Where Mises Went Wrong
by Antal E. Fekete
September 14, 2005
Ludwig von Mises erred when he dismissed what is known as the Fullarton
Effect. In 1844 John Fullarton of the Banking School described how
low interest rates were resisted by savers in selling their gold
bonds and hoarding gold instead. Mises ridiculed the idea, calling
gold hoards a deus ex machina in Human Action (3 rd revised
edition, p 440). My theory of interest corrects this mistake in giving
due recognition to the Fullarton Effect. I can well understand the
frustrations of Robert Blumen, Sean Corrigan, and other detractors
of mine reluctant to read the voluminous outpourings of this "inflationist
monetary crank". Rather than finding a weak point in my argument
they call me names, stonewall Adam Smith, conjure up the bogyman
of John Law, set up straw men only to knock them down again, and
quarrel bitterly with my ad hoc examples while ignoring my
comprehensive theory of interest. For the benefit of discriminating
students of Carl Menger and Eugene Böhm-Bawerk I restate this
novel theory in a concise form.
The rate of interest is a market phenomenon. It is defined as the
rate at which the coupons of the gold bond amortize its price as
quoted in the secondary bond market. The mathematician has shown
us formulas expressing the rate of interest in terms of the price
of the gold bond. They confirm that the two are inversely related:
the higher the bond price, the lower is the rate of interest and vice
versa. As a consequence, the lower bid price of the gold bond
corresponds to the ceiling and the higher asked price to the floor
of the range to which the rate of interest is confined. The question
is what economic factors determine these constraints and how.
The floor is determined by the time preference of the marginal bondholder.
If the rate of interest falls below it, then he takes profit in selling
the overpriced gold bond and will keep the proceeds in gold coin.
When the rate of interest bounces in response to bondholder resistance,
he will buy back the gold bond at a lower price. The gold hoards
are no deus ex machina: they are the very tool of human action
in setting a limit to falling interest rates.
The ceiling is determined by the marginal productivity of capital,
that is, the rate of productivity of the capital of the marginal
producer. If the rate of interest rises above it, then he sells his
plant and equipment and invests the proceeds in the underpriced gold
bond. When the rate of interest falls back in response to producer
resistance, he will sell the gold bond at a profit and use the proceeds
to deploy his capital in production once more.
There is no valid reason to denigrate the productivity theory of
interest following Mises. The theory of time preference and the productivity
theory are not mutually exclusive. On the contrary, they are complementary.
The fratricidal wars between the two schools have been in vain: they
did not serve the advancement of science. They merely contributed
to its retardation. Only a synthesis of the two theories can adequately
explain the formation of the rate of interest.
I submit that my theory of interest brings about such a synthesis.
It is in the spirit of Menger and is in harmony with the insights
of Böhm-Bawerk. It represents a breakthrough that provides solid
foundation for further development of the theory. In Mises, time
preference is no more than a pious wish. It is the gold hoards that
lend teeth to those wishes. Nothing else can. Mises was not alive
to the arbitrage of the marginal bondholder between bonds and gold,
the most potent form of arbitrage between present and future goods.
Likewise, Mises failed to explain how changes in the rate of interest
guide production, to wit, through arbitrage of the marginal producer
between bonds and capital goods.
Mises also criticized the Banking School on the subject of reflux
(op.cit., p 444). He charged that banks regularly short-circuit reflux
by putting retired bank notes back into circulation: "The regular
course of affairs is that the bank replaces bills expired and paid
by discounting new bills of exchange. Then to the amount of bank
notes withdrawn from the market through the repayment of the earlier
loan there corresponds an amount of newly issued bank notes." This
ignores the fact that the credit to which each and every non-fraudulent
bill gives rise is self-liquidating. Moreover, if the Reichsbank
of Germany, for example, had discounted new bills on the same old
merchandise, then it would have violated the law. At any rate, the
argument of the Banking School refers to the transparent case of
bill circulation. Slow or fraudulent bills can take no refuge in
the portfolio of conspiring banks. The bill market is fully capable
of ferreting out delinquent bills and will refuse to discount them.
The nexus between drawer and drawee of the bill of exchange is not
the same as that between lender and borrower. The drawer is no lender,
discounting is no lending, and the discount rate is not the same
as the rate of interest. The drawee is the active protagonist in
the drama of supplying the consumer with urgently needed goods; the
drawer is passive. It is the drawee who promptly reacts to changes
in the height of the discount rate. These changes are governed by
the consumers. The discount rate is not regulated by the savers,
still less is it set by the banks. The drawee, typically a retail
merchant, has the unconditional privilege of prepaying his bills.
The discount serves as an incentive. If demand is brisk, it will
take a lower discount rate to induce him to prepay; if sluggish,
a higher one. Moreover, in the latter case, the marginal retail merchant
will not re-order his usual quota of consumer goods from his suppliers.
Instead, he will carry part of his circulating capital in the form
of bills drawn on more productive merchants until demand picks up
again. Evidently Mises misconstrued the problem of discounting. Insisting
that retail inventory was financed through loans at the bank, Mises
failed to notice that the marginal retail merchant was doing arbitrage
between bills and consumer goods. He would thin out merchandise on
his shelves while beefing up his portfolio of bills in response to
the consumer's reining back spending, while he would sell bills from
portfolio and use the proceeds to replace the missing merchandise
on his shelves upon renewed interest of the consumer in buying. Wrongly,
Mises blotted out the important distinction between the discount
rate and the rate of interest which are governed by entirely different
economic factors and move quite independently of one another.
Not until these three most important forms of human action, the
arbitrage of the marginal bondholder, the arbitrage of the marginal
producer, and the arbitrage of the marginal retail merchant are more
widely recognized can further significant progress in the theory
of interest be made.
References
Robert Blumen, Real Bills, Phony Wealth, July 2005.
Sean Corrigan, Unreal Bills Doctrine, August 8, 2005.
Sean Corrigan, Fool's Gold, August 9, 2005.
Sean Corrigan, Fool's Gold Redux, August 12, 2005.
Sean Corrigan, Clearing the Air, September 8, 2005.
Antal E. Fekete, Gold and Interest, , January, 2003.
Antal E. Fekete, Towards a Dynamic Microeconomics, Laissez-Faire,
Revista de la Facultad de Ciencias Económicas, Universidad
Francisco Marroquín, No. 5, Sept. 1996.
Note
The foregoing piece was written as a rejoinder to Sean Corrigan's
series of papers criticizing me by name, posted on the website LewRockwell.com.
I sent it to Lew whom I have known for over twenty years and with
whom I thought I have had a cordial relation. I asked him to post
my rejoinder so that his readership could see both sides of the argument.
Lew refused.
The late Percy Greaves, the author of the pamphlet "Mises Made Easier",
used to be upset whenever economic research was mentioned in his
presence: "Research? What research? All the research has already
been done by Mises. All that is left is to explain Mises to the public."
I am also an admirer of Mises. I have acknowledged my intellectual
indebtedness to him many times. I have made a conscious effort to
use his terminology in preference to others. I have approached the
criticism of Mises carefully and modestly. I have not rushed into
print with it. I even withheld the publication of my own theory of
interest for several years because it was in conflict with that of
Mises on several points.
Bettina Bien, the widow of Percy Greaves, is a good friend of mine.
She used to invite me to her home in Irvington-on-Hudson for dinner.
We discussed Mises and economics a great deal. She had attended the
Mises seminar at New York University for 18 years. She is a serious,
devoted, and honorable student of Mises. She painstakingly put together
the most complete bibliography of Mises. Years ago I asked her if
she could explain some inconsistencies that I thought I have discovered
in Mises' work. While she agreed that they appeared to be inconsistencies,
she couldn't offer an explanation.
I welcomed Lew's founding of the Mises Institute because I believed
that it was dedicated to the search for and the dissemination of
scientific truth, as was Mises himself. I am sadly disappointed to
see that Lew is outdoing Percy. Not only does he think that all the
research has been done and all we need to do is to regurgitate it
again and again; he also thinks that Mises needs an "intellectual
bodyguard".
Science has nothing to fear from an open debate. Feeling of insecurity
is characteristic of a cult. Mises would have abhorred the idea that
his scientific heritage has fallen to the care of a self-appointed "thought
police" that would censor and suppress all dissent.
The style and approach of Corrigan and Blumen fall short of the
high ideals of Mises. These gentlemen cannot for a moment assume
that their selected targets may write and act in good faith. They
do not want to dispute. They want to discredit. In refusing to publish
my rejoinder Rockwell has stooped to their level. I am sorry for
him. He prefers sycophants to thinkers.
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Antal E. Fekete is Professor Emeritus at Memorial University
in St. Johns, Newfoundland. Born and educated in Hungary, he emigrated
to Canada after the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 and taught for 35
years in the field of mathematics. Over the years, he has been a
visiting professor or Fellow at Columbia University, Princeton University,
and Trinity College of Dublin. He worked in the Washington office
of Congressman W.E. Dannemeyer on monetary and fiscal reform for
five years in the nineties; and in 1996, he won first prize in the
prestigious International Currency Essay contest sponsored by Bank
Lips Ltd. of Switzerland. He is the author of Gold and Interest and Monetary
Economics 101. In addition, his scholarly articles have appeared
on numerous Internet sites such as Financial Sense Online, Free-Market
News, Gold-Eagle, SafeHaven, and LeMetropoleCafe.
E-mail: aefekete@hotmail.com
