The Value of MoneyAnderson, Benjamin M. (Benjamin McAlester)
General
The Value of Money
Anderson, Benjamin M. (Benjamin McAlester)
Money
transactions, we get the following results, when _total clearings for
the country_ are compared with (a) New York share sales, and (b) with
railway gross earnings: (a) r = .607(23); (b) r = .356(23). "Physically
determined trade" is at best a minor factor in that total "trade"
represented by bank transactions!
Mr. Silberling has buttressed his results with a consideration of
various alternative possibilities which might give them a different
interpretation. I need not, for present purposes, go further into his
figures.[261] Taken in conjunction with the other data presented, and to
be presented, together with the theoretical discussion of the nature of
trade, and its relations to money and credit, which the present volume
contains, they give the present writer abundant confidence in the thesis
that the great bulk of trade in the United States is SPECULATION, rather
than that sort of trade which is determined "by physical capacities and
technique."
The figures given above, of the inventory of wealth at a given moment of
time, by the Bureau of the Census, show only trifling magnitudes, as
compared with the estimated 387 billions of deposits made in 1909, of
items which could enter into ordinary trade, as distinguished from
speculation and dynamic readjustments. An effort to calculate ordinary
trade on the basis of figures running through the year may throw further
light on the problem. Railway, gross receipts for the year ending June
30, 1909, were less than two and a half billions. This is six-tenths of
1% of the total. Receipts of the Western Union Telegraph Company were
$30,451,073--less than one-hundredth of 1%. The Post Office in the
fiscal year ending in 1909 took in $203,562,383. This is something over
one twentieth of 1%. These are gigantic sums. But they are insignificant
indeed in this computation. Millions of smaller items simply do not
count at all--ten million items of $387 each would give only 1%. The
total net income of the United States, as estimated by W. I. King for
1910, including all forms of income, dividends, interest, wages, rents,
profits, salaries, etc., is $30,500,000,000[262]--around 7% of the 387
billions.
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