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3 Responses to “Murphy Twin Spin”

1. Reply

   Capt. J Parker says:

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   from the L-M.com post:
   “Both China and Japan are engaged in monetary operations to affect the value of their currencies, and so perhaps the above movements are just a short-term blip on the path of ever higher holdings.” If you would like the value of your currency to fall relative to the dollar wouldn’t that mean you are now free to hold fewer dollars (or liquid dollar denominated assets)? And, If that is true, wouldn’t China and Japan’s sell-off of treasuries just be the start of them continuing to hold fewer treasuries?

2. Reply

   Adrian Gabriel says:

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   Great stuff as always Dr Murphy. It seems odd to me that Paul Buitink in the interview you had with those young Dutch guys either has not read the Mises Regression Theorem & Austrian Economics or has misunderstood both. Interestingly both of those young men are going to the university so seem to tend toward the information touted by their university professors.

   My personal perspective in regards to the idea that governments drove the value of money due to taxation is simply missing the fact that subjective values drive the value of goods, and value scales are what allow for the interpersonal exchange to occur. As mentioned by yourself in various articles you have written, this is how we arrive at the spot price of money. Everything has a price, and thus a value, hence governments do not create value in money unless it is something they want to monopolize and later tax. The tax is not what drives the value of money, but is a secondary effect of coercing others to use their medium.

   For those people unaware of how value begins with the individual’s value scales, and thus prices arise, I would recommend these following articles:

   https://mises.org/library/subjective-value-theory

   https://mises.org/library/subjective-value-and-market-prices

   https://mises.org/library/mystery-marginal-pairs

   Furthermore a reading of Rothbard’s MES would describe much of the science behind this subjective valuation.

   In regards to scholars always trying to point to historical instances where money was minted and later used, (typically the examples used are Gold and Silver coins) overlook the very process of human endeavor. Scholars search for previously written documents to suggest certain ideas that they believe occurred. History thus arrives from the eye of the historian as LVM made clear in Human Action. Therefore it is critical that the reader of history use his best judgment in accepting certain information as truth or accurate at all. It is certainly unclear whether the laymen of the time in which barter and commodity money were used ever wrote down an explanation of how they exchanged to the extent of using barter or commodity money. Indeed there will be certain scholarly writings from men of gentry who may describe these processes, yet laymen tended to interpersonally exchange with what was valued and readily available.

   It seems to me that the layman had little time to describe his processes in writings, something men of gentry had lots of time to do, and whom are the ones that have left us documents to describe the times they lived in. If a Gold/Silver coin is found from the past which was minted at a certain time, does not in any way discredit the clear assumption that the layman used and valued Gold and Silver as precious commodities to interpersonally exchange with prior to the minting of those other coins. Those nuggets they used do not have stamps of Kings on them.

3. Reply

   Tel says:

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   What about the House of Saud selling off half a trillion in US Treasury Bonds?

   Is it serious? Likely to happen?

   I get it that they are worried some US Court might freeze their assets, but they still have to keep the assets somewhere, so what then? Gold, Euros… I kind of doubt the US government will ever allow that. In the past the US government has been quick to protect the KSA.