A visão austro-libertarian sobre a inflação monetária

Nota: Isto para além de ser a causa dos grandes ciclos económicos e crises bancárias.

Adenda: Por inflação monetária entenda-se a capacidade criar dinheiro pelo sistema bancário, essencialmente para conceder crédito sem captação/mobilização de poupança.

DEFLATION AND LIBERTY, JÖRG GUIDO HÜLSMANN:"(...) It is true that the firms who receive money fresh from the printing press are thereby benefited. But other firms are harmed by the very same fact because they can no longer pay the higher prices for wages and rents that the privileged firm can now pay. And all other owners of money, whether they are entrepreneurs or workers, are harmed too, because their money now has a lower purchasing power than it would otherwise have had.

(...) Inflation is an unjustifiable redistribution of income in favor of those who receive the new money and money titles first, and to the detriment of those who receive them last. In practice the redistribution always works out in favor of the fiat-money producers themselves (whom we misleadingly call “central banks”) and of their partners in the banking sector and at the stock exchange. And of course inflation works out to the advantage of governments and their closest allies in the business world. Inflation is the vehicle through which these individuals and groups enrich themselves, unjustifiably, at the expense of the citizenry at large.

21In this regard, inflation works in an unholy alliance with the tax code. The main advantage of the successful newcomer is that he has high revenues. But present-day corporate and income tax rates effectively prevent him from accumulating capital quickly enough to sustain the competition of the establishment. As a result, there are virtually no more firms that make it from the very bottom into the major league of corporate capitalism. It took a technological revolution to overcome these obstacles and bring a few firms such as Microsoft to the top of corporate America.

(...) If there is any truth to the socialist caricature of capitalism—an economic system that exploits the poor to the benefit of the rich—then this caricature holds true for a capitalist system strangulated by inflation. The relentless influx of paper money makes the wealthy and powerful richer and more powerful than they would be if they depended exclusively on the voluntary support of their fellow citizens. And because it shields the political and economic establishment of the country from the competition emanating from the rest of society, inflation puts a brake on social mobility. The rich stay rich (longer) and the poor stay poor (longer) than they would in a free society."