大师作文网钱的发展史,英文版!最好是英文版的,急用!
来源：学生作业帮 编辑：大师作文网作业帮 分类：英语作业 时间：2024/11/11 15:36:53
钱的发展史,英文版!
最好是英文版的,急用!
最好是英文版的,急用!
http://www.ex.ac.uk/~RDavies/arian/money.html
Money, Value, and Monetary History
after Milton Friedman
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
One of the rights which the freeman has always guarded with most jealous care is that of enjoying the rewards of his own industry. Realizing the power to tax is the power to destroy, and that the power to take a certain amount of property or of income is only another way of saying that for a certain proportion of his time a citizen must work for the government, authority to impose a tax upon the people must be carefully guarded. It condemns the citizen to servitude.
President Calvin Coolidge, 1924
Practices of the unscrupulous money-changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion.Yes, the money-changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of that restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.
Franklin Roosevelt [1], First Inaugural Address, 1933
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As Milton Friedman says in Money Mischief [HBJ, 1992], anything can be money: stones, iron, gold, tobacco, silver, shells, cigarettes, copper, paper, nickel, etc. What makes these things money is not what they are, but what they are used for. They may have value in themselves, like gold ("commodity" money), or they may not ("credit" money, which means banknotes, bank deposits, tokens, markers, etc.); but their value as money is separate from their intrinsic value. What gives money value as such is that it is, or can be, used for exchange, replacing the original human system of trade, which was barter. The value of money is thus the value people attribute to what they want to exchange, no more, no less. As a medium of exchange, all money is in effect "credit" money: credit on an incomplete barter, like an IOU. An IOU can also be anything, as long as it is recognized as a contractual obligation on an incomplete exchange. Commodity money was originally the most natural money, but the value of money is not always the same as its value as a commodity. The intrinsic value of commodity money and its value as money can actually interfere with each other.[2] As a medium of exchange, money also establishes a standard of value (e.g. items A and B may both be worth $5, £5, ¥5, etc.), and as money is held in between exchanges, money becomes a store of value.
What the value of money actually is (i.e. what units of the standard will buy, in general) depends on 1) how much money there is, 2) how much money is held out of circulation, and 3) how many exchanges circulating money is used to cover. This is the "quantity theory of money" and can be expressed in a famous equation by the American astronomer and economist Simon Newcomb: MV = PT. "M" signifies the actual quantity of money; "V" signifies the "velocity," which is the rate at which money circulates or how long money is held out of circulation; "T" is the number of transactions, or exchanges; and "P" is the level of prices. This equation easily illuminates most questions about inflation or deflation, which is how money becomes less or more valuable over time. The evidence for the "quantity theory" is that historically inflation and deflation have occurred independently of economic growth and recession, as can be seen in the data from Friedman and Schwartz given below.[3]
Inflation is where the aggregate level of prices goes up and deflation where the aggregate level of prices goes down. Inflation will occur if V and T remain constant but M goes up, i.e. the supply of money increases without any other changes. Inflation can also occur if V goes up (people spend money more quickly) or T declines (the economy shrinks), as the other variables are constant. Most inflations, however, occur because of independent increases in the money supply. That can happen either with commodity money or credit money. A flood of silver from the New World caused a devastating inflation in 16th and 17th century Spain; and gold strikes in California, Australia, South Africa, and the Yukon produced inflations in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Now inflations are always the result of increases in the supply of credit money: it is easy to print paper, and governments that have begun issuing paper money have always eventually fallen to the temptation of just printing and spending new money.[4] Paper money achieved legitimacy in the first place only because the Bank of England, which was privately owned (founded in 1694 and nationalized in 1946),[5] was the first note issuing agency in history that behaved responsibly and restrained its issue of paper money. Consequently, Bank of England notes were "as good as gold." Inflation does not occur because of a "wage-price spiral," an "overheated" economy, excessive economic growth, or through any other natural mechanism of the market. A government debasing the currency would not have fooled anyone a century ago. Now, through deception, a government can try to blame inflation on anything but its own irresponsible actions.
Deflation usually occurs from one of two causes. Either the economy grows and the volume of transactions (T) increases, or the quantity of money (M) decreases. After the Civil War, when the United States issued hundreds of millions of dollars in paper money ("greenbacks") to spend on the war,[6] greenbacks and gold dollars circulated side by side: but gold dollars were worth several greenback dollars.
UNITED STATES PRICE LEVELS: 1929=100% [data from Milton Friedman, Money Mischief, Episodes in Monetary History, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992; and Milton Friedman and Anna. J. Schwartz, Monetary Trends in the United States and the United Kingdom, U. of Chicago Press, 1982, pp.122-137]. Divide by 2.162 to convert to 1967 prices.
40% 45% 50% 55% 60% 65% 70% 75% 80% 85% 90% 95% 100% 105%
1865------Withdrawl of Greenbacks started----------86.5
1866 82.6
1867 77.6
1868-------------------------------------76.2---Withdrawl of Greenbacks
1869 72.7 stopped
1870 68.7
1871 69.8
1872 66.3
1873-----banking Panic--------65.5----Gold Standard adopted
1874 64.8
1875 Depression 63.3 Era of Greenback agitation
1876 1873-79 60.4
1877 58.2
1878--------------53.9---Bland-Allison Act, silver dollars & certificates;
1879 52.0 Greenbacks redeemed in gold.
1880 57.4
1881 56.3
1882 58.1 Depression 1882-85
1883 57.4
1884---Panic-------54.4-----hydraulic gold mining ended in California
1885 50.8
1886-----------50.1----gold discovered in South Africa; Haymarket Riot
1887 50.6
1888 51.5 Era of Free Silver agitation
1889 51.8
1890-----------50.8---Sherman Silver Purchase Act
1891 50.3 Depression 1893-94, 95-97
1892---------48.3-------Homestead Strike
1893--Panic---49.5------Sherman Act repealed; 156 railroads go bankrupt
1894-------46.4----18.4% unemployment; Pullman Strike
1895 45.7
1896-----44.4---"Cross of Gold" William Jennings Bryan defeated; end of
1897 44.6 free silver agitation; gold discovered in the Yukon
1898 45.9
1899 47.1
1900----------49.6-------Gold Standard Act, reaffirms Gold Standard
1901 49.3
1902 51.0
1903 51.5
1904 52.3
1905 53.4
1906---------------54.5----1.7% unemployment; Upton Sinclair's The Jungle
1907-----------------56.8----banking Panic
1908-----------------56.7-----Aldrich-Vreeland Act expands money supply
1909 58.7
1910 60.2
1911 59.7
1912 62.3
1913-----------------------62.6-----Federal Reserve Act creates
1914 63.5 Federal Reserve System
1915 65.5
1916 74.0
1917-----World War I Inflation--------------------------91.4
1918 World War I, 1917-1918 105.1
1919 106.7
The government determined to deflate the greenbacks until they could trade at par with gold.[7] There was considerable political opposition to this. Deflation is bad for borrowers, whose debts become worth more over time. They would rather have inflation, which reduces the value of debts over time.[8] This turned farmers, who are commonly in debt and were a significant part of the population in those days, in favor of the Greenback Party, which promoted paper inflation, and the Free Silver movement, which wanted both gold and silver used for money (instead of just gold, as on the Gold Standard).[9] This political opposition prevented too many greenbacks from actually being withdrawn from circulation, but deflation occurred anyway because the economy grew into the money supply. By 1878 greenbacks traded at par with gold dollars, and the Treasury began to redeem them in gold ("resumed specie payments"). The entire period from the Civil War to the late 1890's was a era of deflation, simply because the economy grew so much (see table). Nevertheless, this was not well appreciated at the time. Falling prices mean falling wages; and it was hard for workers to understand that if their wages were being cut, those same wages might nevertheless be worth more. That is what happened, but the fact of falling wages led to terrible labor strife. Employers knew that they had to cut wages, but even they didn't understand quite why, and wouldn't have been believed anyway.
Deflation also occurs because the money supply shrinks. One way that can happen is because of trade. If there are more imports into an economy than exports out of it, then there will be a net outflow of money to pay for the imports. In the Merchantilist 17th century and the protectionist 20th century this has been regarded as bad; but David Hume (in "Of the Balance of Trade," 1752) had already recognized that it really didn't make any difference: the outflow of money would inflate foreign prices and deflate domestic prices, rendering foreign goods less attractive and domestic goods more attractive, both for domestic and foreign markets. Thus, before too long, imports would naturally decrease and exports would naturally increase, until money flowed back in to rebalance prices. As Hume put it in a letter to Montesquieu in 1749: "It does not seem that money, any more than water, can be raised or lowered anywhere much beyond the level it has in places where communication is open, but that it must rise and fall in proportion to the goods and labor contained in each state." A trade deficit is thus a sign of nothing except the export of a certain kind of commodity, money. When money can simply be printed by the government, exporting it is an extraordinarily profitable business.
Another way that deflation can occur is because of banking. A bank receives money on deposit, holds part of it as a cash reserve, and loans out the rest. In effect this increases the supply of money since both the loaned cash and the credited deposit at the bank function as money. The result could be inflationary, but the system tends to be self-balancing because bank loans, especially commercial loans which are used to create or expand businesses, multiply transactions. A loan is also a kind of deposit, as a bank credits itself with the money it has loaned. A bad loan, to an unsuccessful person or business, cannot be paid off and so at some point must be written off as a loss by the bank. Thus the bank's "deposit" is simply lost, and the money supply thereby decreases by that amount. Banking therefore can stimulate the growth of an economy through loans but usually will not produce an inflation, as bad loans balance the transactions created by the good loans. Instead of inflation, sometimes loans and credit get overextended and their abrupt collapse can decrease the money supply to produce a conspicuous deflation.[10] This was particularly severe in 1929. Such credit crises previously had healed themselves in a year or two, as bad loans were written off and the extension of new loans began again, without causing a Depression.[11] Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt, however, both thought that high wages were the key to healing the economy. They promoted high wages all through the Thirties. But, in a deflationary period, that far overvalued labor, which in effect was priced out of the market. People with jobs, especially union jobs, were very well paid in the Thirties, but unemployment peaked at 28.3% in 1933 and was still up at 20% in 1939 -- it had previously never been higher than 18.4% (in 1894). The inflation and price controls of World War II broke the logjam of wages, and unemployment didn't return after the War (to everyone's surprise).
UNITED STATES PRICE LEVELS: 1929=100% [data from Friedman & Schwartz, op. cit.; unemployment figures from Richard K. Vedder & Lowell E. Gallaway, Out of Work, Unemployment and Government in Twentieth-Century America, Holmes & Meier, 1993]. Divide by 2.162 to convert to 1967 prices.
70% 75% 80% 85% 90% 95% 100% 105% 110% 115% 120% 125% 130% 135%
1920 121.7
1921---11.7% Unemployment-------------103.7---Recession
1922 98.6
1923----2.4% Unemployment----------100.9
1924----5.0% Unemployment---------99.6
1925 Roaring Twenties 101.6
1926----1.8% Unemployment------------102.1
1927 99.4
1928 100.1
1929----3.2% Unemployment----------100.0
1930----8.0% Unemployment-----95.5
1931---------------84.0----Great Depression Deflation
1932 74.3
1933----73.3-------24.9% Unemployment
1934 78.1
1935 77.1 Great Depression, 1929-1940
1936 80.3
1937 81.0
1938-----------80.6----19.0% Unemployment
1939-----------80.0----17.2% Unemployment
1940-----------80.9----14.6% Unemployment
1941------------------87.3-----9.9% Unemployment
1942---4.7% Unemployment---------98.7----World War II Inflation
1943 111.7
1944 World War II, 1941-1945 120.0
1945 125.3
1946------4.0% Unemployment----------------------------------126.4
1947------3.9% Unemployment-------Post-War Inflation-------------------136.6
Actual prices of individual commodities depend on how much they are wanted (demand) and how much is available (supply). This then is a relationship whose terms cannot be set by suppliers or consumers independently. Suppliers, of course, always want higher prices, as consumers want lower prices. The price that consumers are willing or able to pay for a certain volume of a commodity that coincides with the price that suppliers are willing or able to sell that volume for is the "equilibrium" or "market clearing" price. The free market allows prices to move towards market clearing levels. Price fixing, which never works without an application of force (either government force or gangsterism), produces either surpluses or shortages: surpluses (as in "farm surpluses" and unemployment, a surplus of labor) occur where prices are set too high and there is excess supply; shortages (as with rental housing in Santa Monica and New York City, or with everything in the Soviet Union) occur where prices are set too low and there is deficient supply.
The return of prosperity in the 50's and early 60's meant good economic growth but with a couple of qualifications: There was steady, if low, inflation; and unemployment, although negligible by Depression standards, was not as low as in previous periods of growth. There also occurred three recessions in a ten year period. It now appears that the high tax rates of the time, retained by President Eisenhower for the fiscally responsible purpose of paying down the debt from World War II, may have been responsible for the recessions. But the steady inflation, almost invisible at the time, may also have been a wise corrective to the political power of the labor unions, who otherwise exercised steady pressure to drive up wages. The result, overall, was optimism and growth such as had not been seen since the 20's and, at last, a decisive answer on the part of the democracies to the claims that had been made for economic success by the totalitarian regimes. Unfortunately, this success at the same time nurtured a generation that took economic growth for granted, would still find the claims of totalitarian ideologies attractive, and sometimes would not even be exposed to the new defenses of capitalism that post-war prosperity motivated.
UNITED STATES PRICE LEVELS: 1929=100% [data from Friedman & Schwartz, op. cit.; unemployment figures from Vedder & Gallaway, Op. cit.]. Divide by 2.162 to convert to 1967 prices.
135% 140% 145% 150% 155% 160% 165% 170% 175% 180% 185% 190% 195% 200%
1947--136.6
1948 145.6
1949---------143.7-------Recession
1950 146.5
1951 156.1
1952 158.0
1953----Recession-------------160.4
1954 162.6
1955 166.1
1956 Average Unemployment=5.0% 170.8
1957 176.6
1958-----Recession-------------------------------179.0
1959 183.1
1960 186.4
1961 188.3
1962 Average Unemployment=5.7% 192.2
1963 195.2
1964-----5.2% Unemployment------------------------------------------198.5
President Kennedy came to believe, despite the opposition of crypto-socialist economists like John Kenneth Galbraith, that high tax rates were what had hampered the economy in the 50's. After his death, President Johnson pushed through the tax cuts, and soon the economy took off as never before, pushing unemployment below 4% for the first time in a while. Unfortunately, why the tax cuts worked was open to different interpretations. Rather than unleashing supply-side production according to Say's Law, the effect was largely taken to be the result of a Keynesian demand-side stimulation. Along with this the idea also began to develop, which Keynes had not believed, that inflation itself, by stimulating demand, created prosperity. Since President Johnson also had the War in Vietnam to pay for, it became a convenient thought that inflationary money creation, by which wars had usually been financed, now could be used, not just for that purpose, but to promote civilian prosperity as well. This made it possible, as it was said, to have both "guns and butter."
Such a policy was continued by President Nixon, who famously said, "We are all Keynesians now." However, inflation soon seemed to be getting positively out of control. Since inflation erodes the value of savings and reduces the return on loans (in a period when many usury laws capped interest rates), the damage being done began to outweigh the perceived benefits. Also, vast mone
参考资料：http://www.friesian.com/money.htm
Money, Value, and Monetary History
after Milton Friedman
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
One of the rights which the freeman has always guarded with most jealous care is that of enjoying the rewards of his own industry. Realizing the power to tax is the power to destroy, and that the power to take a certain amount of property or of income is only another way of saying that for a certain proportion of his time a citizen must work for the government, authority to impose a tax upon the people must be carefully guarded. It condemns the citizen to servitude.
President Calvin Coolidge, 1924
Practices of the unscrupulous money-changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion.Yes, the money-changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of that restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.
Franklin Roosevelt [1], First Inaugural Address, 1933
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As Milton Friedman says in Money Mischief [HBJ, 1992], anything can be money: stones, iron, gold, tobacco, silver, shells, cigarettes, copper, paper, nickel, etc. What makes these things money is not what they are, but what they are used for. They may have value in themselves, like gold ("commodity" money), or they may not ("credit" money, which means banknotes, bank deposits, tokens, markers, etc.); but their value as money is separate from their intrinsic value. What gives money value as such is that it is, or can be, used for exchange, replacing the original human system of trade, which was barter. The value of money is thus the value people attribute to what they want to exchange, no more, no less. As a medium of exchange, all money is in effect "credit" money: credit on an incomplete barter, like an IOU. An IOU can also be anything, as long as it is recognized as a contractual obligation on an incomplete exchange. Commodity money was originally the most natural money, but the value of money is not always the same as its value as a commodity. The intrinsic value of commodity money and its value as money can actually interfere with each other.[2] As a medium of exchange, money also establishes a standard of value (e.g. items A and B may both be worth $5, £5, ¥5, etc.), and as money is held in between exchanges, money becomes a store of value.
What the value of money actually is (i.e. what units of the standard will buy, in general) depends on 1) how much money there is, 2) how much money is held out of circulation, and 3) how many exchanges circulating money is used to cover. This is the "quantity theory of money" and can be expressed in a famous equation by the American astronomer and economist Simon Newcomb: MV = PT. "M" signifies the actual quantity of money; "V" signifies the "velocity," which is the rate at which money circulates or how long money is held out of circulation; "T" is the number of transactions, or exchanges; and "P" is the level of prices. This equation easily illuminates most questions about inflation or deflation, which is how money becomes less or more valuable over time. The evidence for the "quantity theory" is that historically inflation and deflation have occurred independently of economic growth and recession, as can be seen in the data from Friedman and Schwartz given below.[3]
Inflation is where the aggregate level of prices goes up and deflation where the aggregate level of prices goes down. Inflation will occur if V and T remain constant but M goes up, i.e. the supply of money increases without any other changes. Inflation can also occur if V goes up (people spend money more quickly) or T declines (the economy shrinks), as the other variables are constant. Most inflations, however, occur because of independent increases in the money supply. That can happen either with commodity money or credit money. A flood of silver from the New World caused a devastating inflation in 16th and 17th century Spain; and gold strikes in California, Australia, South Africa, and the Yukon produced inflations in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Now inflations are always the result of increases in the supply of credit money: it is easy to print paper, and governments that have begun issuing paper money have always eventually fallen to the temptation of just printing and spending new money.[4] Paper money achieved legitimacy in the first place only because the Bank of England, which was privately owned (founded in 1694 and nationalized in 1946),[5] was the first note issuing agency in history that behaved responsibly and restrained its issue of paper money. Consequently, Bank of England notes were "as good as gold." Inflation does not occur because of a "wage-price spiral," an "overheated" economy, excessive economic growth, or through any other natural mechanism of the market. A government debasing the currency would not have fooled anyone a century ago. Now, through deception, a government can try to blame inflation on anything but its own irresponsible actions.
Deflation usually occurs from one of two causes. Either the economy grows and the volume of transactions (T) increases, or the quantity of money (M) decreases. After the Civil War, when the United States issued hundreds of millions of dollars in paper money ("greenbacks") to spend on the war,[6] greenbacks and gold dollars circulated side by side: but gold dollars were worth several greenback dollars.
UNITED STATES PRICE LEVELS: 1929=100% [data from Milton Friedman, Money Mischief, Episodes in Monetary History, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992; and Milton Friedman and Anna. J. Schwartz, Monetary Trends in the United States and the United Kingdom, U. of Chicago Press, 1982, pp.122-137]. Divide by 2.162 to convert to 1967 prices.
40% 45% 50% 55% 60% 65% 70% 75% 80% 85% 90% 95% 100% 105%
1865------Withdrawl of Greenbacks started----------86.5
1866 82.6
1867 77.6
1868-------------------------------------76.2---Withdrawl of Greenbacks
1869 72.7 stopped
1870 68.7
1871 69.8
1872 66.3
1873-----banking Panic--------65.5----Gold Standard adopted
1874 64.8
1875 Depression 63.3 Era of Greenback agitation
1876 1873-79 60.4
1877 58.2
1878--------------53.9---Bland-Allison Act, silver dollars & certificates;
1879 52.0 Greenbacks redeemed in gold.
1880 57.4
1881 56.3
1882 58.1 Depression 1882-85
1883 57.4
1884---Panic-------54.4-----hydraulic gold mining ended in California
1885 50.8
1886-----------50.1----gold discovered in South Africa; Haymarket Riot
1887 50.6
1888 51.5 Era of Free Silver agitation
1889 51.8
1890-----------50.8---Sherman Silver Purchase Act
1891 50.3 Depression 1893-94, 95-97
1892---------48.3-------Homestead Strike
1893--Panic---49.5------Sherman Act repealed; 156 railroads go bankrupt
1894-------46.4----18.4% unemployment; Pullman Strike
1895 45.7
1896-----44.4---"Cross of Gold" William Jennings Bryan defeated; end of
1897 44.6 free silver agitation; gold discovered in the Yukon
1898 45.9
1899 47.1
1900----------49.6-------Gold Standard Act, reaffirms Gold Standard
1901 49.3
1902 51.0
1903 51.5
1904 52.3
1905 53.4
1906---------------54.5----1.7% unemployment; Upton Sinclair's The Jungle
1907-----------------56.8----banking Panic
1908-----------------56.7-----Aldrich-Vreeland Act expands money supply
1909 58.7
1910 60.2
1911 59.7
1912 62.3
1913-----------------------62.6-----Federal Reserve Act creates
1914 63.5 Federal Reserve System
1915 65.5
1916 74.0
1917-----World War I Inflation--------------------------91.4
1918 World War I, 1917-1918 105.1
1919 106.7
The government determined to deflate the greenbacks until they could trade at par with gold.[7] There was considerable political opposition to this. Deflation is bad for borrowers, whose debts become worth more over time. They would rather have inflation, which reduces the value of debts over time.[8] This turned farmers, who are commonly in debt and were a significant part of the population in those days, in favor of the Greenback Party, which promoted paper inflation, and the Free Silver movement, which wanted both gold and silver used for money (instead of just gold, as on the Gold Standard).[9] This political opposition prevented too many greenbacks from actually being withdrawn from circulation, but deflation occurred anyway because the economy grew into the money supply. By 1878 greenbacks traded at par with gold dollars, and the Treasury began to redeem them in gold ("resumed specie payments"). The entire period from the Civil War to the late 1890's was a era of deflation, simply because the economy grew so much (see table). Nevertheless, this was not well appreciated at the time. Falling prices mean falling wages; and it was hard for workers to understand that if their wages were being cut, those same wages might nevertheless be worth more. That is what happened, but the fact of falling wages led to terrible labor strife. Employers knew that they had to cut wages, but even they didn't understand quite why, and wouldn't have been believed anyway.
Deflation also occurs because the money supply shrinks. One way that can happen is because of trade. If there are more imports into an economy than exports out of it, then there will be a net outflow of money to pay for the imports. In the Merchantilist 17th century and the protectionist 20th century this has been regarded as bad; but David Hume (in "Of the Balance of Trade," 1752) had already recognized that it really didn't make any difference: the outflow of money would inflate foreign prices and deflate domestic prices, rendering foreign goods less attractive and domestic goods more attractive, both for domestic and foreign markets. Thus, before too long, imports would naturally decrease and exports would naturally increase, until money flowed back in to rebalance prices. As Hume put it in a letter to Montesquieu in 1749: "It does not seem that money, any more than water, can be raised or lowered anywhere much beyond the level it has in places where communication is open, but that it must rise and fall in proportion to the goods and labor contained in each state." A trade deficit is thus a sign of nothing except the export of a certain kind of commodity, money. When money can simply be printed by the government, exporting it is an extraordinarily profitable business.
Another way that deflation can occur is because of banking. A bank receives money on deposit, holds part of it as a cash reserve, and loans out the rest. In effect this increases the supply of money since both the loaned cash and the credited deposit at the bank function as money. The result could be inflationary, but the system tends to be self-balancing because bank loans, especially commercial loans which are used to create or expand businesses, multiply transactions. A loan is also a kind of deposit, as a bank credits itself with the money it has loaned. A bad loan, to an unsuccessful person or business, cannot be paid off and so at some point must be written off as a loss by the bank. Thus the bank's "deposit" is simply lost, and the money supply thereby decreases by that amount. Banking therefore can stimulate the growth of an economy through loans but usually will not produce an inflation, as bad loans balance the transactions created by the good loans. Instead of inflation, sometimes loans and credit get overextended and their abrupt collapse can decrease the money supply to produce a conspicuous deflation.[10] This was particularly severe in 1929. Such credit crises previously had healed themselves in a year or two, as bad loans were written off and the extension of new loans began again, without causing a Depression.[11] Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt, however, both thought that high wages were the key to healing the economy. They promoted high wages all through the Thirties. But, in a deflationary period, that far overvalued labor, which in effect was priced out of the market. People with jobs, especially union jobs, were very well paid in the Thirties, but unemployment peaked at 28.3% in 1933 and was still up at 20% in 1939 -- it had previously never been higher than 18.4% (in 1894). The inflation and price controls of World War II broke the logjam of wages, and unemployment didn't return after the War (to everyone's surprise).
UNITED STATES PRICE LEVELS: 1929=100% [data from Friedman & Schwartz, op. cit.; unemployment figures from Richard K. Vedder & Lowell E. Gallaway, Out of Work, Unemployment and Government in Twentieth-Century America, Holmes & Meier, 1993]. Divide by 2.162 to convert to 1967 prices.
70% 75% 80% 85% 90% 95% 100% 105% 110% 115% 120% 125% 130% 135%
1920 121.7
1921---11.7% Unemployment-------------103.7---Recession
1922 98.6
1923----2.4% Unemployment----------100.9
1924----5.0% Unemployment---------99.6
1925 Roaring Twenties 101.6
1926----1.8% Unemployment------------102.1
1927 99.4
1928 100.1
1929----3.2% Unemployment----------100.0
1930----8.0% Unemployment-----95.5
1931---------------84.0----Great Depression Deflation
1932 74.3
1933----73.3-------24.9% Unemployment
1934 78.1
1935 77.1 Great Depression, 1929-1940
1936 80.3
1937 81.0
1938-----------80.6----19.0% Unemployment
1939-----------80.0----17.2% Unemployment
1940-----------80.9----14.6% Unemployment
1941------------------87.3-----9.9% Unemployment
1942---4.7% Unemployment---------98.7----World War II Inflation
1943 111.7
1944 World War II, 1941-1945 120.0
1945 125.3
1946------4.0% Unemployment----------------------------------126.4
1947------3.9% Unemployment-------Post-War Inflation-------------------136.6
Actual prices of individual commodities depend on how much they are wanted (demand) and how much is available (supply). This then is a relationship whose terms cannot be set by suppliers or consumers independently. Suppliers, of course, always want higher prices, as consumers want lower prices. The price that consumers are willing or able to pay for a certain volume of a commodity that coincides with the price that suppliers are willing or able to sell that volume for is the "equilibrium" or "market clearing" price. The free market allows prices to move towards market clearing levels. Price fixing, which never works without an application of force (either government force or gangsterism), produces either surpluses or shortages: surpluses (as in "farm surpluses" and unemployment, a surplus of labor) occur where prices are set too high and there is excess supply; shortages (as with rental housing in Santa Monica and New York City, or with everything in the Soviet Union) occur where prices are set too low and there is deficient supply.
The return of prosperity in the 50's and early 60's meant good economic growth but with a couple of qualifications: There was steady, if low, inflation; and unemployment, although negligible by Depression standards, was not as low as in previous periods of growth. There also occurred three recessions in a ten year period. It now appears that the high tax rates of the time, retained by President Eisenhower for the fiscally responsible purpose of paying down the debt from World War II, may have been responsible for the recessions. But the steady inflation, almost invisible at the time, may also have been a wise corrective to the political power of the labor unions, who otherwise exercised steady pressure to drive up wages. The result, overall, was optimism and growth such as had not been seen since the 20's and, at last, a decisive answer on the part of the democracies to the claims that had been made for economic success by the totalitarian regimes. Unfortunately, this success at the same time nurtured a generation that took economic growth for granted, would still find the claims of totalitarian ideologies attractive, and sometimes would not even be exposed to the new defenses of capitalism that post-war prosperity motivated.
UNITED STATES PRICE LEVELS: 1929=100% [data from Friedman & Schwartz, op. cit.; unemployment figures from Vedder & Gallaway, Op. cit.]. Divide by 2.162 to convert to 1967 prices.
135% 140% 145% 150% 155% 160% 165% 170% 175% 180% 185% 190% 195% 200%
1947--136.6
1948 145.6
1949---------143.7-------Recession
1950 146.5
1951 156.1
1952 158.0
1953----Recession-------------160.4
1954 162.6
1955 166.1
1956 Average Unemployment=5.0% 170.8
1957 176.6
1958-----Recession-------------------------------179.0
1959 183.1
1960 186.4
1961 188.3
1962 Average Unemployment=5.7% 192.2
1963 195.2
1964-----5.2% Unemployment------------------------------------------198.5
President Kennedy came to believe, despite the opposition of crypto-socialist economists like John Kenneth Galbraith, that high tax rates were what had hampered the economy in the 50's. After his death, President Johnson pushed through the tax cuts, and soon the economy took off as never before, pushing unemployment below 4% for the first time in a while. Unfortunately, why the tax cuts worked was open to different interpretations. Rather than unleashing supply-side production according to Say's Law, the effect was largely taken to be the result of a Keynesian demand-side stimulation. Along with this the idea also began to develop, which Keynes had not believed, that inflation itself, by stimulating demand, created prosperity. Since President Johnson also had the War in Vietnam to pay for, it became a convenient thought that inflationary money creation, by which wars had usually been financed, now could be used, not just for that purpose, but to promote civilian prosperity as well. This made it possible, as it was said, to have both "guns and butter."
Such a policy was continued by President Nixon, who famously said, "We are all Keynesians now." However, inflation soon seemed to be getting positively out of control. Since inflation erodes the value of savings and reduces the return on loans (in a period when many usury laws capped interest rates), the damage being done began to outweigh the perceived benefits. Also, vast mone
参考资料：http://www.friesian.com/money.htm