30 de Julio de 2010

A great part of the argument of the classical writers on Money proceeded on this assumption of a “purely metallic currency”. I wholly agree with these writers that for certain purposes it is a very useful assumption to make. I shall however not follow them in their practice of assuming that the conclusions arrived from these assumptions can be applied immediately to the monetary systems actually in existence. This belief was due to their conviction that the existing mixed currency systems not only could and should be behave in every respect in the same way as a purely metallic currency, but that –at any rate in England since the Bank Act of 1844– the total quantity of money was actually made to behave in this way. I shall argue later that this erroneous belief is responsible for much confusion about the mechanism of the gold standard as it existed; that it has prevented us from achieving a satisfactory theory of the working of the modern mixed system, since the explanation of the role of the banking system was only imperfectly grafted upon and never really integrated with the theory of the purely metallic currency; and that in consequence the gold standard or the existence of an international system was blamed for much which in fact was really due to the mixed character of the system and not to its “internationalism” at all.

Friedrich Hayek, Prices and Production and Other Words, Monetary Nationalism and International Stability, p. 341-342.