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IPFS News Link • Economy - Recession-Depression

"We've Moved Beyond The Disaster Stage & Are Approaching Catastrophe..."

• Zero Hedge - Tyler Durden

Authored by Anthony Mueller via The Mises Institute,

[In the second part of this interview, Brazilian journalist André de Godoy speaks with Antony Mueller about the relationship between credit and money, the inflationary process, and its relation to the real economy. How will the current debt binge end? What comes after Quantitative Easing?]

André de Godoy: Ludwig von Mises mentions in his books that credit expansion is one of the causes of the inflation beyond the monetary expansion. What are the similarities and differences between those two phenomena?

Antony Mueller: Money comes into circulation through the channel of credit. Commercial banks get a loan from the central bank and provide loans to consumers, business, and government. Thus, there are two sources of credit creation and two basic types of money: central bank money and depository money. The modern monetary system is a pure credit system based on fiat money without a physical backing such as gold, for example. Governments left the gold standard with the beginning of World War I and they never returned to it. Nowadays, the government through its central bank can create as much money as it wants.

Godoy: What exactly is the relationship between credit and money?

Mueller: While fiat money is based on credit, not all money impacts on the economy. For example, commercial banks can borrow money from the central bank and not use it for loans but deposit it in their accounts at the central bank. Then more central bank money does not mean more commercial credit for the investors and consumers in the economy. Also, more money that comes into the economy does not necessarily mean more demand because the holders of money may slow down the frequency of transaction–the so-called velocity of money. When the economic agents spend less and hold their money assets for longer period of time, the velocity of circulation of money slows. Therefore, it is wrong to postulate that more money means more credit and that more money always means more spending. That was the false assumption of the monetarists.


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