Keynesian view on Monetary History is a prescient remdinder that we have much to learn

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	• Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went John Kenneth Galbraith Houghton Mifflin (T), 2001 - 336 pages average customer review:based on 7 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

An introduction to money by an old-school Keynesian

On one side of the world is a broad swath of professional mystery-makers, who stand in awe at the world's complexity, quite often view it as unanalyzable or irreducible, and let it stand pretty much as it was before. Then there are people in this world who want very much to take apart all the world's complex systems and machines, show you what they're made of, and say, "See? It's not all that awe-inspiring after all." I've decided that John Kenneth Galbraith, on the basis of "Money", is one of the latter.

Among those peddling mystery rather than clear thinking around money are some of Galbraith's own economist colleagues, who enshround the topic in hefty terminology and bestow upon money men an authority that, as it turns out, they don't deserve. Here's Galbraith clarifying a couple often-heard terms from the world of finance (after another connected paragraph that I've had to leave out for brevity):

"Few phrases have ever been endowed with such mystery as open-market operations, the bank rate, the discount rate. This is because economists and bankers have been proud of their access to knowledge that even the most percipient of other citizens believe beyond their intelligence. Open-market operations are the sale of securities just mentioned by the central bank which removes the loanable cash or reserves from the commercial or ordinary banks. The bank rate and the discount rate are the same; they are what prevent the banks from too painlessly recouping their cash by borrowing from the central bank. This is it. Viewed in the context of their development in the last century it is hard to regard these mysteries as anything but a simple, even obvious, accommodation to circumstance."

That same tone, in a couple of particulars, is what makes "Money" such a tremendous book. First there's the persistently arched eyebrow, aimed at other economists. Then there's the urge to make the world clearer. The whole book is quite admirable in this way.

Money's pace is a little funny: perhaps 80 pages get us from the start of world history up to the Bank of England, then another 100 pages from the 19th century to World War I. The remaining 150 pages covering the practical collapse of the gold standard through the Depression and its aftermath. It's like Zeno's Monetary History.

Galbraith's central observation about banking is that, beyond its most primitive forms, all banks suffer from one single, ineradicable problem: they have more money on the books than they actually have on hand. And every now and again, panic spreads from bank to bank, justly or unjustly: a nearby bank fails, so all my depositors rush to empty out their accounts. They are all shocked to discover that I don't have a special bag of gold coins labeled "Doris's savings account." My bank fails, as do all the other banks. My bank wasn't necessarily any worse just before the failure than it was a week earlier, but expectations combined to make it collapse. If I'm not mistaken, observations of this form are distinctly Keynesian.

Indeed, Galbraith is an old-school Keynesian, responsible in some fashion for price controls during World War II. Some of the most interesting parts of "Money", to me, were Galbraith's defenses of this centralization. It all worked quite well, says Galbraith, and people seemed generally satisfied with it. When the price controls were lifted, inflation did not go through the roof; there was no pent-up demand waiting to explode, but for the evil central planners. This, and much of the rest of the book, is a more or less direct response to Milton Friedman, maybe especially Friedman and Stigler's "Roofs or Ceilings?"

Part of "Money" is in fact a direct attack on Friedman's monetarism. The standard Keynesian attack seems to go like this: there comes a point in an economic crisis when the interest rate just cannot be productively lowered any more -- we are at the "zero lower bound". Banks are afraid to lend out any more money, so they hoard it. Lower interest rates near the ZLB just lead to more hoarding. The distinctive Keynesian response is to emphasize fiscal policy here over monetary policy: the government should actively spend money to put it in consumers' pockets to get people spending, get them borrowing (clear out those hoards), etc. When read today, Keynes sounds somewhat naïve about the prospects for apolitical control of the economy by a technocratic élite; so does Galbraith.

Some of Galbraith's naïveté comes from a belief that the world is moving to greater centralization: fewer corporations controlling production, and unions representing workers in bulk. It sounds like commerce really was more concentrated during World War II, and consequently that the central planner had a much easier task than he would now. Galbraith doesn't seem to have updated this picture of the world since 1945.

Still, "Money" is a terrific read. A lot of what Galbraith says makes perfect sense, and I have a much better picture of how monetary policy works. He's maybe less reliable on Keynesian demand management; just read the final 50 pages or so with the same skepticism that you brought to the rest of the book, and you'll be fine.

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Keynesian view on Monetary History is a prescient remdinder that we have much to learn

"Money" is an easily read and easily comprehended history of how the western industrialized countries have created, adapted, and managed their monetary systems. Written by one of the post-WWII-era's most famous economists, John Kenneth Galbraith, "Money" is as much a lesson in American history and politics as it is in economics. Galbraith seeks to show how the management of monetary systems, driven by the interests of the rich and supported at times by conservative ideology, has been fraught with error, corruption, and more commonly--simple incompetence. But he protests the inefficacy of monetary management too much. Published in 1975, Galbraith's book can be seen as a response to the rise of the "monetarist" school of economics which, in many ways, was a challenge his economic philosophy.

An ardent supporter of the Keynesian school of economics, Galbraith rose to prominence during the late Depression era and especially during WWII as a government official in charge of controlling prices (He later served in the several Democratic administrations including a post as Ambassador to India for Kennedy). With the Depression still in full force just prior to WWII, he was chosen specifically to help implement a Keynesian economic policy which emphasized the use of fiscal policy--government spending and more activist management of the economy--to bring about full employment.

In 1963, Milton Friedman and Ann Schwartz published the now famous "Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1963". Friedman and Schwartz laid out, in convincing empirical fashion, what became known as the "monetarist" school of economics which emphasized the management of the monetary system as the key to macroeconomics stability and growth. While "Monetary History" acknowledges the managerial shortcomings of past monetary officials--those shortcomings were the result of a lack of understanding of the monetary system rather than an inherent flaw in monetary policies themselves. In contrast, Galbraith's "Money" emphasizes that monetary policy is itself flawed. In addition to showing how attempts to manage monetary systems over the past 200 years have generally been abysmal, Galbraith goes on to assert that even when managed well, monetary policy has a limited impact on macroeconomic health compared to Keynesian-influenced fiscal policies.

Galbraith may have a point. In the 30 years since he published "Money", activist fiscal policy has been replaced by activist monetary policy as the tool of choice for maintaining macroeconomic growth and stability. Yet, monetary crises have remained a significant feature of the economic landscape: The stagflation of the late 1970s, the early 80s recession as a result of the monetary policy response of Paul Volcker's FED; the Asian Financial Crisis; and the current housing bubble brought on by the FED relaxation of interest rates in response to the previous dot-com bubble. The art of managing a monetary system seems no more under control than it did earlier in the 20th century. What has changed over the past 30 years is the realization that increasing economic centralization under the aegis of Keynesian-influenced government intervention has been shown to be problematic to economic growth as well. In addition conservatives also call upon the works of Hayek to show that economic centralization--an inherent feature of heavily Keynesian governments--has political implications that put individual freedoms at risk as well

Ultimately Galbraith's "Money" is an excellent and understandable introduction to the various efforts over the last several centuries to manage monetary systems. But the reader is given more than monetary and Keynesian theory and is engaged in a wonderful, if broad-brushed economic history of the United States. Fifteen years ago, an argument could be made that "Money" was out of date. A second look at recent crises born of monetary policy suggests that "Money" is a relevant reminder that there is still much to learn.

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A rare book

More and more books on economics are just based on political opinions so it is refreshing to read economics based on historical facts. Of course facts are interpreted and Kenneth Galbraith, as a leftist, is not unbiased, nevertheless he tries to be honest and didn't hesitate to be critics towards the US Central Bank. He qualified as Burton effect the veneration of scholarships towards this institution which is unjustifiable for him. For example, he is maybe the only one who reveals that the Central Bank has refused to save the 1929 crash but a state bank unknown from the public. The FED is in private hands although created with public agreement by Congress.

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A generally correct exposition flawed by his ignorance about Keynes

Galbraith presents a generally correct overview of the connection that exists between the private commercial banks' optimizing behavior, loans from the banks to speculators,speculation by the banks themselves,the creation of bubbles leading to manias,panics,crashes and economic collapse ,resulting in recession /depression.The business cycle is thus due to two major sources that create uncertainty about the future,one monetary and one real but both endogenous to the economic system-technological advance ,innovation,and "creative destruction" ,and financial innovation as the banks constantly try to create new assets to avoid the regulatory constraints previously imposed upon them in an effort to rein in and minimize their speculative behavior. Thus, Galbraith gets the following right:"In financing the sale of bad securities and in nourishing the stock market speculation,a leading part was played in these years(author's note-Galbraith is talking about 1925-1929;however,it also applies to the years 1980-2008) by the new monetary system"(Galbraith,p.173).

Unfortunately,Galbraith was tutored,as was Paul Samuelson, on " What Keynes meant " by Joan Robinson,Austin Robinson,and Richard Kahn.This explains the following assessment made by Galbraith about Keynes and the General Theory:" The theoretical justification came in the book Keynes mentioned to Shaw(note-George Bernard Shaw),The General Theory....Keynes had long been suspect among his colleagues for the clarity of his writing and thought,the two often going together.In The General Theory he redeemed his academic reputation.It is a work of profound obsurity,badly written and prematurely published.All economists claim to have read it.Only a few have.The rest feel a secret guilt that they never will.Some of its influence derived from its being extensively incomprehensible.Other scholars were needed to construe its meaning,restate its propositions in intelligible form.Those who initially preformed the task-Joan Robinson in England,Alvin Hansen and Seymour Harris at Harvard-then became highly effective evangilists for the ideas".(Galbraith,pp.217-218).Galbraith,unfortunately,never covered the theoretical core of the GT in chapter 19,the appendix to chapter 19,chapter 20,where Keynes works everything out in great detail,and in chapter 21,where Keynes presents his final results demonstrating that it is speculation that causes involuntary unemployment.Keynes generalizes the Quantity of Exchange formula in chapter 21 so that,for instance,neoclassical theory and Milton Friedman's monetarism are seen as special cases holding only under certainty and linear (normal distribution)risk.These theories break down under non linear risk,uncertainty(ambiguity-D Ellsberg),and ignorance.It's all there on pp.304-306 of the GT.

Galbraith's assessment of Keynes could not be further from the truth.Galbraith's assessment has been a major factor in explaining why economists still have no idea about what Keynes did in 1936.Galbraith is the founder of the American Post Keynesian School(Journal of Post Keynesian Economics),a major influence in the American Institutionalist School (Journal of Economic Issues),and a major influence in the Cambridge Keynesian school(Cambridge Journal of Economics).Galbraith's assessment forms the foundation for all work published on Keynes in these journals and many others as well.

The book is worth buying as long as the reader realizes that Galbraith has no specific knowledge of the GT and probably did not read it himself.

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Great Book. But too bad it ends around 1973

This is an absolutely wonderful book. Lively and fun to read. I highly recommend it. But it stops about 1973. The 2001 reprint was not updated. Which is a shame because Galbraith would have had a lot to say about the folly of the last 30 years.

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