The Principles of Economics, with Applications to Practical ProblemsFetter, Frank A. (Frank Albert)
General
The Principles of Economics, with Applications to Practical Problems
Fetter, Frank A. (Frank Albert)
Economics
6. _The rate of contract interest on safe long-time loans registers
pretty nearly the prevailing rate of time-discount in the community._
There are of course different capital markets, and the estimates put
upon next year's income as compared with this year's is very different
in Montana, New York, and London. Because of the friction in the
transfer of investments from one locality to another, these differences
may persist indefinitely; but within each capital market the interest on
any particular loan must, for reasons readily seen, tend to conform
pretty closely to the prevailing rate. Various groups of men living in
the same community have, however, varying estimates of time-value. The
increase of safe long-time bonds issued by strong corporations and by
wealthy nations as, for example, the New York Central Railroad, and the
government of Great Britain, gives a large number of choice investments
where the element of risk is almost entirely absent. Various agencies
have developed for making the loans, that is, for bringing the borrower
and lender together with the minimum of trouble and expense. Other
efficient, but somewhat more costly, agencies for bringing together the
owners of loanable capital and men wishing to use capital are
savings-banks, building and loan associations, insurance companies
issuing endowment policies, and mortgage-investment companies of many
kinds. While on the one side of the bidding are thousands of lenders
offering to exchange ready money for assured incomes, on the other are
thousand of borrowers offering to exchange the promise of assured
incomes for ready money. If either of these classes got far out of touch
with the prevailing rate of capitalization, to which all the valuations
are adjusted, that class would lose greatly.
[Sidenote: Relations between the concepts of rent, interest, and
time-value]
7. _All the net usufructs actually yielded by wealth are rents; economic
time-discount is never a realized income; it is merely a calculation
form, or anticipation of the difference between present and future
gratifications._ There has been much discussion as to what should be the
relations in thought between rent and interest. Space permits here only
an indication of the view on this question involved in the foregoing
treatment. Rent, as the term is here applied, includes all the net
productivity attributable to the ownership and use of capital, whether
the yield be in economic form (in an increment of value) or in
contractual form. Even contract money-interest must be looked upon as a
species of the genus contract rent, the peculiarity in the money loan
being merely that the thing which it is agreed to return is a certain
number of units of the standard money.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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