Felix Somary, Rezension: Mitjavile, La crise du change en Espagne (1906)

Felix Somary’s brief German review evaluates Mitjavile’s 1904 study of Spain’s exchange-rate crisis. Moving from the fiscal exhaustion of colonial warfare through depreciation’s economic effects to its monetary causes and proposed remedies, Somary endorses a central argument: the crisis benefited a narrow group while imposing widespread losses, and its roots lay in government finance.

Unter allen Aufgaben, die die spanischen Staatsmänner zu lösen hatten, war die schwierigste die Wiederherstellung der Valuta, ein fast unlösliches Problem in einem Staate, dessen Budget alljährlich mit einem Defizit abschloß und dessen Einnahmen 700 Millionen Pesetas nicht wesentlich überstiegen.

English translation: Among all the tasks which Spanish statesmen had to solve, the most difficult was the restoration of the currency, an almost insoluble problem in a state whose budget closed every year with a deficit and whose revenues did not substantially exceed 700 million pesetas.

Currency stabilization thus appears as a fiscal problem from the outset. Somary also identifies Spain’s exceptional exchange-rate fluctuations as an opportunity for monetary analysis: their magnitude seemed to make depreciation’s effects unusually visible. Yet he praises Mitjavile’s methodological caution. Changes in protective tariffs and the repatriation of colonial investments complicate statistical attribution, prompting detailed examination of particular effects instead.

That examination rejects optimistic accounts of depreciation. A relatively small share of exporters gained, while food prices rose, commerce became more speculative, and foreign interest payments grew more burdensome. The losses of the Compagnie du Nord provide a concrete instance of how depreciation strained enterprises with external obligations. Somary’s emphasis is distributional: gains for selected interests cannot establish a benefit to the economy as a whole.

In überaus scharfsinniger Weise, durch argumentum a contrario, führt Mitjavile die Krise auf die ungünstige Finanzlage zurück, welche die Regierung zwang, zu große Vorschüsse bei ihrer Notenbank aufzunehmen; dieses Moment und die gesetzliche Erlaubnis, Staatspapiere in die Notendeckung einrechnen zu dürfen, hat in letzter Linie die gefährliche Situation verursacht.

English translation: In an exceedingly acute manner, by means of an argumentum a contrario, Mitjavile traces the crisis back to the unfavourable financial position which compelled the government to take up excessively large advances from its bank of issue; this factor and the statutory permission to count government securities towards the cover for the notes have in the last resort caused the dangerous situation.

This passage connects fiscal weakness to the institutional mechanisms of monetary instability: excessive government advances from the note-issuing bank and the eligibility of government securities as note backing. Somary approves Mitjavile’s resulting preference for Villaverde’s reform efforts, without detailing those proposals. His closing praise for the book’s impartiality and strict fairness reinforces the review’s larger judgment: its scholarly value lies in combining caution about evidence with a forceful explanation of depreciation’s unequal consequences and fiscal origins.