Strigl’s essay asks whether a currency can be protected not only by central-bank statutes or gold-standard conventions, but against the political authority that can suspend them. Written after the postwar inflations and amid the crisis following 1929, it addresses the renewed appeal of an “entgegenkommende” monetary policy that would stimulate business through credit expansion. Strigl does not claim that the gold standard is an abstract ideal. His narrower point is that, in 1932, gold convertibility or gold parity remains the only credible barrier to manipulation. Where the currency is sound, the state cannot simultaneously use monetary expansion as an economic remedy.
Insolange ist es aber auch nicht möglich, die Wirtschaft durch Erweiterung des Geldumlaufes anzuregen.
English translation: So long as this is the case, however, it is also not possible to stimulate the economy by expanding the circulation of money.
The first section, “Die Aufgabe,” explains why ordinary safeguards fail. Central banks may be required to redeem notes, defend reserves, avoid state credit, and preserve independence; yet all such rules remain statutes of a state that can change or suspend them. Strigl’s fear is therefore not merely technical mismanagement but the political recurrence of inflation whenever private distress or fiscal pressure makes easy credit attractive. The social cost is capital destruction and a risk premium built into interest. Money must support calculation over time, especially saving and investment.
Rechenhaftigkeit und Vertrauen sind Grundlage der modernen Wirtschaft.
English translation: Calculability and confidence are the foundations of the modern economy.
The conceptual turn comes in the second section, “Eine Umkehrung des Greshamschen Gesetzes.” Strigl argues that depreciating money survives only because people are compelled, misled, or habituated into using it. If contracts, prices, wages, and credit could freely be denominated in foreign currency, the economic community would flee the inferior money: gold clauses, foreign-currency contracts, and foreign-exchange loans are already signs of this tendency. Under freedom, the usual Gresham formula is reversed.
Das gute Geld verdrängt das schlechte.
English translation: Good money drives out bad.
This reversal is not, for Strigl, a paradox but the key to an anti-inflation mechanism. Bad money drives out good only where legal tender rules, exchange controls, or prohibitions distort choice. The historical fact that great inflations did not immediately eliminate the national money is explained by ignorance, tradition, state-created privileged markets, official exchange rationing, and above all coercion.
Vor allem aber standen Verbote der Verwendung von ausländischen Währungen dem freien Verkehr entgegen.
English translation: Above all, prohibitions on the use of foreign currencies stood in the way of free commerce.
The “Ausweg,” then, is not a new currency scheme but a legal-international constraint: states should bind themselves by treaty never to prohibit the circulation or contractual use of a partner’s currency. Such clauses would be akin to ordinary commercial treaty guarantees. If a state began inflation under those conditions, users would rapidly shift to the safer money, shrinking the national currency’s field of use and magnifying the price effects until the inflation became self-defeating. The possibility of exit would discipline both treasury and central bank.
Der Staat, der eine fremde Währung einem Verwendungsverbot nicht unterwerfen kann, kann auch keine Inflation treiben.
English translation: The state that cannot subject a foreign currency to a prohibition on its use also cannot pursue an inflation.
Strigl presents this as an “Automatik”: not a discretionary reform entrusted to enlightened officials, but a rule that makes manipulation immediately visible and costly. A state committed to sound money should welcome the limitation; only one that wants to reserve a right to inflate has reason to object. Nor would the result be permanent foreign domination of domestic payments. If the national currency is genuinely stable, no one will prefer the inconvenience of foreign notes for ordinary domestic use. But if such use spreads, it becomes a warning signal to the note-issuing authority.
ein außerordentlich reagibler Index für die Gesundheit der heimischen Währung
English translation: an extraordinarily sensitive index of the health of the domestic currency
The closing section insists that the proposal is pedagogical and deliberately untimely. Strigl refuses the role of monetary project-maker: he is not proposing manipulation by other means, but a way of rebuilding trust once healthy currencies have been restored. His relevance lies in the rigor with which he separates monetary policy from stimulus policy and links currency credibility to legal freedom of choice. In the climate of 1932, he sees his own demand as premature, because inflationary doctrines again dominate public discussion.
Der Geist der Zeit ist inflationistisch
English translation: The spirit of the age is inflationist.
The essay’s main thesis is thus that inflation can be prevented only when the state cannot protect its own depreciating currency from competition. Gold remains the immediate anchor, but the deeper principle is institutional: a sound currency must be exposed to exit. Strigl’s central move is to transform foreign-currency freedom from a symptom of crisis into a constitutional safeguard against it.
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