Theories of the current crisis: Why non-dollar currencies are finished

In a recent post, Deflation or Hyperinflation, FOFOA begins the meat of his argument with investment adviser Rick Ackerman (who, until recently, predicted this present crisis will end in a debt deflation) by directly addressing Ackerman’s core deflationist argument, which originally was set forth in a 1976 book by C.V. Myers, The Coming Deflation:

Ackerman wrote:

My instincts concerning deflation were hard-wired in 1976 after reading C.V. Myers’ The Coming Deflation.  The title was premature, as we now know, but the book’s core idea was as timeless and immutable as the Law of Gravity. Myers stated, with elegant simplicity, that “Ultimately, every penny of every debt must be paid — if not by the borrower, then by the  lender.”  Inflationists and deflationists implicitly agree on this point — we are all ruinists at heart, as our readers will long since have surmised, and  we differ only on the question of who, borrower or lender, will take the hit.  As Myers made clear, however, someone will have to pay.  If you understand this, then you understand why the dreadnought of real estate deflation, for one, will remain with us even if 30 million terminally afflicted homeowners leave their house keys in the mailbox. To repeat: We do not make debt disappear by walking away from it; someone will have to take the hit.

FOFOA’s response to the deflationist argument was both simple and fatal for the deflationist argument:

Yes, someone will pay. But there is a third option that is missing from Myers’ dictum. “The hit” can be socialized…

What the deflationist miss, says FOFOA, is that Washington will never accept the collapse of its failing economic mechanism. It will create whatever quantity of ex nihilo dollars it takes to socialize the losses of financial institutions, pension funds, etc. — even if this threatens the viability of global financial system and the dollar itself.

Like FOFOA, I want to begin this post by directly addressing the core argument of both camps, that this crisis must end either in the deflation or hyperinflation of dollar prices, or both. As FOFOA has argued, the present crisis will likely end in both hyperinflation and deflation at the same time. I agree with this analysis, but I disagree with his targets. Both hyperinflation and deflation of prices will occur, but they are likely to hit every ex nihilo currency on the planet except the dollar. If other currencies survive at all, they will do so only as boutique items marketed to private collectors, like their predecessor, gold. The deflationary/hyperinflationary hit will be not just socialized, but globalized as well.

Is this argument true? I don’t know for sure. To be honest, there are so many variables in the current crisis that any attempt to make a firm prediction must end in embarrassment for someone — a whole lot of “someones”, in fact. But, let’s assess the probabilities determining the outcome of this crisis using Marx’s Law of Value, rather than Austrian economics:

Zero divided by zero equals ?

To be absolutely clear at the outset, there is no difference between the fundamental facts underlying the dollar and the fundamental facts underlying all other national currencies — they are all worthless and possess infinitely more purchasing power than their actual value. From the standpoint of the law of value, any exchange rate between any two ex nihilo currencies is meaningless, since it is merely the ratio between one object that is entirely worthless and another object that is entirely worthless. For the past decade, the purchasing power of the euro has risen against the dollar despite the absolute worthlessness of either currency. The Zimbabwe dollar is collapsing into hyperinflation, but not so far as to actually represent in circulation its actual value — a Zim$1.00 note has exactly the same value as a Zim$1,000,000,000.00 note (and exactly the same value as a one hundred dollar bill for that matter).

Likewise, prices denominated in any ex nihilo currency are meaningless, since they can never rise to actually reflect the values of the commodities which the ex nihilo money denominates. An increase in the purchasing power of an ex nihilo currency would, in any case, conceal the utter worthlessness of the currency. And as to the fall in the purchasing power of any currency, it suffices to state no matter how far the purchasing power of Zimbabwe dollars fall, Zimbabwe dollar denominated prices of commodities never reflect how worthless the currency really is.

What both the hyperinflationist camp and the deflationist camp need to explain is why, despite the absence of value of all ex nihilo currencies, no major currency was put back on the gold standard after Washington closed the gold window in 1971? Why was gold, despite its value as money, relegated to the basements of major central banks or the private collections of hoarders? Why was it necessary for all major trading nations to remove a commodity standard for the general price level from the world economy? The questions answer themselves: a commodity standard for the general price level is incompatible with an economy founded on capitalist social relations at this stage of its development — absolute over-accumulation. The rather stunning fact presented by gold is this: if prices of commodities were denominated in gold, no commodity would be “worth” the gold standard price quoted for it, i.e., the purchasing power of gold as money would be below its value as a commodity — a situation previously found only during over-production of commodities is now a permanent feature of the capitalist mode of production. It is this situation that initially drove gold from circulation as money, that compelled it to strip off its monetary form.

Without understanding this piece of the puzzle, it is not possible to understand the nature of the present crisis, which, despite appearing as the product of a massive accumulation of worthless debt threatening all existing currencies, is actually the cause of this accumulation of fictitious capital. It is futile to try to understand the current crisis by comparing the attractiveness of various existing or imagined alternative ex nihilo currencies on the world market, since each is worthless, and are as prone to sudden and unexpected hyper-depreciation of their purchasing power as the dollar — and which, moreover, owe their role as money to the fact the gold has ceased to be able to function as money. Since there is nothing about the currencies themselves that set them apart from each other or from the dollar, predictions about their respective fates as currencies must rest, not on the respective attraction of the currencies themselves, but solely on the material relation between respective national states — we must ignore the apparent differences in the purchasing powers of various ex nihilo currencies and delve into the actual economic relations between and among the various states.

World market prices versus existing prices

No matter the differences in the exchange rate between dollars and all other currencies, the following conditions hold: on the one hand, world market prices are denominated in dollars, while, on the other hand, the total sum of present prices throughout the world market as a whole are determined by the ratio of the total sum of currencies of every nation to the total quantity of commodities in circulation throughout the world market. If the dollar was the only currency in circulation there would be no difficulty with regards to world prices and existing prices — they would be identical. However, if we have two currencies — we will call them ex nihilo dollars and an ex nihilo “Rest of the World Currency” (rotwocs) — the situation is changed. Although the dollars and rotwocs are identical — i.e., both are worthless — in circulation the effect on the total sum of world market prices is the ratio between all ex nihilo currency in circulation (X dollars plus Y rotwocs) to the total quantity of commodities in circulation throughout the world market.

Despite this fact, world prices are determined by dollars alone, and under the following circumstances: the dollar is not accepted for all commodities because it is world reserve currency; rather, the situation is precisely the opposite: because it is universally accepted in exchange for any commodity, it is the world reserve currency. This means the dollar’s purchasing power is absolute, while the purchasing power of the rotwoc is only relative — the rotwoc can purchase any commodity whose price is denominated in rotwocs, but to purchase a commodity denominated in dollars, it must be exchanged for dollars before the transaction can be completed. If we assume the world market is divided into two zones — a dollar only zone and a combined dollar/rotwoc zone — of equal size, it is obvious that the existing stock of dollars can readily serve as means of purchase in the entire world market, while the existing stock of rotwocs can serve as means of purchase only in the rotwoc zone. The purchasing power of the stock of dollars is, therefore, twice that of the stock of rotwocs, i.e., there are twice as many commodities available to be purchased by dollars as there are by rotwocs.

It should be obvious now that the sum total of all other ex nihilo currencies provide no additional purchasing power to global demand — they are entirely superfluous. On the other hand, the dollar actually exchanges with all other ex nihilo currencies at a rate significantly below its purchasing power throughout the world market — even against ex nihilo currencies that are, at any given moment, appreciating in purchasing power against it. Since the purchasing power of any ex nihilo currency is not inherent in the currency itself, but depends solely on the total quantity of commodities available to be purchased by it, it follows the purchasing power of the ex nihilo dollar is not limited to the commodities available to be purchased in the dollar zone alone, but all commodities that are available to be purchased by it throughout the world market.

On the other hand, it should be equally obvious that the total sum of prices in the world market must be above world market prices. Since world market prices are here determined solely by the ratio of the total sum of ex nihilo dollars in circulation to the total sum of commodities in circulation within the world market, but the actual sum of prices is determined by the ratio between total sum of dollars in circulation plus the total sum of all other currencies in circulation (x dollars plus y rotwocs) to the total sum of commodities in circulation, any quantity of non-dollar national currencies in circulation above zero results in prices that are above world market prices.

The endpoint of this crisis

The question is how all this works out in the crisis as it is now unfolding. While I don’t have a crystal ball, I will attempt to outline a likely course.

As we have seen in this crisis, no matter how profligate the Fascist State is in its spending on a massive global machinery of repression, and on socialization of the losses of incurred by the failed economic mechanism, the more expenditures it undertakes, the greater the pressure on other national monetary authorities to tighten their own monetary policies in response — to impose naked austerity on their citizens, to further constrain domestic prices in the face of rising global prices. Rising global prices translate into a falling rate of profit in the non-dollar states. To offset this falling rate of profit, the domestic labor forces of the various non-dollar states must be squeezed still further, and the resultant surplus product exported. The profligacy of the Fascist State and the austerity regime of these non-dollar states are only two sides of the same process, feeding on each other, each reinforcing the other.

The two do not merely reinforce each other, however, they also act to make their opposite insufficient in resolving the crisis. Insofar as the profligacy of the Fascist State increases, the pressure on the non-dollar states toward domestic austerity increases, and with this also increases its exports. Insofar as exports increase, global overaccumulation is intensified and the world market settles even more deeply into depression. But, as we have already seen, with an ex nihilo currency regime depressions are now associated not with deflation of prices, but the inflation of prices — so actual prices rise still faster in response to domestic austerity.

A straight-line assumption of the crisis indicates constantly rising world market prices, combined with increasing austerity and monetary policy contraction of non-dollar states. However, living processes do not move in a straight line; in any event non-dollar currencies are likely to experience an existential endpoint — separately, or in groups — since the collapse of any one of them involves fewer complications than replacement of the dollar as world reserve currency. Moreover, replacing the dollar with another currency does not solve the problem that these non-dollar currencies are superfluous. Non-dollar currencies are likely finished; nothing in this crisis appears to offer them another fate.

The question provoked by the above is not “What is the fate of the dollar?” Nor, is it, “What is the fate of non-dollar currencies?” Rather, the real question posed by my analysis is this:

“Why should any of these worthless currencies survive?”

Continued