Volume 3, No. 4 (Winter 2000)
In the last twenty years, continual financial innovation has led to the increased use of MMMFs as a substitute for checkable deposits. While many technical considerations suggest that it is inappropriate to list Money Market Mutual Funds (MMMFs) as a substitute for checkable deposits. While many technical considerations suggest that it is inappropriate to list MMMFs as money, traditional Austrian thought has emphasized money’s subjective aspects: money is what people think it is. Since the public increasingly uses MMMFs as money substitutes, they are money in all practical respects. Every technical consideration that would restrict the use of MMMFs as a type of money thus crashes against the rocks of practical, everyday experience.
