There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.
- Ludwig von Mises - Topics: Monetary Policy, Debt.
Government spending cannot create additional jobs. If the government provides the funds required by taxing the citizens or by borrowing from the public, it abolishes on the one hand as many jobs as it creates on the other. If government spending is financed by borrowing from the commercial banks, it means credit expansion and inflation.
- Ludwig von Mises - Topics: Debt, Government, Monetary Policy, Tax.
Just as the sound money policy of gold standard advocates went hand in hand with liberalism, free trade, capitalism and peace, so is inflationism part and parcel of imperialism, militarism, protectionism, statism and socialism.
- Ludwig von Mises - Topics: Liberalism, Inflation, Gold, Socialism.
No very deep knowledge of economics is usually needed for grasping the immediate effects of a measure; but the task of economics is to foretell the remoter effects, and so to allow us to avoid such acts as attempt to remedy a present ill by sowing the seeds of a much greater ill for the future.
- Ludwig von Mises - Topics: Monetary Policy, Economist.
An essential point in the social philosophy of interventionism is the existence of an inexhaustible fund which can be squeezed forever. The whole doctrine of interventionism collapses when this fountain is drained off. The Santa Claus principle liquidates itself.
- Ludwig von Mises - Topics: Socialism.
In the long run, inflation comes to an end with the breakdown of the currency.
- Ludwig von Mises - Topics: Inflation.
How long can a central bank continue an inflation? Probably as long as people are convinced that the government, sooner or later, but certainly not too late, will stop printing money and thereby stop decreasing the value of each unit of money. When people no longer believe this, when they realize that the government will go on and on without any intention of stopping, then they begin to understand that prices tomorrow will be higher than they are today. Then they begin buying at any price, causing prices to go up to such heights that the monetary system breaks down.
Under a gold standard, sound government has a much better chance; its leaders can say to the people and to the politicians, "We can't do it unless we increase taxes." The gold standard is a form of protection against spendthrift governments.
- Ludwig von Mises - Topics: Inflation, Gold.
The longer the boom of inflationary bank credit continues, the greater the scope of malinvestments in capital goods, and the greater the need for liquidation of these unsound investments. When the credit expansion stops, reverses, or even significantly slows down, the malinvestments are revealed.
- Ludwig von Mises - Topics: Monetary Policy.
The government must keep its hands off the recession, so that the recession process can quickly eliminate the distortions imposed by the government-created inflationary boom
- Ludwig von Mises - Topics: Government, Monetary Policy.
Some experts have declared that it is necessary to tax the people until it hurts. I disagree with these sadists.
- Ludwig von Mises - Topics: Tax.
Economic history is a long record of Government policies that failed because they were designed with a bold disregard for the laws of economics.
- Ludwig von Mises - Topics: Government.
The issue is always the same: the government or the market. There is no third solution.