Inhalt
Literaturbericht: Seite 193–207
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Rezensionen: Seite 159–192
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Aufsatz: Seite 105–118
Michael D. Bordo
Under what Circumstances can Inflation be a Solution to Excessive National Debt? Some Lessons from History
The strategy of monetizing national debt by purchasing newly issued government debt with central bank money as well as using inflation to reduce the real value of outstanding nominal debt is fraught with the peril of creating high inflation. This was the case in several famous episodes of hyperinflation in the interwar period. But there are some mehr...
situations where monetizing government debt can be the best thing to do, for example during a war where a country's survival is at stake or during a deep depression like the Great Depression of the 1930s when real output and prices declined by over 30 per cent. In each of these cases money financed fiscal deficits can be effective but theory and history teaches us that once the emergency is past the expansionary policy must be reversed.
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Aufsatz: Seite 119–150
Frauke Schlütz
Karl Tenhagen – Vom Bankkaufmanngehilfe-Lehrling zum Genossenschaftsleiter und vom Genossenschaftsleiter zum Bankmanager
Karl Tenhagen – From Banker's Assistant Apprentice to Cooperative Bank Director and from Cooperative Bank Director to Bank Manager The group of persons who managed cooperative banks has not attracted a great deal of attention in the scholarly research into economic history. The reasons are the underestimation of their significance (far beyond the mehr...
actual cooperative organization) as well as the often scarce source material. In the case of Chairman of the Board Karl Tenhagen, who worked in Rhineland cooperative banks for around 50 years – 40 years of which being for Volksbank Dinslaken eG – the traditional sources do allow for a sufficiently in-depth case study, though. They show how Tenhagen – like many other directors of German cooperative banks – helped to shape the development of the credit cooperative sector not only locally but also on the regional and to a lesser degree on the national level. Further studies will indicate to what extent Tenhagen's professional career is representative for the large number of board members of cooperative banks on the local level of the Cooperative Financial Services Network. As with the present paper, they can make important contributions to the history of the German credit cooperatives based on biographical studies of individual actors.
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Miszelle: Seite 151–158
Gerhard Müller
"…durch Tausendkünstler schnell vertausendfacht"? Goethe und die Geldpolitik in Deutschland um 1800
Goethe and the Monetary Policy in Germany around 1800 For the writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the inflationary monetary policy counted as one of the main evils of the period around 1800. He experienced the consequences of the monetary policy in the Austrian lands during his summer stays in the spa at Carlsbad. When the collapse of Austrian paper money had mehr...
taken on disastrous proportions in the wake of the lost war against Napoleon, Goethe opted to take a course for action as a commentator on the practice of issuing paper money in the 'Jenaische Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung', which he controlled. For example, he published an in-depth review of the polemical pamphlet by the Swiss economist Jean-Charles-Léonard Simonde des Sismondi against paper money, which had appeared in Weimar in late 1810. Alongside the criticism of the increasing issuance of paper money by the governments of the European powers at the time of the coalition wars, another important motivation for Goethe's activities has remained unrecognized up to now: his outrage over a clandestine plan for issuing paper money by Duke Carl August von Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach in 1810. Among other things, these plans were aimed to pay the salaries of civil servants, therefore also that of Goethe, in 'cash billets'. Alongside the national bankruptcy of Austria, which transpired just a little while later, the campaign against paper money by Goethe and his comrades-in-arms contributed to the Duke of Weimar ultimately refraining from implementing his plans.
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