Readings in Money and Banking: Selected and AdaptedPhillips, Chester Arthur
General
Readings in Money and Banking: Selected and Adapted
Phillips, Chester Arthur
Banks and banking; Banks and banking -- United States; Money
That Professor Laughlin seeks to hold this untenable position, it seems
to me, is made evident by the qualification with which he accepts the
statement that a change in the quantity of money, other things being
equal, would be a factor affecting prices. He says, "An increasing
demand for gold, however, would work against the effect of an increasing
supply. If the new demand offset the new supply, then, if changes of
price occurred, their cause must be sought in the influences touching
the producing and marketing of goods." The second conditional clause in
that last sentence introduces an impossible supposition, for if a new
supply of gold is offset by a new demand for it, there could be no
change in the general level of prices, so that no cause for any change
would have to be sought in the "influences touching the producing and
marketing of goods." Professor Laughlin appears to have in mind forces
affecting the general level of prices which are entirely hidden from my
sight. A change in the level of prices means a change in the value of
gold, and how can there be a change in that if the new demand for gold
just offsets the new supply?
Professor Laughlin's analysis of the price-making process is incomplete
and misleading. He is correct when he says that the causes of price
changes must be sought in the forces settling particular prices, but he
is manifestly wrong when he states that the price of wheat is "arrived
at by the higgling of the market, which depends on the buyers' and
sellers' judgment of the demand for and supply of wheat." Such higgling
would determine only the value of wheat. The price of wheat is not fixed
until buyer and seller have reached an agreement in their estimates as
to the value not only of wheat, but also of money. If wheat is
comparatively easy to get, the price falls. If money is easier to get,
the price rises. The demand for and supply of money is evidently just as
important in the determination of the price of wheat as is the demand
for and supply of wheat itself. When Professor Laughlin says that the
offer of money for goods is only a resultant of price-making forces
previously at work, he must have in mind some price-making process and
price-making forces of which I have never heard. I know of no market in
which goods are lowered in price except for the reason that at the
higher price not enough money is offered to absorb the supply; nor of
any market in which goods are raised in price except for the reason that
buyers are willing to offer more money for the goods.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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