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Can an Economy Advance Without Savings?

January 21, 2018

Can an Economy Advance Without Savings?

According to Frank Decker, Honorary Associate at the University of Sydney Law School, it certainly can. Not only that, but eschewing savings in favor of “monetisation of assets” will yield better results! I refer to his article in Economic Affairs–Volume 37, Number 3, October 2017–, a publication of the Institute of Economic Affairs, London.

Mr. Decker purports to answer the question “Central Bank or Monetary Authority? Three Views on Money and Monetary Reform.” The three views examined are commodity money, state money, and money as a derivative of property. All three views are explained very well, and a beginner to the study of the role of money will learn a lot in a short period of time.

Commodity money is the name Decker aptly gives to money backed by gold or some other widely accepted medium of indirect exchange. Commodity money’s proponents see two major advantages–that it ends inflation and the business cycle. He quotes Mises and Rothbard to good effect.

State money, or money as a state liability, is fiat money that all the world knows today. Its two most famous proponents are Keynes and Friedman. State money’s main advantages, as seen by Decker, are that the state can engage in countercyclical spending and the state can fund itself by printing all the money that it needs for current expenditures.

Decker’s third type of money–money as a derivative of property–sounds no different than fractional reserve banking, except that the fraction of reserves required to be held by the lending banks is so low that it is not a factor of lending restraint. Decker gives the example of a business that uses its assets as loan collateral. According to Decker, the money that the bank creates is NOT created out of thin air, because it is backed by private property; i.e., the loan collateral.

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