Debunking Fekete?

Os textos de Antal Fekete não são estranhos aos leitores habituais do Inflaccionista mas desta vez venho-vos recomendar um texto de Robert Blumen no Mises Institute que expõe os erros da teoria base de Fekete: a Real Bill Doctrine.

Fekete’s proposition is that clearing systems enable savings to be used more efficiently because when real bills are used to finance the movement of goods, then precious can be conserved for other uses.

Fekete’s has completely confused cash transactions with savings. Every cash transaction, in his mind, uses up real savings. Economizing on cash, then, is the same as economizing on savings. In his “Miltonic” example, he computes the volume of cash transactions, which totals $4995, and then compares this to quantity of savings. From this he reaches the conclusion that there would not be enough savings to produce the Miltonic.

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This is not a problem in the real world because any volume of transactions can be performed with any quantity of money at some price level. Everything that Fekete says on this topic is false once you realize that the price system is capable of adjusting to any supply of money. If the economy grows faster than the supply of money, prices of both capital goods and final goods will have to fall in order for the larger volume of transactions to be accommodated, a point brilliantly explained by Hayek in his essay The Paradox of Savings