Money Humor, But Nobody's Laughing

Here's a letter we sent to the Wall Street Journal this past Monday:

If, as Jonathan Wright is quoted in Brenda Cronin’s and Ben Casselman’s “Sharper Focus, Tools Fortify Economists” (The Outlook, 10/21/13, A-3), “economics is in about the same state as medicine in about the 18^th century,” it is because mainstream schools of economics — Keynesian, Monetarist/Chicago, and Austrian — are based on a theory of money and credit as outdated and fallacious as that of Galen’s theory of the four humors, and that has degenerated into economic remedies as insane as bloodletting as cure-all.

Money is anything that can be accepted in settlement of a debt, regardless who issues it.  Contrary to the widespread belief that money represents only State-issued claims on existing wealth, money consists of “everything that can be transferred in commerce.”  This includes bills and notes conveying property rights in both existing wealth and to-be created wealth, i.e., “past” and “future” savings.

Restricting money to claims on existing wealth or, worse, to instruments issued by the State and backed by the public’s faith that the government will some day collect the tax monies to redeem its promises impedes growth, interferes with private property, and undermines the sanctity of contract (freedom of association/liberty).

Yours,

Blah, blah.

#30#