I’m wondering if anyone could point me to some of the best texts in the Austrian Library that cover deflation. I know Jorg Guido Hulsmann has an essay on it but he writes in the preface that his views are somewhat at odds with Mises and even Rothbard.
I guess I’m want to learn Mises and Hayek’s views on deflation first before i read some of the more recent ideas in the Austrian library. Any help is greatly appreciated. thx
Jeff
de Soto discusses and summarizes deflation quite well in http://mises.org/books/desoto.pdf
Go to page 444
12. THE NECESSARY TIGHTENING OF CREDIT IN
THE RECESSION STAGE: CRITICISM OF THE
THEORY OF “SECONDARY DEPRESSION "
where he starts to discuss 3 types of deflation.
i dont even know if the deflation that has been described at mises sites is true or not.
from looking at money supply (currency???) figures at economagic.com (if they are true) overall money supply keeps a rather steady upward growth.
if lending slows down at banks to some degree i guess people are spending money directly instead of loaning it.
instead of wondering what a misesmay have thought a hundred years ago try to find out what is actually happening now as far as any type of deflationary phenomenon.
a text search through the mises pdfs using the therm deflation or contraction should give you some info…i cant say that it would be true though
thx for the reference DD5, I will take look.
i agree that there hasn’t been to much deflation in terms of dollars but in terms of gold there has been. I wasn’t interested in deflation now though. The reason for my post was to further my understanding of the Austrian views on deflation in the spirit if Mises, Hayek, Hazlitt ,etc.
Thx for the recommendation on the searching the PDF’s.
" but in terms of gold there has been."
well..if you seem to know about gold deflation it doesnt seem to much of a stretch to know about dollar deflation.
i dont know when peak gold money was…from what i read there is more above ground gold than ever before. mining continues. aside from a few shipwrecks i cant see where the gold supply deflated.
what are you talking about?
i agree that there hasn’t been to much deflation in terms of dollars…
would the austrian view look at dollar supply figures other than what you agree on?
its not that i don’t know anything about deflation but i think i have more to learn is all.
when i say there has been deflation in terms of gold i meant price deflation not a contraction of the gold supply itself.
again i was just talking about prices not money supply. sorry for being unclear.
I found Hazlitt’s free book, “Inflation”, very informative.
Basically he says that deflation is a good thing, cheaper prices for all.
There is one exception: If the deflation is brought about suddenly by some artificial means, like a country suddenly returning to the gold standard after being off it.
Even then, the problem is that people insist on getting their old wages and charging their old prices for goods, and of course they won’t get them. So the result is unemployment and bankruptcies on a very unpleasant scale.
looks like Hazlitt has two books with Inflation in the title. Inflation Crisis and How to Resolve It, and From Brenton Woods to World Inflation. Which one were you referring to?
thx for the recommendation.
Mine is a PDF file called “What you should know about Inflation.” 158 pages long, 4.66 MB size of the file.
I don’t know if I got it here or on another free book site, like FEE for example.
Joseph Salerno’s “An Austrian Taxonomy of Deflation” is very good.