Thursday, June 27, 2024

The Collapse Of Real Savings Caused The Great Depression

According to Friedman, the Fed failed to pump enough reserves into the banking system to prevent a collapse of the money stock.

As the operation of the market tends to determine the final state of money's purchasing power at a height at which the supply of and the demand for money coincide, there can never be an excess or deficiency of money.... The services which money renders can be neither improved nor repaired by changing the supply of money.... The quantity of money available in the whole economy is always sufficient to secure for everybody all that money does and can do.

Instead, the decline in the money stock came as a result of the shrinking pool of real savings brought about by the past loose monetary policies of the Fed.

Observe that economic depressions are not caused by the collapse in the money stock but come in response to a shrinking pool of real savings on account of the previous monetary pumping.

A decline in the money stock is the result of a decline in the pool of real savings.

Even if the central bank were to be successful in preventing the decline of the money stock, this could not prevent the economic depression if the pool of real savings is declining.

Contrary to popular thinking, economic depressions are not caused by a strong decline in the money stock but rather by the depleted pool of real savings. 

https://mises.org/mises-wire/collapse-real-savings-caused-great-depression

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