Understanding the dollar crisis

332 Pages·2007·21.975 MB·English

by  Greaves, Percy L.;Von Mises, Ludwig

I AM ItSIAMHU.
THE DOLLAR CRISIS
Percy L Greaves, Jr.
Professor Ijudnig vmilises
WESTERN IfLANDf
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PUBLISHERS
BOSTON LOS ANGELES
THE AMERICANIST CLASSICS
COPYRIGHT © 1973 BY PERCY L. GREAVES, JR.
All rights reserved
Published by
Western Islands
Belmont, Massachusetts 02178
Manufactured in the United States of America
To
Ludwig von Mises
whose contributions may yet
save our civilization

Table Of Contents
Foreword by Ludwig von Mises xi
Author's Preface xv
PART ONE
I. What Is Economics? 1
II. The Role of Value in Human Action 27
III. How Prices Are Determined 65
IV. The Effect Of Wage Rate Interventions 105
PART TWO
V. The Theory Of Money 141
VI. The Cause Of The 1929 Depression 175
VII. The Evolution Of The Present World Monetary
Crisis 233
Index of Persons Cited 297
Index of Subjects 299

List Of Tables
Number Subject Page
I Production Process (Assuming five processes) 35
II Production Process, Interest Included
(Assuming five processes) 38
III Marginal Utility Scales 43
IV Value Scale for Use of Six Bags of Grain 45
V Simple Barter 72
VI More Complex Barter 73
VII Isolated Exchange 77
VIII One-sided Competition Among Buyers 78
IX One-sided Competition Among Sellers 80
X Bilateral Competition (Problem Posed) 82
XI Bilateral Competition (First Part of Problem
Answered) 84
XII Bilateral Competition (Second Part of Problem
Answered) 87
XIII Effect of Union Policies on Investment in and
Operation of Steamship 124
XIV Gold-Silver Ratios, 1792-1874 150
XV Liberty Loans, 1917-1919 195
XVI World War I Monetary Tableau, 1914-1920 196
XVII Post-War Depression, 1920-1923 200
XVIII Monetary Expansion, 1922-1924 202
XIX Effects of Helping England, 1924-1927 208
XX Average Annual Rate of Change, 1922-1927 223
XXI Collateral Loan Data, 1922-1932 224
XXII Development of the Crisis, 1927-1929 228
XXIII Deflation, 1928-1933 236
XXIV New Deal Pump Priming, 1933-1938 240
XXV Unemployment and Production, 1933-1942 244
XXVI World War II Monetary Tableau, 1938-1945 248
XXVII Post War-Marshall Plan, 1945-1950 250
XXVIII Korea and 1952 258
XXIX Eisenhower Administration, 1953-1960 263
XXX Some Key Monetary Data, 1953-1960 264
XXXI Yearly Changes, 1961-1968 267
XXXII Democratic Administrations, 1961-1968 269
XXXIII Ownership of U.S. Government Debt, 1953-1968 . .. 270
XXXIV U.S. Government Debt-Yearly Changes, 1961-1968 . 273
ix

Foreword
The seven lectures that Professor Percy L. Greaves, Jr.,
delivered in June 1969 before the Centro de Estudios sobre la
Libertad in Buenos Aires deal with the fundamental eco-
nomic problems; they are about "human life," about "the
ideas that motivate human beings," about "the most im-
portant and interesting drama of all — human action."
To us, mortal human beings as we are, the universe appears
as consisting of two different fields or regions: the field of
events human action is able to influence to some extent and
the field of events that are beyond the reach of any human
action. The line that separates these two regions from one
another is not rigidly fixed forever. We know that in the
course of history man has acquired the knowledge and the
power to achieve things that to earlier generations had
appeared as simply impossible. But we know also that certain
things can never and will never be achieved by any human
action, that man can and will never become omnipotent.
The history of mankind appears to us as the history of the
progressive expansion of man's knowledge of what we call
the laws that determine the course of all changes going on in
xi