My Book Published Today: "Money Cycles - The Curse of an Elastic Money Supply"

Click to view on Amazon.

My book Money Cycles - The Curse of an Elastic Money Supply was today published on Amazon: 

You might have been told differently, but most economies today are never actually economically stable. Under current monetary regimes, financial stability is only a temporary phenomenon as economies around the world are in fact inherently unstable by design. Presently, this is the case more so than perhaps ever before. 

In "Money Cycles", the curse of an elastic money supply is explained in detail and its effects on economic progress in general and the business cycle and stock market valuations in particular are exposed. The author presents a comprehensive account of how the banking system creates money and expands the quantity of money, how you can compile accurate and relevant money supply aggregates, and how the money cycle is the main determinant of the business cycle. In the final part of the book, the Austrian theory of the business cycle is described and applied to demonstrate how the money cycle determines stock market booms and the crashes that must follow.

I've included the preface and contents below for those keen on learning more about the book. 

Preface

In today’s mixed economies, large-scale financial crises originate mostly in the banking sector, but are fundamentally caused by unsound monetary systems. It is the existing monetary system that brought about the previous banking crisis. It is also this system that will bring about the next one. I was not aware of this fact the day Lehman Brothers failed. This book is a result of research completed in recent years in an effort to understand the true nature of the business cycle, stock market cycles, and financial crises and why they will continue to be regular features of economic developments around the world.

Wall Street, hedge fund managers and other investment professionals, financial pundits and economists have few reservations about presenting their views on changes in asset prices, employment, interest rates, and trade. Very few of them however seem to incorporate changes in the quantity of money in their analyses. This to me remains a bit of a conundrum as the great majority of prices are quoted in monetary terms. This is also a primary reason this book deals extensively with monetary developments. The book’s focus on this subject must not however be misconstrued as it being the only relevant economic variable for economic progress or lack thereof. Nothing could be further from the truth. Having said that, it seems to me that the powerful effects changes in the money supply have on asset prices and economic progress is at best underestimated and at worst ignored. To my experience, this must be due to a lack of education and a general deprivation of exposure to this more than a century-old science. A goal of this book is therefore to reintroduce this old knowledge in a concentrated manner as the nonmonetary aspects of economics are written about extensively elsewhere by all schools of economic thought.

In many ways, this is a book about what transpires when increased consumption and investment are driven by inflationary credit growth rather than increased production and savings. It is the elastic currencies employed around the world today that make such moves away from economic equilibrium effortless. As it turns out, consumption and investment not fully backed by production and savings have important repercussions for not only the stock market, other asset prices, and prices in general, but more importantly for economic growth and people’s standards of living.

At the time of writing, financial markets appear to indicate all is swell. Major U.S. stock market indices are hitting new all-time highs. Underneath however, things are not quite so rosy. Many large European banks are struggling and Monte dei Paschi, the oldest surviving bank in the world today, is currently being bailed out with taxpayers’ money. Across the pond, U.S. banks are as poorly capitalised as ever though their cash balances, in total and compared to net assets, are substantially higher today than in 2008. The debt problems in the U.S. and many countries in the Eurozone have for years been attempted solved with more of what created them in the first place: more debt and lower interest rates. Consequently, the excesses accumulated during the previous decade have not been dealt with, but have instead been magnified. There is no painless way out of this economic mess. But for it to be dealt with conclusively causes, rather than symptoms, need to be addressed. Government spending and interventions must be reduced drastically over time. A determined move toward the implementation of hard currencies needs to be initiated. Central banks as lenders of last resort must be ended. If not, economic growth will increasingly become a relic of the past and increased poverty, not prosperity, will become firmly established as the norm. I attempt to answer why in this book. Economic regression has already been on its way for at least a decade and arguably much longer in many so-called developed nations. No matter what path is chosen, with the proviso that central banks will contain what they may deem “excessive” price inflation, cash will soon again be king and stock markets will again tumble. This year, 2017, might very well be the year when it all unravel once again.

            The great majority of the sources used in this book were found on the Mises Institute website. This is not by design, but solely due the tremendous collection of writings, especially old books, from the classical- and Austrian economics schools of thought the institute have made freely available to all. For that I thank the Mises Institute for opening up a whole new world of knowledge to me and many others. As Thomas Sowell once so wisely explained, "It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.”

Finally, facts have been presented as accurately as possible and established theories have been stated as fully as deemed necessary for the messages I try to get across. The interpretation of those facts and theories are in many cases subjective however and my analysis and conclusions may therefore at times differ even from others having a similar philosophy to mine. All errors and omissions are my own.

Atle Willems

Norway, January 11^th 2017

Contents

PART I. MONEY  

CHAPTER 1. THE ROLES AND FUNCTIONS OF MONEY                        

CHAPTER 2. THE VALUE OF MONEY & LUDWIG VON MISES’ REGRESSION THEOREM  

   

PART II. THE MONETARY SYSTEM & THE MONEY SUPPLY            

CHAPTER 3. FRACTIONAL RESERVE BANKING   

CHAPTER 4. CENTRAL BANKING: THE FEDERAL RESERVE               

CHAPTER 5. THE MONEY SUPPLY          

CHAPTER 6. MONEY SUPPLY AGGREGATES PUBLISHED BY THE FEDERAL RESERVE      

CHAPTER 7. THE “AUSTRIAN” TRUE MONEY SUPPLY    

CHAPTER 8. THE MONETARY BASE        

CHAPTER 9. HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTS OF THE U.S. MONEY SUPPLY AND MONETARY BASE 

PART III. THE MONEY CREATION PROCESS          

CHAPTER 10. HOW BANKS CREATE BANK CREDIT: MAKING LOANS AND BUYING SECURITIES    

     APPENDIX: THE DEPOSIT CREATION PROCESS: BANKS MAKING LOANS                

     APPENDIX: THE DEPOSIT CREATION PROCESS: BANKS PURCHASING SECURITIES     CHAPTER 11. HOW THE FEDERAL RESERVE CONTROLS THE BANKING SYSTEM’S EXCESS RESERVES AND THE MONEY SUPPLY               

CHAPTER 12. ALTERNATIVE MONETARY SYSTEMS: ELASTIC VS. INELASTIC MONEY      

     FULL RESERVE BANKING             

     THE GOLD STANDARD   

     FREE BANKING 

PART IV. PRICES, VALUATION AND APPRAISAL

PART V. THE TIME MARKET     

CHAPTER 13. THE LOAN MARKET: SAVINGS, BORROWINGS AND THE INTEREST BRAKE 

CHAPTER 14. THE LOAN MARKET: THE SAVING-INVESTMENT RELATION              

CHAPTER 15. THE FACTORS OF PRODUCTION: LAND, LABOUR, AND CAPITAL    

CHAPTER 16. THE STRUCTURE OF PRODUCTION  

             

PART VI. THE PURCHASING POWER OF MONEY              

CHAPTER 17. THE MONEY RELATION      

CHAPTER 18. CONSUMER PRICE INFLATION: THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN    

      

PART VII. ECONOMIC GROWTH               

CHAPTER 19. MALINVESTMENT, OVERCONSUMPTION AND SQUANDERING OF MEANS 

CHAPTER 20. WHAT “PRODUCTION” IS. AND WHAT IT IS NOT.  

CHAPTER 21. THE IMPORTANCE OF PRODUCTION, SAVING, AND INVESTMENT: A TALE OF TWO ISLANDS         

     SAY WHAT, PRODUCTION OPENS A DEMAND FOR PRODUCTS?              

CHAPTER 22. THE ECONOMIC MEANING OF PROFIT      

CHAPTER 23. THE ECONOMIC SIGNIFICANCE OF SAVING           

FORCED SAVING AND INVOLUNTARY SAVING  

CHAPTER 24. THE ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF DEBT             

     LACK OF LENDING – THE CULPRIT FOR LACKLUSTRE ECONOMIC GROWTH?      

CHAPTER 25. ECONOMIC GROWTH: NATURAL AND INFLATIONARY – SOUND AND UNSOUND 

     NATURAL ECONOMIC GROWTH              

     INFLATIONARY GROWTH           

CHAPTER 26. A NOTE ON ECONOMIC ACTIVITY 

CHAPTER 27. A NOTE ON GDP   

PART VIII. MONEY CYCLES & THE ECONOMY     

CHAPTER 28. MONEY CYCLES DEFINED 

CHAPTER 29. THE BANK CREDIT CYCLE  

CHAPTER 30. THE BANKING CRISIS – A HOUSE OF CARDS           

CHAPTER 31. THE AUSTRIAN THEORY OF THE BUSINESS CYCLE  

CHAPTER 32. THE CONTRADICTORY MISSIONS OF CENTRAL BANKING: STABLE PRICE INFLATION & ECONOMIC STABILITY          

CHAPTER 33. THE “ECONOMIC STIMULUS” FABLE AND THE MONETARY CRANK   

      

PART VIIII. MONEY CYCLES & THE STOCK MARKET          

CHAPTER 34. THE FUNDAMENTALS OF A STOCK MARKET BOOM            

    INDIRECT AND DIRECT EFFECTS OF AN EXPANDING MONEY SUPPLY ON STOCK    
    MARKET PRICES   
CHAPTER 35. THE FUNDAMENTALS OF A STOCK MARKET CRASH           

CHAPTER 36. THE STOCK MARKET AS A LEADING RECESSION INDICATOR          

CHAPTER 37. STOCK MARKET SELL-OFFS AS RECESSION TRIGGERS         

CHAPTER 38. THE MONEY SUPPLY-TO-SAVING RATIO  

CHAPTER 39. MONEY CYCLES – A SHORT SYNTHESIS