone else. As Paul Feyerabend said, "I have no objection to incompetence but I do object when incompetence is accompanied by boredom and self-righteousness."

I would also add that I object when incompetence, boredom, and self-righteousness are accompanied by government coercion. But that is a digression.

What I mean to insist on here is that Keynesian economists, who claim to be empirical scientists, ought to abandon their theory. The entire history of civilization stands as a monumental falsification of it. Or please, at the very least, stop degrading the good name of empirical science with such rubbish."

... depois de Adam Smith II

O Vol. II, aqui (pdf).

Classical Economics - An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, Volume II, Murray N. Rothbard

Introduction vii
Acknowledgements xv
1. J.B. Say: the French tradition in Smithian clothing 1
2. Jeremy Bentham: the utilitarian as big brother 47
3. James Mill, Ricardo, and the Ricardian system 69
4. The decline of the Ricardian system, 1820-48 101
5. Monetary and banking thought, I: the early bullionist controversy 157
6. Monetary and banking thought, II: the bullion Report and the return to gold 191
7. Monetary and banking thought, III: the struggle over the currency school 225
8. John Stuart Mill and the reimposition of Ricardian economics 275
9. Roots of Marxism: messianic communism 297
10. Marx's vision of communism 315
11. Alienation, unity, and the dialectic 347
12. The Marxian system, I: historical materialism and the class struggle 369
13. The Marxian system, II: the economics of capitalism and its inevitable demise 407
14. After Mill: Bastiat and the French laissez-faire tradition 439
Bibliographical essay 477
Index 507

Austrian Scholars Conference 2009: Destaques de amanhã

• DANIEL COLEMAN (Catholic University of America) AND STEPHEN KROGH (Duquesne University)
The Private Production of Urban Planning

• WALTER BLOCK AND WILLIAM BARNETT (Loyola University New Orleans)
Time Deposits: Fraud and the ABCT

• WILLIAM ANDERSON (Frostburg State University)
Say’s Law and the Austrian Business Cycle Theory