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Web of Debt - Thinking Outside The Box: How A Bankrupt Germany Solved Its Infrastructure Problems
Schacht actually disapproved of this government fiat money, and wound up getting fired as head of the Reichsbank when he refused to issue it (something that may have saved him at the Nuremberg trials). But he acknowledged in his later memoirs that allowing the government to issue the money it needed had not produced the price inflation predicted by classical economic theory. He surmised that this was because factories were sitting idle and people were unemployed. In this he agreed with John Maynard Keynes: when the resources were available to increase productivity, adding new money to the economy did not increase prices; it increased goods and services. Supply and demand increased together, leaving prices unaffected.
Fascinating...

En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Sep 2nd, 2009 at 07:27:13 AM EST
[ Parent ]
according to John Kenneth Galbraith:
     By the mid thirties there was also in existence an advanced demonstration of the Keynesian system.  This was the economic policy of Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich.  It involved large-scale borrowing for public expenditures, and at first this was principally for civilian works -- railroads, canals and the Autobahnen.  The result was a far more effective attack on unemployment than in any other industrial city.16 By 1935, German unemployment was minimal.  'Hitler had already found how to cure unemployment before Keynes had finished explaining why it occurred.'17  In 1936, as prices and wages came under upward pressure, Hitler took the further step of combining an expansive employment policy with comprehensive price controls.
      The Nazi economic policy, it should be noted, was an ad hoc response to what seemed over-riding circumstance.  The unemployment position was desperate.  So money was borrowed and people put to work.  When rising wages and prices threatened price stability, a price ceiling was imposed.  Although there had been much discussion of such policy in pre-Hitler Germany, it seems doubtful if it was highly influential.  Hitler and his cohorts were not a bookish lot.  Nevertheless the elimination of unemployment in Germany during the Great Depression without inflation -- and with initial reliance on essentially civilian activities -- was a signal accomplishment.  It has rarely been praised and not much remarked.  The notion that Hitler could do no good extends to his economics as it does, more plausibly, to all else.

      Thus the effect of The General Theory was to legitimatize ideas that were in circulation.  What had been the aberrations of cranks and crackpots became now respectable scholarly discussion.  To suggest that there might be over-saving now no longer cost a man his degree or, necessarily, his promotion.  That the proper remedy for over-saving was public spending financed by borrowing was henceforth a fit topic for discussion -- although it continued to provoke bitter rebuke.  The way was now open for public action.

  1. '... the Nazies were ... more successful in curing the economic ills of the 1930s [than the United States].  They reduced unemployment and stimulated industrial production faster than than the Americans did and, considering their resources, handled their monetary and trade problems more successfully, certainly more imaginatively.  This was partly because the Nazis employed deficit financing on a larger scale ... By 1936 the depression was substantially over in Germany, far from finished in the United State.' John A. Garraty, 'The New Deal, National Socialism, and the Great Depression' American Historical Review, vol. 78, no. 4 (October 1973), p. 944.

  2. Joan Robinson. Quoted by Garvy.

_______

John Kenneth Galbraith, "The Coming of J.M. Keynes", Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went (1975), pp. 237-239

So he does qualify the Nazi achievement as "the elimination of unemployment in Germany during the Great Depression without inflation", but this was done through the use of price controls, which seems like cheating to me (though to Galbraith, who served as deputy head of the [U.S.] Office of Price Administration during World War II, price controls were a legitimate economic policy tool, if used judiciously in appropriate types of markets).

The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion, but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence.

by marco on Wed Sep 2nd, 2009 at 09:44:43 AM EST
[ Parent ]
marco:
By 1935, German unemployment was minimal.  'Hitler had already found how to cure unemployment before Keynes had finished explaining why it occurred.'[Joan Robinson]  In 1936, as prices and wages came under upward pressure, Hitler took the further step of combining an expansive employment policy with comprehensive price controls.

...

... Nevertheless the elimination of unemployment in Germany during the Great Depression without inflation -- and with initial reliance on essentially civilian activities -- was a signal accomplishment.  It has rarely been praised and not much remarked.  The notion that Hitler could do no good extends to his economics as it does, more plausibly, to all else.

Oh, God, don't let the freepers find out or they'll start claiming that Keynes was a Nazi.

En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Sep 2nd, 2009 at 09:54:32 AM EST
[ Parent ]
marco:
this was done through the use of price controls, which seems like cheating to me (though to Galbraith, who served as deputy head of the [U.S.] Office of Price Administration during World War II, price controls were a legitimate economic policy tool, if used judiciously in appropriate types of markets)
Reading assignment: The New Industrial State wherein the mechanisms by which corporations control prices is elucidated, as well as the reasons why they do it. Having accepted that prices are controlled in a modern economy, why shouldn't they be controlled for the good of society? And, within Galbraith's analysis, since the "private" corporations are enmeshed in the institutional structure of society and its economy, isn't what is good for the corporations good for society and conversely?

En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Thu Sep 3rd, 2009 at 10:20:02 AM EST
[ Parent ]
It is.

But - by definition - Nazi economic policy cannot have got anything right....

"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson

by ChrisCook (cojockathotmaildotcom) on Wed Sep 2nd, 2009 at 10:11:40 AM EST
[ Parent ]
On the other hand, can we hear here a dog that did not bark?

What seems to be missing is pressure (or an attack) of international investors on the "funny" Nazi currency. It is not a big secret that, particularly, a portion of US political and financial establishment was rooting for Nazis.

by das monde on Wed Sep 2nd, 2009 at 10:56:35 PM EST
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