Alberto Veronese | The True View of Nature of Money (1948) @fistfullproduction | Uploaded December 2014 | Updated October 2024, 17 hours ago.
This is my 501st post. lol. I'm grateful for everyone who's followed.
[...] A credit redeems a debt and nothing else does, unless in virtue of a special statute or a particular contract.
The main obstacle to the adoption of a truer view of the nature of money is the difficulty of persuading the public that "things are not the way they seem," that what appears to be the simple and obvious explanation of every-day phenomenon is incompatible with ascertainable, demonstrable facts – to make the public realize, as it were, that while they believe themselves to be watching the sun's progress round the earth, they are really watching the progress of the earth round the sun. It is hard to disbelieve the evidence of our senses.
We see a law which establishes in the United States a "standard dollar" of a definite weight of gold of a certain fineness; we see a law making the acceptance of these coins in payment of debt obligatory on the creditor – a law which is cheerfully obeyed without question; we see all commercial transactions carried on in dollars; and finally we everywhere see coins (or equivalent notes) called dollars or multiples or fractions thereof, by means of which innumerable purchases are made and debts settled.
Seeing all these things, what more natural than to believe that, when the Law declared a certain coin to be the Standard Dollar, it really became so: that when we pronounce the word "dollar" we refer to a standard coin, that when we do our commercial transactions we do them, theoretically at least, in these coins with which we are so familiar. What more obvious that when we give or take a "promise to pay" so many dollars, we mean thereby a promise to pay golden coins or their equivalent.
Suddenly we are told that our cherished beliefs are erroneous, that the Law has no power to create a standard dollar, that, when we buy and sell, the standard which we use is not a piece of gold, but something abstract and intangible, that when we "promise to pay" we do not undertake to pay gold coins, but that we merely undertake to cancel our debt by an equivalent credit expressed in terms of our abstract, intangible standard; that a government coin is a "promise to pay," just like a private bill or note.
What wonder if the teacher of the novel doctrine is view with suspicion? What wonder if the public refuses to be at once convinced that the earth revolves around the sun?" (A. Mitchell Innes )
"The Credit Theory of Money"
by A. Mitchell Innes, from The Banking Law Journal
Vol. 31 (1914), Dec./Jan., Pages 151-168.
community-exchange.org/docs/The%20Credit%20Theoriy%20of%20Money.htm
Edited Excerpts from:
Banks and Credit (1948)
Coronet Instructional Films
The Prelinger Archives collection
archive.org/details/0537_Banks_and_Credit_19_41_46_04
Google The Web
Modern Monetary Theory
This is my 501st post. lol. I'm grateful for everyone who's followed.
[...] A credit redeems a debt and nothing else does, unless in virtue of a special statute or a particular contract.
The main obstacle to the adoption of a truer view of the nature of money is the difficulty of persuading the public that "things are not the way they seem," that what appears to be the simple and obvious explanation of every-day phenomenon is incompatible with ascertainable, demonstrable facts – to make the public realize, as it were, that while they believe themselves to be watching the sun's progress round the earth, they are really watching the progress of the earth round the sun. It is hard to disbelieve the evidence of our senses.
We see a law which establishes in the United States a "standard dollar" of a definite weight of gold of a certain fineness; we see a law making the acceptance of these coins in payment of debt obligatory on the creditor – a law which is cheerfully obeyed without question; we see all commercial transactions carried on in dollars; and finally we everywhere see coins (or equivalent notes) called dollars or multiples or fractions thereof, by means of which innumerable purchases are made and debts settled.
Seeing all these things, what more natural than to believe that, when the Law declared a certain coin to be the Standard Dollar, it really became so: that when we pronounce the word "dollar" we refer to a standard coin, that when we do our commercial transactions we do them, theoretically at least, in these coins with which we are so familiar. What more obvious that when we give or take a "promise to pay" so many dollars, we mean thereby a promise to pay golden coins or their equivalent.
Suddenly we are told that our cherished beliefs are erroneous, that the Law has no power to create a standard dollar, that, when we buy and sell, the standard which we use is not a piece of gold, but something abstract and intangible, that when we "promise to pay" we do not undertake to pay gold coins, but that we merely undertake to cancel our debt by an equivalent credit expressed in terms of our abstract, intangible standard; that a government coin is a "promise to pay," just like a private bill or note.
What wonder if the teacher of the novel doctrine is view with suspicion? What wonder if the public refuses to be at once convinced that the earth revolves around the sun?" (A. Mitchell Innes )
"The Credit Theory of Money"
by A. Mitchell Innes, from The Banking Law Journal
Vol. 31 (1914), Dec./Jan., Pages 151-168.
community-exchange.org/docs/The%20Credit%20Theoriy%20of%20Money.htm
Edited Excerpts from:
Banks and Credit (1948)
Coronet Instructional Films
The Prelinger Archives collection
archive.org/details/0537_Banks_and_Credit_19_41_46_04
Google The Web
Modern Monetary Theory
