Introduction to Austrian Economic Analysis

10. Banking and the Business Cycle

06/23/2006 Joseph T. Salerno

The tenth and final lecture from Joseph Salerno’s Introduction to Austrian Economic Analysis seminar.

Loan banking is non-inflationary. Interest rates on loans are merely reflective of price spreads. All speculation, on the free-market, is self-correcting and speeds adjustment, rather than cause economic trouble.

100% reserve banking is sound, but fractional reserve banking is inflationary. An inflationary boom is caused by commercial banks extending more credit than any private pools of saving have justified. Money has been created out of thin air. Prices must be allowed to fall to adjust supply and demand. Doing less just postpones the final reckoning. Saving helps during recessions.

What is the Mises Institute?

The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.

Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.

Become a Member