Braun’s German-language article examines whether managed currency can stabilize purchasing power without impairing economic calculation. It moves from the disruption of the gold standard to critiques of Irving Fisher and J. M. Keynes, concluding with support for Austrian monetary stabilization. Its central distinction concerns money’s functions as a means of payment and a unit of account: stabilizing purchasing power through a commodity-price index may, Braun argues, undermine entrepreneurial calculation.
Man erhofft von ihr die Sicherung der Stabilität des Geldwertes, die durch die Goldwährung nicht garantiert erscheint.
English translation: What is hoped for from it is the securing of the stability of the value of money, which the gold standard does not appear to guarantee.
Braun takes this aspiration seriously without accepting its proposed remedy. Wartime restrictions, suspended convertibility, and movements of gold toward neutral countries disturbed gold’s value. American gold accumulation subsequently gave a single state exceptional influence over it. The existing gold standard therefore cannot simply be contrasted with managed currency as though one were natural and the other artificial.
Heute ist sie jedenfalls aus den oben besprochenen Gründen in einem viel höheren Grade eine manipulierte Währung, weil ein einziger Staat einen entscheidenden Einfluß auf den Goldwert nimmt.
English translation: Today, at any rate, for the reasons discussed above, it is to a far higher degree a manipulated currency, because a single state exerts a decisive influence upon the value of gold.
Her defense of gold rests instead on the distinction between maintaining a fixed monetary relation to gold and discretionarily changing the monetary unit. Gold’s weakened regulatory role followed restrictions on its circulation; those restrictions do not, for Braun, establish the inherent failure of a gold-based accounting standard. She also acknowledges that gold’s value depends partly on its institutional designation as currency metal.
After briefly considering Bendixen’s alternative, Braun concentrates on Fisher’s compensated dollar, whose gold content would vary according to a commodity-price index.
Das von Fisher angestrebte Ziel ist das Geld mit unveränderlicher Kaufkraft.
English translation: The goal pursued by Fisher is money with unalterable purchasing power.
Her objection extends beyond commodity selection or measurement accuracy. An index records past exchanges, whereas income’s purchasing power concerns future acquisitions. Changing needs, innovations, and shifts in demand prevent a historical basket from guaranteeing equivalent satisfaction to its recipient. Statistical stability therefore cannot be equated straightforwardly with stability in money’s economic significance.
Keynes’s broader approach supplements commodity prices with indicators of employment, production, and credit demand while loosening the connection between monetary issuance and gold. Braun responds that central banks already consider such conditions in discount policy. Removing the additional constraint of gold convertibility would enlarge the consequences of uncertain administrative judgments: intervention would alter the basis of calculation rather than merely financing costs. Monetary changes also affect prices successively, making their consequences difficult to anticipate.
The decisive question is whether stable purchasing power would be desirable even if technically attainable. Stabilization proposals foreground the creditor’s interest in recovering an equivalent command over goods. Braun instead considers the borrowing entrepreneur, whose expected profit depends on costs and receipts expressed in a stable accounting unit. A wheat trader who correctly anticipates a price increase may nevertheless lose the expected monetary return if compensation changes that unit. Long-term projects, such as railway construction, would likewise become exposed to index movements originating in unrelated sectors.
Drawing on Mises’s account of successive price adjustments, Braun identifies a dilemma. Frequent compensation follows price movements more closely but repeatedly disturbs entrepreneurial calculation; infrequent compensation leaves differences in incomes’ purchasing power unresolved. She nevertheless allows indexing salaries or particular personal loans when the parties expressly seek an agreed purchasing power. Her objection is to making that objective determine the universal unit of account.
The contrast between static reproduction and dynamic development supplies the theoretical framework. With unchanged output and demand, general price movements might isolate changes in gold’s value. In a developing economy, however, an index combines heterogeneous changes in consumption and production. Braun prefers a commodity accounting unit subject to its own disturbances over one continually adjusted to disturbances throughout the economy. Austrian entrepreneurs’ use of gold currencies during inflation supplies her practical illustration.
The conclusion endorses the Austrian National Bank’s stabilization policy in principle while leaving its exchange rate, discount policy, and transitional arrangements open to criticism. Braun thus distinguishes stable aggregate purchasing power from dependable entrepreneurial accounting, arguing that policies pursuing the former can compromise the latter.
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