What Has Government Done to Our Money?

by Murray N. Rothbard

  We come now to perhaps the thorniest problem facing the monetary economist: an evaluation of “fractional reserve banking.” We must ask the question: would fractional reserve banking be permitted in a free market, or would it be proscribed as fraud? It is well-known that banks have rarely stayed on a “100 percent” basis very long. Since money can remain in the warehouse for a long period of time, the bank is tempted to use some of the money for its own account—tempted also because people do not ordinarily care whether the gold coins they receive back from the warehouse are the identical gold coins they deposited. The bank is tempted, then to use other people's money to earn a profit for itself.

  If the banks lend out the gold directly, the receipts, of course, are now partially invalidated. There are now some receipts with no gold behind them; in short, the bank is effectively insolvent, since it cannot possibly meet its own obligations if called upon to do so. It cannot possibly hand over its customers' property, should they all so desire.

  Generally, banks, instead of taking the gold directly, print uncovered or “pseudo” warehouse receipts, i.e., warehouse receipts for gold that is not and cannot be there. These are then loaned at a profit. Clearly, the economic effect is the same. More warehouse receipts are printed than gold exists in the vaults. What the bank has done is to issue gold warehouse receipts which represent nothing, but are supposed to represent 100 percent of their face value in gold. The pseudo-receipts pour forth on the trusting market in the same way as the true receipts, and thus add to the effective money supply of the country. In the above example, if the banks now issue two million ounces of false receipts, with no gold behind them, the money supply of the country will rise from ten to twelve million gold ounces—at least until the hocus-pocus has been discovered and corrected. There are now, in addition to four million ounces of gold held by the public, eight million ounces of money substitutes, only six million of which are covered by gold.

  Issue of pseudo-receipts, like counterfeiting of coin, is an example of inflation, which will be studied further below. Inflation may be defined as any increase in the economy's supply of money not consisting of an increase in the stock of the money metal. Fractional reserve banks, therefore, are inherently inflationary institutions.

  Defenders of banks reply as follows: the banks are simply functioning like other businesses—they take risks. Admittedly, if all the depositors presented their claims, the banks would be bankrupt, since outstanding receipts exceed gold in the vaults. But, banks simply take the chance—usually justified—that not everyone will ask for his gold. The great difference, however, between the “fractional reserve” bank and all other business is this: other businessmen use their own or borrowed capital in ventures, and if they borrow credit, they promise to pay at a future date, taking care to have enough money at hand on that date to meet their obligation. If Smith borrows 100 gold ounces for a year, he will arrange to have 100 gold ounces available on that future date. But the bank isn't borrowing from its depositors; it doesn't pledge to pay back gold at a certain date in the future. Instead, it pledges to pay the receipt in gold at any time, on demand. In short, the bank note or deposit is not an IOU, or debt; it is a warehouse receipt for other people's property. Further, when a businessman borrows or lends money, he does not add to the money supply. The loaned funds are saved funds, part of the existing money supply being transferred from saver to borrower. Bank issues, on the other hand, artificially increase the money supply since pseudo-receipts are injected into the market.

  A bank, then, is not taking the usual business risk. It does not, like all businessmen, arrange the time pattern of its assets proportionately to the time pattern of liabilities, i.e., see to it that it will have enough money, on due dates, to pay its bills. Instead, most of its liabilities are instantaneous, but its assets are not.

  The bank creates new money out of thin air, and does not, like everyone else, have to acquire money by producing and selling its services. In short, the bank is already and at all times bankrupt; but its bankruptcy is only revealed when customers get suspicious and precipitate “bank runs.” No other business experiences a phenomenon like a “run.” No other business can be plunged into bankruptcy overnight simply because its customers decide to repossess their own property. No other business creates fictitious new money, which will evaporate when truly gauged.

  The dire economic effects of fractional bank money will be explored in the next chapter. Here we conclude that, morally, such banking would have no more right to exist in a truly free market than any other form of implicit theft. It is true that the note or deposit does not actually say on its face that the warehouse guarantees to keep a full backing of gold on hand at all times. But the bank does promise to redeem on demand, and so when it issues any fake receipts, it is already committing fraud, since it immediately becomes impossible for the bank to keep its pledge and redeem all of its notes and deposits.15 Fraud, therefore, is immediately being committed when the act of issuing pseudo-receipts takes place. Which particular receipts are fraudulent can only be discovered after a run on the bank has occurred (since all the receipts look alike), and the late-coming claimants are left high and dry.16

  If fraud is to be proscribed in a free society, then fractional reserve banking would have to meet the same fate.17Suppose, however, that fraud and fractional reserve banking are permitted, with the banks only required to fulfill their obligations to redeem in gold on demand. Any failure to do so would mean instant bankruptcy. Such a system has come to be known as “free banking.” Would there then be a heavy fraudulent issue of money substitutes, with resulting artificial creation of new money? Many people have assumed so, and believed that “wildcat banking” would then simply inflate the money supply astronomically. But, on the contrary, “free banking” would lead to a far “harder” monetary system than we have today.

  The banks would be checked by the same three limits that we noted above, and checked rather rigorously. In the first place, each bank's expansion will be limited by a loss of gold to another bank. For a bank can only expand money within the limits of its own clientele. Suppose, for example, that Bank A, with 10,000 ounces of gold deposited, now issues 2,000 ounces of false warehouse receipts to gold, and lends them to various enterprises, or invests them in securities. The borrower, or former holder of securities, will spend the new money on various goods and services. Eventually, the money going the rounds will reach an owner who is a client of another bank, B.

  At that point, Bank B will call upon Bank A to redeem its receipt in gold, so that the gold can be transferred to Bank B's vaults. Clearly, the wider the extent of each bank's clientele, and the more the clients trade with one another, the more scope there is for each bank to expand its credit and money supply. For if the bank's clientele is narrow, then soon after its issue of created money, it will be called upon to redeem—and, as we have seen, it doesn't have the wherewithal to redeem more than a fraction of its obligations. To avoid the threat of bankruptcy from this quarter, then, the narrower the scope of a bank's clientele, the greater the fraction of gold it must keep in reserve, and the less it can expand. If there is one bank in each country, there will be far more scope for expansion than if there is one bank for every two persons in the community. Other things being equal, then, the more banks there are, and the tinier their size, the “harder”—and better—the monetary supply will be. Similarly, a bank's clientele will also be limited by those who don't use a bank at all. The more people use actual gold instead of bank money, the less room there is for bank inflation.

  Suppose, however, that the banks form a cartel, and agree to pay out each other's receipts, and not call for redemption. And suppose further that bank money is in universal use. Are there any limits left on bank expansion? Yes, there remains the check of client confidence in the banks. As bank credit and the money supply expand further and further, more and more clients will get worried over the lowering of the reserve fraction. And, in a truly free society, those who k
now the truth about the real insolvency of the banking system will be able to form AntiBank Leagues to urge clients to get their money out before it is too late. In short, leagues to urge bank runs, or the threat of their formation, will be able to stop and reverse the monetary expansion.

  None of this discussion is meant to impugn the general practice of credit, which has an important and vital function on the free market. In a credit transaction, the possessor of money (a good useful in the present) exchanges it for an IOU payable at some future date (the IOU being a “future good”) and the interest charge reflects the higher valuation of present goods over future goods on the market. But bank notes or deposits are not credit; they are warehouse receipts, instantaneous claims to cash (e.g., gold) in the bank vaults. The debtor makes sure that he pays his debt when payment becomes due; the fractional reserve banker can never pay more than a small fraction of his outstanding liabilities.

  We turn, in the next chapter, to a study of the various forms of governmental interference in the monetary system—most of them designed, not to repress fraudulent issue, but on the contrary, to remove these and other natural checks on inflation.

  13.

  Summary

  What have we learned about money in a free society? We have learned that all money has originated, and must originate, in a useful commodity chosen by the free market as a medium of exchange. The unit of money is simply a unit of weight of the monetary commodity—usually a metal, such as gold or silver. Under freedom, the commodities chosen as money, their shape and form, are left to the voluntary decisions of free individuals. Private coinage, therefore, is just as legitimate and worthwhile as any business activity. The “price” of money is its purchasing power in terms of all goods in the economy, and this is determined by its supply, and by every individual's demand for money. Any attempt by government to fix the price will interfere with the satisfaction of people's demands for money. If people find it more convenient to use more than one metal as money, the exchange rate between them on the market will be determined by the relative demands and supplies, and will tend to equal the ratios of their respective purchasing power. Once there is enough supply of a metal to permit the market to choose it as money, no increase in supply can improve its monetary function. An increase in money supply will then merely dilute the effectiveness of each ounce of money without helping the economy. An increased stock of gold or silver, however, fulfills more nonmonetary wants (ornament, industrial purposes, etc.) served by the metal, and is therefore socially useful. Inflation (an increase in money substitutes not covered by an increase in the metal stock) is never socially useful, but merely benefits one set of people at the expense of another. Inflation, being a fraudulent invasion of property, could not take place on the free market.

  In sum, freedom can run a monetary system as superbly as it runs the rest of the economy. Contrary to many writers, there is nothing special about money that requires extensive governmental dictation. Here, too, free men will best and most smoothly supply all their economic wants. For money as for all other activities of man, “liberty is the mother, not the daughter, of order.”

  III.

  GOVERNMENT MEDDLING WITH MONEY

  1.

  The Revenue of Government

  GOVERNMENTS, IN CONTRAST TO all other organizations, do not obtain their revenue as payment for their services. Consequently, governments face an economic problem different from that of everyone else. Private individuals who want to acquire more goods and services from others must produce and sell more of what others want. Governments need only find some method of expropriating more goods without the owner's consent.

  In a barter economy, government officials can only expropriate resources in one way: by seizing goods in kind. In a monetary economy they will find it easier to seize monetary assets, and then use the money to acquire goods and services for government, or else pay the money as subsidies to favored groups. Such seizure is called taxation.1

  Taxation, however, is often unpopular, and, in less temperate days, frequently precipitated revolutions. The emergence of money, while a boon to the human race, also opened a more subtle route for governmental expropriation of resources. On the free market, money can be acquired by producing and selling goods and services that people want, or by mining (a business no more profitable, in the long run, than any other). But if government can find ways to engage in counterfeiting—the creation of new money out of thin air—it can quickly produce its own money without taking the trouble to sell services or mine gold. It can then appropriate resources slyly and almost unnoticed, without rousing the hostility touched off by taxation. In fact, counterfeiting can create in its very victims the blissful illusion of unparalleled prosperity.

  Counterfeiting is evidently but another name for inflation—both creating new “money” that is not standard gold or silver, and both functioning similarly. And now we see why governments are inherently inflationary: because inflation is a powerful and subtle means for government acquisition of the public's resources, a painless and all the more dangerous form of taxation.

  2.

  The Economic Effects of Inflation

  To gauge the economic effects of inflation, let us see what happens when a group of counterfeiters set about their work. Suppose the economy has a supply of 10,000 gold ounces, and counterfeiters, so cunning that they cannot be detected, pump in 2,000 “ounces” more. What will be the consequences? First, there will be a clear gain to the counterfeiters. They take the newly-created money and use it to buy goods and services. In the words of the famous New Yorker cartoon, showing a group of counterfeiters in sober contemplation of their handiwork: “Retail spending is about to get a needed shot in the arm.” Precisely. Local spending, indeed, does get a shot in the arm. The new money works its way, step by step, throughout the economic system. As the new money spreads, it bids prices up—as we have seen, new money can only dilute the effectiveness of each dollar. But this dilution takes time and is therefore uneven; in the meantime, some people gain and other people lose. In short, the counterfeiters and their local retailers have found their incomes increased before any rise in the prices of the things they buy. But, on the other hand, people in remote areas of the economy, who have not yet received the new money, find their buying prices rising before their incomes. Retailers at the other end of the country, for example, will suffer losses. The first receivers of the new money gain most, and at the expense of the latest receivers.

  Inflation, then, confers no general social benefit; instead, it redistributes the wealth in favor of the first-comers and at the expense of the laggards in the race. And inflation is, in effect, a race—to see who can get the new money earliest. The latecomers—the ones stuck with the loss—are often called the “fixed income groups.” Ministers, teachers, people on salaries, lag notoriously behind other groups in acquiring the new money. Particular sufferers will be those depending on fixed money contracts—contracts made in the days before the inflationary rise in prices. Life insurance beneficiaries and annuitants, retired persons living off pensions, landlords with long term leases, bondholders and other creditors, those holding cash, all will bear the brunt of the inflation. They will be the ones who are “taxed.”2

  Inflation has other disastrous effects. It distorts that keystone of our economy: business calculation. Since prices do not all change uniformly and at the same speed, it becomes very difficult for business to separate the lasting from the transitional, and gauge truly the demands of consumers or the cost of their operations. For example, accounting practice enters the “cost” of an asset at the amount the business has paid for it. But if inflation intervenes, the cost of replacing the asset when it wears out will be far greater than that recorded on the books. As a result, business accounting will seriously overstate their profits during inflation—and may even consume capital while presumably increasing their investments.3 Similarly, stockholders and real estate holders will acquire capital gains during an inflation that are
not really “gains” at all. But they may spend part of these gains without realizing that they are thereby consuming their original capital.

  By creating illusory profits and distorting economic calculation, inflation will suspend the free market's penalizing of inefficient, and rewarding of efficient, firms. Almost all firms will seemingly prosper. The general atmosphere of a “sellers' market” will lead to a decline in the quality of goods and of service to consumers, since consumers often resist price increases less when they occur in the form of downgrading of quality.4 The quality of work will decline in an inflation for a more subtle reason: people become enamored of “get-rich-quick” schemes, seemingly within their grasp in an era of ever-rising prices, and often scorn sober effort. Inflation also penalizes thrift and encourages debt, for any sum of money loaned will be repaid in dollars of lower purchasing power than when originally received. The incentive, then, is to borrow and repay later rather than save and lend. Inflation, therefore, lowers the general standard of living in the very course of creating a tinsel atmosphere of “prosperity.”