The Man Who Predicted the Depression (Ludwig von Mises)

Wall Street Journal ^ | November 6, 2009 | Mark Spitznagel

[reaganaut1]

Ludwig von Mises was snubbed by economists world-wide as he warned of a credit crisis in the 1920s. We ignore the great Austrian at our peril today.

Mises's ideas on business cycles were spelled out in his 1912 tome "Theorie des Geldes und der Umlaufsmittel" ("The Theory of Money and Credit"). Not surprisingly few people noticed, as it was published only in German and wasn't exactly a beach read at that.

Taking his cue from David Hume and David Ricardo, Mises explained how the banking system was endowed with the singular ability to expand credit and with it the money supply, and how this was magnified by government intervention. Left alone, interest rates would adjust such that only the amount of credit would be used as is voluntarily supplied and demanded. But when credit is force-fed beyond that (call it a credit gavage), grotesque things start to happen.

Government-imposed expansion of bank credit distorts our "time preferences," or our desire for saving versus consumption. Government-imposed interest rates artificially below rates demanded by savers leads to increased borrowing and capital investment beyond what savers will provide. This causes temporarily higher employment, wages and consumption.

Ordinarily, any random spikes in credit would be quickly absorbed by the system—the pricing errors corrected, the half-baked investments liquidated, like a supple tree yielding to the wind and then returning. But when the government holds rates artificially low in order to feed ever higher capital investment in otherwise unsound, unsustainable businesses, it creates the conditions for a crash. Everyone looks smart for a while, but eventually the whole monstrosity collapses under its own weight through a credit contraction or, worse, a banking collapse.

[reaganaut1]

The Ludwig von Mises Institute is devoted to the Austrian school of economics. Very few Americans belong to any "school" of economics, but many can apply their common sense to understand that simply printing more money will not revive the economy but will cause higher prices.

[RoadTest]

Yup. The “Fed”, an arm of the New World Order, shrank the money supply to bring about the 1929 market crash and depression, so that the public would beg Roosevelt to institute all those alphabet soup Socialist agencies in our federal government.

[4rcane]

its the purist of capitalist school of economics. Even more free than Milton Friedman, who get the stuff about money wrong

[RoadTest]

Yes. The government is the only agency that can print counterfeit American money and get away with it. Oh, and I understand the North Koreans were doing that, too. They also got away with it.

[Sgt_Schultze]

The $700 billion stimulus bill would have accomplished more if it had been structured as a withholding holiday as many conservatives suggested. Every family would have been given access to all of their own money to spend as their family situation required. Many would pay down credit debt, others might have saved it and some others might have splurged. But the money would have gone to exactly the right places where it would have been most effective.

Except the government would have benefitted no donating constituency. But the worst possible outcome of such a stimulus package would have been realized. There would be no way for the government to reinstitute withholding again. After Americans had access to all of their own money, who could convince them again to send at least 1/4 off the top to their drunken uncle to buy more whiskey?

[hopespringseternal]

Withholding should be constitutionally prohibited. In fact, taxation should be done on a “here’s your bill, send it in” basis. Anything that allows taxation to be hidden (such as government mandated inflation) concentrates power in the hands of those who fundamentally believe the exercise of that power is A Good Thing. That impulse is in direct contradiction to what the founders intended for this nation.

[filbert]

Austrian economists Henry Hazlett (”Economics In One Lesson”) and Hayek (”Road to Serfdom”) should be required reading for all high school students in the United States.

Asking them to take on Mises right out of the chute might be a bit much . . . but I’d be perfectly OK with making all college students spend a couple of semesters studying “Human Action” as a requirement for graduation.

[count-your-change]

As Mises showed, the debtor class temporarily benefits from inflation in that they pay off debt with inflated money and this continues until the creditors can compensate. Then the debtors feel pinched again and the cycle renews.
But the printing of money will not stop because the largest and most persistent debtor is the federal government, which has like most of America, been spending way beyond its means for the past generation.

[SeekAndFind]

Very few schools in this country teach the Economic ideas of Ludwig Von Mises anymore. I can only think of two colleges in the USA who teach him seriously — Grove City College and Hillsdale. This is the Austrian School of Economics.

The post-1938 personal economic papers of Ludwig Von Mises are housed in the archive of Grove City College.

ETA, New York University does have a course on Austrian Economics ( since Mises used to teach there ), but I don’t think they emphasize it.

It’s a shame because his ideas ought to be taken seriously. Instead, we are exposed to Keynesianism and guys like Paul Krugman are still being given a hearing.

[SeekAndFind]

Very few schools in this country teach the Economic ideas of Ludwig Von Mises anymore. I can only think of two colleges in the USA who teach him seriously — Grove City College and Hillsdale. This is the Austrian School of Economics.

The post-1938 personal economic papers of Ludwig Von Mises are housed in the archive of Grove City College.

ETA, New York University does have a course on Austrian Economics ( since Mises used to teach there ), but I don’t think they emphasize it.

It’s a shame because his ideas ought to be taken seriously. Instead, we are exposed to Keynesianism and guys like Paul Krugman are still being given a hearin

[secretagent]

Mises's solution follows logically from his warnings. You can't fix what's broken by breaking it yet again. Stop the credit gavage. Stop inflating. Don't encourage consumption, but rather encourage saving and the repayment of debt. Let all the lame businesses fail—no bailouts. (You see where I'm going with this.) The distortions must be removed or else the precipice from which the system will inevitably fall will simply grow higher and higher.

The Fed didn't inflate enough, according to Friedman. The Great Depression was a Deflationary Depression.

What's the Austrian counter to that claim?

[Swing_Thought]

The Fed didn't inflate enough, according to Friedman. The Great Depression was a Deflationary Depression.

What's the Austrian counter to that claim?

The Austrians believe that it was the voluminous interventions of Hoover and FDR that prolonged the great depression. The tripling of taxes, the enormous increase in regulations, the vast new social programs put in place to help the unemployed, the propping up of industries and wages that prevented the liquidation of the boom malinvestments, etc...

In other words the depression of the late 20's early 30's became "great" due to various boneheaded government policies put in place to try to fix the economy - policies similar to the interventions taking place today on a grander scale.

Austrians today believe that while Bernanke's money pump stopped the bleeding it's done nothing to heal the patient. That the patient is still sick, perhaps sicker, than before. That we now have a rash of zombie "too bigs" who should have failed and we've added substantial new moral hazard into the mix going forward. That the reset that needs to take place to put us on a solid path hasn't happened.

[Brugmansian]

Only one person signed all 4 great American founding documents (The Continental Association, the DOI, the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution). Don't hear much about Roger Sherman today but his entire political career and philosophy developed as a result of losing a court case in which junk bills of credit from the state of Rhode Island were used to cheat Roger and his brother.

America was founded on hard money. But it didn't take long for the Jacobins, followers of Shay and the heirs of Jefferson to whittle away at the "real" constitution, the constitution which was written to prevent governments from cheating the people by devaluing the money. Sherman wrote in 1751:

If what is used as a Medium of Exchange is fluctuating in its Value it is no better than unjust Weights and Measures, both which are condemned by the Laws of GOD and Man, and therefore the longest and most universal Custom could never make the Use of such a Medium either lawful or reasonable . . .

But so long as we part with our most valuable Commodities for such Bills of Credit as are no Profit; but rather a Cheat, Vexation and Snare to us, and become a Medium whereby we are continually cheating and wronging one another in our Dealings and Commerce. And so long as we import so much more foreign Goods than are necessary, and keep so many Merchants and Trader employed to procure and deal them out to us: Great Part of which, we might as well make among ourselves; and another great Part of which, we had much better be without, especially the Spiritous Liquors of which vast Quantities are consumed in this Colony every Year, unnecessarily to the great Destruction of the Estates, Morals, Health and even the Lives of many of the Inhabitants. I say so long as these Things are so we shall spend great Part of our Labour and Substance for that which will not profit us.

[proud_yank]

And instead high school kids get Michael Moore & Algor, and college students are fed Noam Chomsky.

What a world we live in.