• Preface to the English-Language Edition • Preface to the Second Spanish Edition • Introduction Chapter 1: The Legal Nature of the Monetary Irregular-Deposit Contract • A Preliminary Clarification of Terms: Loan Contracts (Mutuum and Commodatum)and Deposit Contracts • The Commodatum Contract • The Mutuum Contract • The Deposit Contract • The Deposit of Fungible Goods or "Irregular" Deposit Contract • The Economic and Social Function of Irregular Deposits • The Fundamental Element in the Monetary Irregular Deposit • Resulting Effects of the Failure to Comply with the Essential Obligation in the Irregular Deposit • Court Decisions Acknowledging the Fundamental Legal Principles which Govern the Monetary Irregular-Deposit Contract (100-Percent Reserve Requirement) • The Essential Differences Between the Irregular Deposit Contract and the Monetary Loan Contract • The Extent to Which Property Rights are Transferred in Each Contract • Fundamental Economic Differences Between the Two Contracts Fundamental Legal Differences Between the Two Contracts • The Discovery by Roman Legal Experts of the General Legal Principles Governing the Monetary Irregular-Deposit Contract • The Emergence of Traditional Legal Principles According to Menger, Hayek and Leoni • Roman Jurisprudence • The Irregular Deposit Contract Under Roman Law Chapter 2: Historical Violations of the Legal Principles Legal Principles Governing the Monetary Irregular-Deposit Contract • Introduction • Banking in Greece and Rome • Trapezitei, or Greek Bankers • Banking in the Hellenistic World • Banking in Rome • The Failure of the Christian Callistus's Bank • The Societates Argentariae • Bankers in the Late Middle Ages • The Revival of Deposit Banking in Mediterranean Europe • The Canonical Ban on Usury and the "Depositum Confessatum" • Banking in Florence in the Fourteenth Century • The Medici Bank • Banking in Catalonia in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries: The Taula de Canvi • Banking During the Reign of Charles V and the Doctrine of the School of Salamanca • The Development of Banking in Seville • The School of Salamanca and the Banking Business • A New Attempt at Legitimate Banking: The Bank of Amsterdam. • Banking in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries • The Bank of Amsterdam • David Hume and the Bank of Amsterdam • Sir James Steuart, Adam Smith and the Bank of Amsterdam • The Banks of Sweden and England • John Law and Eighteenth-Century Banking in France • Richard Cantillon and the Fraudulent Violation of the Irregular-Deposit Contract Chapter 3: Attempts to Legally Justify Fractional-Reserve Banking • Introduction • Why it is Impossible to Equate the Irregular Deposit with the Loan or Mutuum Contract • The Roots of the Confusion • The Mistaken Doctrine of Common Law • The Doctrine of Spanish Civil and Commercial Codes • Criticism of the Attempt to Equate the Monetary Irregular-Deposit Contract with the Loan or Mutuum Contract • The Distinct Cause or Purpose of Each Contract • The Notion of the Unspoken or Implicit Agreement • An Inadequate Solution: The Redefinition of the Concept of Availability • The Monetary Irregular Deposit, Transactions with a Repurchase Agreement and Life Insurance Contracts • Transactions with a Repurchase Agreement • The Case of Life Insurance Contract Chapter 4: The Credit Expansion Process • Introduction • The Bank's Role as a True Intermediary in the Loan Contract • The Bank's Role in the Monetary Bank-Deposit Contract • The Effects Produced by Bankers' Use of Demand Deposits: The Case of an Individual Bank • The Continental Accounting System • Accounting Practices in the English-speaking World • An Isolated Bank's Capacity for Credit Expansion and Deposit Creation • The Case of a Very Small Bank • Credit Expansion and Ex Nihilo Deposit Creation by a Sole, Monopolistic Bank • Credit Expansion and New Deposit Creation by the Entire Banking System • Creation of Loans in a System of Small Banks • A Few Additional Difficulties • When Expansion is Initiated Simultaneously by All Banks • Filtering Out the Money Supply From the Banking System • The Maintenance of Reserves Exceeding the Minimum Requirement • Different Reserve Requirements for Different Types of Deposits • The Parallels Between the Creation of Deposits and the Issuance of Unbacked Banknotes • The Credit Tightening Process Chapter 5: Bank Credit Expansion and Its Effects on the Economic System • The Foundations of Capital Theory • Human Action as a Series of Subjective Stages • Capital and Capital Goods • The Interest Rate • The Structure of Production • Some Additional Considerations • Criticism of the Measures used in National Income Accounting • The Effect on the Productive Structure of an Increase in Credit Financed under a Prior Increase in Voluntary Saving • The Three Different Manifestations of the Process of Voluntary Saving • Account Records of Savings Channeled into Loans • The Issue of Consumer Loans • The Effects of Voluntary Saving on the Productive Structure • First: The Effect Produced by the New Disparity in Profits Between the Different Productive Stages • Second: The Effect of the Decrease in the Interest Rate on the Market Price of Capital Goods • Third: The Ricardo Effect • Conclusion: The Emergence of a New, More Capital-Intensive Productive Structure • The Theoretical Solution to the "Paradox of Thrift" • The Case of an Economy in Regression • The Effects of Bank Credit Expansion Unbacked by an Increase in Saving: The Austrian Theory or Circulation Credit Theory of the Business Cycle • The Effects of Credit Expansion on the Productive Structure • The Market's Spontaneous Reaction to Credit Expansion • Banking, Fractional-Reserve Ratios and the Law of Large Numbers Chapter 6: Additional Considerations on the Theory of the Business Cycle • Why no Crisis Erupts when New Investment is Financed by Real Saving (And Not by Credit Expansion) • The Possibility of Postponing the Eruption of the Crisis: The Theoretical Explanation of the Process of Stagflation • Consumer Credit and the Theory of the Cycle • The Self-Destructive Nature of the Artificial Booms Caused by Credit Expansion: The Theory of "Forced Saving" • The Squandering of Capital, Idle Capacity and Malinvestment of Productive Resources Credit Expansion as the Cause of Massive Unemployment • National Income Accounting is Inadequate to Reflect the Different Stages in the Business Cycle • Entrepreneurship and the Theory of the Cycle • The Policy of General-Price-Level Stabilization and its Destabilizing Effects on the Economy • How to Avoid Business Cycles: Prevention of and Recovery from the Economic Crisis • The Theory of the Cycle and Idle Resources: Their Role in the Initial Stages of the Boom • The Necessary Tightening of Credit in the Recession Stage: Criticism of the Theory of "Secondary Depression" • The "Manic-Depressive" Economy: The Dampening of the Entrepreneurial Spirit and Other Negative Effects Recurring Business Cycles Exert on the Market Economy • The Influence Exerted on the Stock Market by Economic Fluctuations Effects the Business Cycle Exerts on the Banking Sector • Marx, Hayek and the View that Economic Crises are Intrinsic to Market Economies • Two Additional Considerations • Empirical Evidence for the Theory of the Cycle • Business Cycles Prior to the Industrial Revolution • Business Cycles From the Industrial Revolution Onward • The Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression of 1929 • The Economic Recessions of the Late 1970s and Early 1990s • Some Empirical Testing of the Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle • Conclusion Chapter 7: A Critique of Monetarist and Keynesian Theories • Introduction • A Critique of Monetarism • The Mythical Concept of Capital • Austrian Criticism of Clark and Knight • A Critique of the Mechanistic Monetarist Version of the Quantity Theory of Money • A Brief Note on the Theory of Rational Expectations • Criticism of Keynesian Economics • Say's Law of Markets • Keynes's Three Arguments On Credit Expansion • Keynesian Analysis as a Particular Theory • The So-Called Marginal Efficiency of Capital • Keynes's Criticism of Mises and Hayek • Criticism of the Keynesian Multiplier • Criticism of the "Accelerator" Principle • The Marxist Tradition and the Austrian Theory of Economic Cycles: The Neo-Ricardian Revolution and the Reswitching Controversy • Conclusion • Appendix on Life Insurance Companies and Other Non-Bank Financial Intermediaries Life Insurance Companies as True Financial Intermediaries • Surrender Values and the Money Supply • The Corruption of Traditional Life-Insurance Principles • Other True Financial Intermediaries: Mutual Funds and Holding and Investment Companies • Specific Comments on Credit Insurance Chapter 8: Central and Free Banking Theory • A Critical Analysis of the Banking School • The Banking and Currency Views and the School of Salamanca • The Response of the English-Speaking World to these Ideas on Bank Money • The Controversy Between the Currency School and the Banking School • The Debate Between Defenders of the Central Bank and Advocates of Free Banking • Parnell's Pro-Free-Banking Argument and the Responses of McCulloch and Longfield • A False Start for the Controversy Between Central Banking and Free Banking • The Case for a Central Bank • The Position of the Currency-School Theorists who Defended a Free-Banking System • The "Theorem of the Impossibility of Socialism" and its Application to the Central Bank • The Theory of the Impossibility of Coordinating Society Based on Institutional Coercion or the Violation of Traditional Legal Principles • The Application of the Theorem of the Impossibility of Socialism to the Central Bank and the Fractional-Reserve Banking System • (a) A System Based on a Central Bank Which Controls and Oversees a Network of Private Banks that Operate with a Fractional Reserve • (b) A Banking System which Operates with a 100-Percent Reserve Ratio and is Controlled by a Central Bank • (c) A Fractional-Reserve Free-Banking System • Conclusion: The Failure of Banking Legislation • A Critical Look at the Modern Fractional-Reserve Free-Banking School • The Erroneous Basis of the Analysis: The Demand for Fiduciary Media, Regarded as an Exogenous Variable • The Possibility that a Fractional-Reserve Free-Banking System May Unilaterally Initiate Credit Expansion • The Theory of "Monetary Equilibrium" in Free Banking Rests on an Exclusively Macroeconomic Analysis • The Confusion Between the Concept of Saving and that of the Demand for Money • The Problem with Historical Illustrations of Free-Banking Systems • Ignorance of Legal Arguments • Conclusion: The False Debate between Supporters of Central Banking and Defenders of Fractional-Reserve Free Banking Chapter 9: A Proposal for Banking Reform: The Theory of a 100-Percent Reserve Requirement • A History of Modern Theories in Support of a 100-Percent Reserve Requirement • The Proposal of Ludwig von Mises • F.A. Hayek and the Proposal of a 100-Percent Reserve Requirement • Murray N. Rothbard and the Proposal of a Pure Gold Standard with a 100-Percent Reserve Requirement • Maurice Allais and the European Defense of a 100-Percent Reserve Requirement • The Old Chicago-School Tradition of Support for a 100-Percent Reserve Requirement • Our Proposal for Banking Reform • Total Freedom of Choice in Currency • A System of Complete Banking Freedom • The Obligation of All Agents in a Free-Banking System to Observe Traditional Legal Rules and Principles, Particularly a 100-Percent Reserve Requirement on Demand Deposits • What Would the Financial and Banking System of a Totally Free Society be Like? An Analysis of the Advantages of the Proposed System • Replies to Possible Objections to our Proposal for Monetary Reform • An Economic Analysis of the Process of Reform and Transition toward the Proposed Monetary and Banking System • A Few Basic Strategic Principles • Stages in the Reform of the Financial and Banking System • The Importance of the Third and Subsequent Stages in the Reform: The Possibility They Offer of Paying Off the National Debt or Social Security Pension Liabilities • The Application of the Theory of Banking and Financial Reform to the European Monetary Union and the Building of the Financial Sector in Economies of the Former Eastern Bloc Conclusion: The Banking System of a Free Society Bibliography Index of Subjects Index of Names |