1) Productivity Growth
Last updated
Last updated
As shown below in chart 1, real per capita GDP has increased at an average rate of a shade less than 2% over the last 100 years and didn’t vary a lot from that. This is because, over time, knowledge increases, which in turn raises productivity and living standards. As shown in this chart, over the very long run, there is relatively little variation from the trend line. Even the Great Depression in the 1930s looks rather small. As a result, we can be relatively confident that, with time, the economy will get back on track. However, up close, these variations from trend can be enormous. For example, typically in depressions the peak-to-trough declines in real economic activity are around 20%, the destruction of financial wealth is typically more than 50% and equity prices typically decline by around 80%. The losses in financial wealth for those who have it at the beginning of depressions are typically greater than these numbers suggest because there is also a tremendous shifting of who has wealth.
如图1所示，实际人均国内生产总值在过去100年中平均增长了2％以下，与之不同。这是因为随着时间的推移，知识增加，从而提高了生产率和生活水平。如图所示，从长远来看，趋势线的变化相对较小。即使是在二十世纪三十年代的大萧条，看起来相当小。因此，我们可以相对自信，随着时间的推移，经济将恢复正常。然而，近来，这些从趋势的变化可能是巨大的。例如，通常在萧条时期，实际经济活动中的峰谷下降约为20％，金融财富的破坏通常超过50％，股票价格通常下降约80％。在经济衰退开始时，财务财富的损失通常大于这些数字，因为财富的转变也是巨大的转变。
Swings around this trend are not primarily due to expansions and contractions in knowledge. For example, the Great Depression didn't occur because people forgot how to efficiently produce, and it wasn't set off by war or drought. All the elements that make the economy buzz were there, yet it stagnated. So why didn't the idle factories simply hire the unemployed to utilize the abundant resources in order to produce prosperity? These cycles are not due to events beyond our control, e.g., natural disasters. They are due to human nature and the way the credit system works.
这种趋势的波动主要不是因为知识的扩张和收缩。例如，大萧条并没有发生，因为人们忘记了如何有效地生产，并没有因战争或干旱而垮台。所有使经济喧嚣的元素都在那里，但它停滞不前。那么，为什么闲置的工厂不是简单地雇用失业者来利用丰富的资源来繁荣呢？这些周期不是由于我们无法控制的事件，例如自然灾害。它们是由于人性和信用制度的运作方式。
Most importantly, major swings around the trend are due to expansions and contractions in credit – i.e., credit cycles, most importantly 1) a long-term (typically 50 to 75 years) debt cycle and 2) a shorter-term (typically 5 to 8 years) debt cycle (i.e., the “business/market cycle”). Productivity is examined in greater depth in chapter III, “Productivity and Structural Reform: Why Countries Succeed & Fail, and What Should Be Done So Failing Countries Succeed.”
最重要的是，这种趋势的主要波动是由于信贷的扩张和收缩 - 即信贷周期，最重要的是1）长期（通常为50至75年）债务周期，2）短期（通常为5至8年）债务周期（即“商业/市场周期”）。生产率在第三章“生产力与结构改革：国家成功与失败为什么，国家成功失败”应该如何进行深入研究。
I find that whenever I start talking about cycles, particularly the long-term variety, I raise eyebrows and elicit reactions similar to those I’d expect if I were talking about astrology. For this reason, before I begin explaining these two debt cycles I'd like to say a few things about cycles in general.
A cycle is nothing more than a logical sequence of events leading to a repetitious pattern. In a market-based economy, cycles of expansions in credit and contractions in credit drive economic cycles and they occur for perfectly logical reasons. Each sequence is not pre-destined to repeat in exactly the same way nor to take exactly the same amount of time, though the patterns are similar, for logical reasons. For example, if you understand the game of Monopoly®, you can pretty well understand credit and economic cycles. Early in the game of Monopoly®, people have a lot of cash and few hotels, and it pays to convert cash into hotels. Those who have more hotels make more money. Seeing this, people tend to convert as much cash as possible into property in order to profit from making other players give them cash. So as the game progresses, more hotels are acquired, which creates more need for cash (to pay the bills of landing on someone else’s property with lots of hotels on it) at the same time as many folks have run down their cash to buy hotels. When they are caught needing cash, they are forced to sell their hotels at discounted prices. So early in the game, “property is king” and later in the game, “cash is king.” Those who are best at playing the game understand how to hold the right mix of property and cash, as this right mix changes.
我发现，每当我开始谈论周期，特别是长期的品种时，我会引起眉毛，引发类似于我所说的占星术的反应。因此，在我开始解释这两个债务周期之前，我想说一些关于周期的一些事情。
Now, let’s imagine how this Monopoly® game would work if we changed the role of the bank so that it could make loans and take deposits. Players would then be able to borrow money to buy hotels and, rather than holding their cash idly, they would deposit it at the bank to earn interest, which would provide the bank with more money to lend. Let’s also imagine that players in this game could buy and sell properties from each other giving each other credit (i.e., promises to give money and at a later date). If Monopoly® were played this way, it would provide an almost perfect model for the way our economy operates. There would be more spending on hotels (that would be financed with promises to deliver money at a later date). The amount owed would quickly grow to multiples of the amount of money in existence, hotel prices would be higher, and the cash shortage for the debtors who hold hotels would become greater down the road. So, the cycles would become more pronounced.
一个循环只不过是导致重复模式的逻辑事件序列。在市场经济中，信贷扩张和信贷收缩的周期推动了经济周期，并且出现了完全合乎逻辑的原因。出于逻辑原因，尽管模式是相似的，但是每个序列都不是预先注定要以完全相同的方式重复，也不是采取完全相同的时间量。例如，如果您了解Monopoly®的游戏，您可以很好地了解信用和经济周期。在Monopoly®游戏初期，人们拥有大量现金和很少的酒店，并且可以将现金转换成酒店。那些有更多酒店的人赚更多的钱。看到这一点，人们倾向于将尽可能多的现金转换为财产，以利用其他玩家给予现金。所以随着游戏的进行，更多的酒店被收购，这就造成了更多的现金需求（同时支付其他物业上的大量酒店的登陆费用），同时许多人纷纷倒下购买酒店。当他们被抓到需要现金时，他们被迫以折扣价出售他们的酒店。所以在游戏的早期，“财产是王”，后来在游戏中，“现金是王者”。那些最好玩游戏的人会理解如何掌握正确的财产和现金组合，因为这种正确的组合变化。
The bank and those who saved by depositing their money in it would also get into trouble when the inability to come up with needed cash caused withdrawals from the bank at the same time as debtors couldn’t come up with cash to pay the bank. Basically, economic and credit cycles work this way.
当银行和那些通过存入资金而挽救的银行也将遇到困难，因为无法提供所需的现金，导致银行提款，同时债务人无法提供现金支付银行。基本上，经济和信贷周期是这样工作的。
We are now going to look at how credit cycles – both long-term debt cycles and short-term debt cycles – drive economic cycles. But first we need to understand some basics of how money and credit work in a market-based system.
我们现在要看看信贷周期 - 长期债务周期和短期债务周期如何推动经济周期。但首先，我们需要了解一些基于市场的系统中货币和信贷如何工作的基础知识。
Prosperity exists when the economy is operating at a high level of capacity: in other words, when demand is pressing up against a pre-existing level of capacity. At such times, business profits are good and unemployment is low. The longer these conditions persist, the more capacity will be increased, typically financed by credit growth. Declining demand creates a condition of low capacity utilization; as a result, business profits are bad and unemployment is high. The longer these conditions exist, the more cost-cutting (i.e., restructuring) will occur, typically including debt and equity write-downs.
当经济运行在高水平的能力下时，繁荣存在：换句话说，当需求与预先存在的能力水平相冲突时。在这样的时候，商业利润好，失业率低。这些情况持续的时间越长，信贷增长的资金越多，增加的能力越强。需求下降创造了低产能利用的条件;因此，营业利润不佳，失业率高。这些条件越长，削减成本（即重组）将越多，通常包括债务和权益减记。
Therefore, prosperity equals high demand, and in our credit- based economy, strong demand equals strong real credit growth; conversely, deleveraging equals low demand, and hence lower and falling real credit growth. Contrary to now-popular thinking, recessions and depressions do not develop because of productivity (i.e., inabilities to produce efficiently); they develop from declines in demand, typically due to a fall-off in credit creation.
因此，繁荣等于高需求，在信贷经济中，强劲的需求等于强劲的实质信贷增长;相反，去杠杆化等于低需求，因此实际信贷增长较低和下降。与现在流行的思维相反，由于生产力（即无法有效生产），衰退和萧条不会发展;它们是由需求下降而形成的，通常是由于信贷创造的下降。
Since changes in demand precede changes in capacity in determining the direction of the economy, one would think that prosperity would be easy to achieve simply through pursuing policies that would steadily increase demand. When the economy is plagued by low capacity utilization, depressed business profitability and high unemployment, why doesn't the government simply give it a good shot of whatever it takes to stimulate demand in order to produce a far more pleasant environment of high capacity utilization, fat profits and low unemployment? The answer has to do with what that shot consists of.
由于需求变化是决定经济发展方向的能力变化之前，人们会认为，通过追求稳步增长需求的政策，可以轻松实现繁荣。当经济受到产能利用率低下，企业盈利能力下降和失业率高的困扰时，为什么政府不要轻率地刺激需求，为了产生更加愉快的高产能利用环境，胖利润低失业率？答案与所拍摄的内容有关。
Money is what you settle your payments with. Some people mistakenly believe that money is whatever will buy you goods and services, whether that's dollar bills or simply a promise to pay (e.g., whether it's a credit card or an account at the local grocery). When a department store gives you merchandise in return for your signature on a credit card form, is that signature money? No, because you did not settle the transaction. Rather, you promised to pay money. So you created credit, which is a promise to pay money.
钱是你结算的付款。有些人错误地认为，无论是美钞还是承诺付款（例如，是否是当地杂货店的信用卡或帐户），钱都是买你的商品和服务。当百货公司给您的商品作为回报，以信用卡的形式签名时，是签名钱吗？不，因为你没有交易。相反，你答应付钱。所以你创造了信用，这是承诺付钱。
The Federal Reserve has chosen to define “money” in terms of aggregates (i.e., currency plus various forms of credit - M1, M2, etc.), but this is misleading. Virtually all of what they call money is credit (i.e., promises to deliver money) rather than money itself. The total amount of debt in the U.S. is about $50 trillion and the total amount of money (i.e., currency and reserves) in existence is about $3 trillion. So, if we were to use these numbers as a guide, the amount of promises to deliver money (i.e., debt) is roughly 15 times the amount of money there is to deliver.5 The main point is that most people buy things with credit and don’t pay much attention to what they are promising to deliver and where they are going to get it from, so there is much less money than obligations to deliver it.
美联储选择以汇总（即货币加各种形式的信贷 - M1，M2等）定义“货币”，但这是误导的。几乎所有他们所说的钱都是信用（即承诺交付钱）而不是货币本身。美国的债务总额约为50万亿美元，总存款额（即货币和储备金）约为3万亿美元。所以，如果我们用这些数字作为指导，交付金额的承诺金额（即债务）大约是交付金额的15倍.5主要是大多数人用信用证买东西并不重视他们有希望交付的东西，以及他们将要从何处获得的东西，所以要付出的义务要少得多。
As mentioned, credit is the promise to deliver money, and credit spends just like money. While credit and money spend just as easily, when you pay with money the transaction is settled; but if you pay with credit, the payment has yet to be made.
如上所述，信贷是承诺交付资金，信贷像金钱一样花钱。虽然信贷和金钱的花费一样容易，当你用钱支付交易结算;但如果您用信用卡付款，则尚未付款。
There are two ways demand can increase: with credit or without it. Of course, it's far easier to stimulate demand with credit than without it. For example, in an economy in which there is no credit, if I want to buy a good or service I would have to exchange it for a comparably valued good or service of my own. Therefore, the only way I can increase what I own and the economy as a whole can grow is through increased production. As a result, in an economy without credit, the growth in demand is constrained by the growth in production. This tends to reduce the occurrence of boom-bust cycles, but it also reduces both the efficiency that leads to high prosperity and severe deleveraging, i.e., it tends to produce lower swings around the productivity growth trend line of about 2%.
需求可以增加两种：信用或没有。当然，通过信贷来刺激需求更容易。例如，在没有信贷的经济体中，如果我想购买一个好的或服务的话，我必须交换一个相当有价值的我自己的好处或服务。所以我可以增加自己和整个经济的唯一途径就是增加生产力。因此，在没有信贷的经济中，需求的增长受到生产增长的制约。这倾向于减少繁荣萧条周期的发生，但也降低了导致高繁荣和严重去杠杆化的效率，即，其倾向于在约2％的生产率增长趋势线周围产生较低的波动。
By contrast, in an economy in which credit is readily available, I can acquire goods and services without giving up any of my own. A bank will lend the money on my pledge to repay, secured by my existing assets and future earnings. For these reasons credit and spending can grow faster than money and income. Since that sounds counterintuitive, let me give an example of how that can work.
相比之下，在一个可以获得信贷的经济体中，我可以获得货物和服务，而不放弃任何我自己的信用。银行将借由我现有资产和未来收益保证我的承诺偿还款项。由于这些原因，信贷和支出可以比货币和收入增长更快。由于这听起来违反直觉，让我举一个例子说明如何才能奏效。
If I ask you to paint my office with an agreement that I will give you the money in a few months, your painting my office will add to your income (because you were paid with credit), so it will add to GDP, and it will add to your net worth (because my promise to pay is considered as much of an asset as the cash that I still owe you). Our transaction will also add an asset (i.e., the capital improvement in my office) and a liability (the debt I still owe you) to my balance sheet. Now let’s say that buoyed by this increased amount of business that I gave you and your improved financial condition that you want to expand. So you go to your banker who sees your increased income and net worth, so he is delighted to lend you some “money” (increasing his sales and his balance sheet) that you decide to buy a financial asset with (let’s say stocks) until you want to spend it. As you can see, debt, spending and investment would have increased relative to money and income.
如果我要求你在几个月内给我办理一个协议，我会给你钱，你的画我的办公室将增加你的收入（因为你已经是信用），所以它将增加GDP将增加您的净值（因为我承诺付款被视为与我仍然欠您的现金一样的资产）。我们的交易还将增加资产（即我办公室的资本改善）和负债（我仍然欠您的债务）到我的资产负债表。现在我们来看看这个增加了我给你的业务量，以及你想扩大的财务状况。所以你去看看你增加的收入和净值的银行家，所以他很高兴地借给你一些“我的钱”（增加他的销售和资产负债表），你决定购买一个金融资产（就是说股票）直到你想花费如你所见，债务，支出和投资将相对于货币和收入而增加。
This process can be, and generally is, self-reinforcing because rising spending generates rising incomes and rising net worths, which raise borrowers’ capacity to borrow, which allows more buying and spending, etc. Typically, monetary expansions are used to support credit expansions because more money in the system makes it easier for debtors to pay off their loans (with money of less value), and it makes the assets I acquired worth more because there is more money around to bid them. As a result, monetary expansions improve credit ratings and increase collateral values, making it that much easier to borrow and buy more.
这个过程可以而且一般来说是自我加强的，因为支出增加会增加收入和净值上升，从而提高借款人的借款能力，从而允许更多的购买和支出等。通常，货币扩张用于支持信贷扩张因为系统中的更多资金使债务人更容易偿还贷款（用较少的资金），这使得我获得的资产值得更多，因为有更多的钱投标。因此，货币扩张会提高信用评级，增加抵押品价值，从而更容易借款和购买更多。
In such an economy, demand is constrained only by the willingness of creditors and debtors to extend and receive credit. When credit is easy and cheap, borrowing and spending will occur; and when it is scarce and expensive, borrowing and spending will be less. In the short-term debt cycle, the central bank will control the supply of money and influence the amount of credit that the private sector creates by influencing the cost of credit (i.e., interest rates). Changes in private sector credit drive the cycle. Over the long term, typically decades, debt burdens rise. This obviously cannot continue forever. When it can’t continue a deleveraging occurs.
在这样一个经济体中，需求只有债权人和债务人愿意扩大和获得信贷才会受到限制。信用轻便便宜时，会发生借款和支出;当它稀缺和昂贵时，借款和支出就会少一些。在短期债务周期中，中央银行将通过影响信贷成本（即利率）来控制资金供给并影响私营部门创造的信贷额度。私营部门信贷的变化推动了周期。长期来看，几十年来，债务负担上升。这显然不能永远延续下去。当它不能继续进行去杠杆化时。
As previously mentioned, the most fundamental requirement for private sector credit creation to occur in a market-based system is that both borrowers and lenders believe that the deal is good for them. Since one man’s debts are another man’s assets, lenders have to believe that they will get paid back an amount of money that is greater than inflation (i.e., more than they could get by storing their wealth in inflation-hedge assets), net of taxes. And, because debtors have to pledge their assets (i.e., equity) as collateral in order to motivate the lenders, they have to be at least as confident in their ability to pay their debts as they value the assets (i.e., equity) that they pledged as collateral.
如前所述，私人部门信贷创造在基于市场的制度中发生的最根本的要求是借款人和贷款人都认为这笔交易对他们有利。由于一个人的债务是另一个人的资产，贷款人必须相信他们将得到一笔比通货膨胀更大的资金（即通过将其财富存储在通货膨胀对冲资产中可以获得的），扣除税款。而且，因为债务人必须将其资产（即股权）作为抵押品抵押以激励贷款人，所以他们必须至少对偿付债务的能力有信心，因为他们重视资产（即权益）承诺作为抵押品。
Also, an important consideration of investors is liquidity – i.e., the ability to sell their investments for money and use that money to buy goods and services. For example, if I own a $100,000 Treasury bond, I probably presume that I'll be able to exchange it for $100,000 in cash and in turn exchange the cash for $100,000 worth of goods and services. However, since the ratio of financial assets to money is so high, obviously if a large number of people tried to convert their financial assets into money and buy goods and services at the same time, the central bank would have to either produce a lot more money (risking a monetary inflation) and/or allow a lot of defaults (causing a deflationary deleveraging).
此外，投资者的一个重要考虑因素是流动性 - 即出售其投资和使用这笔钱购买商品和服务的能力。例如，如果我拥有10万美元的国债，我可能认为我可以兑换10万美元的现金，反过来交换价值10万美元的商品和服务的现金。然而，由于金融资产与货币的比率如此之高，显然如果大量企业将金融资产转化为货币，同时购买商品和服务，中央银行将不得不生产更多 金钱（冒险货币通胀）和/或允许大量违约（导致通货紧缩去杠杆化）。
One of the greatest powers governments have is the creation of money and credit, which they exert by determining their countries’ monetary systems and by controlling the levers that increase and decrease the supply of money and credit. The monetary systems chosen have varied over time and between countries. In the old days there was barter, i.e., the exchange of items of equal intrinsic value. That was the basis of money. When you paid with gold coins, the exchange was for items of equal intrinsic value. Then credit developed – i.e., promises to deliver “money” of intrinsic value. Then there were promises to deliver money that didn’t have intrinsic value.
政府最大的权力之一就是通过确定国家的货币体系和控制增加和减少货币和信贷供应的杠杆来创造货币和信贷。选择的货币体系随着时间的推移和国家间的变化而变化在过去，有一个易货物，即交换内在价值相同的物品。那是钱的基础。当你用金币付款时，这个交换是为了内在价值相同的东西。然后信贷发达 - 即承诺提供内在价值的“钱”。那么有承诺提供没有内在价值的钱。
Those who lend expect that they will get back an amount of money that can be converted into goods or services of a somewhat greater purchasing power than the money they originally lent – i.e., they use credit to exchange goods and services today for comparably valuable goods and services in the future. Since credit began, creditors essentially asked those who controlled the monetary systems: “How do we know you won’t just print a lot of money that won’t buy me much when I go to exchange it for goods and services in the future?” At different times, this question was answered differently.
那些贷款人希望他们能够收回一笔可以转换成比原来借款的货币或服务更大的购买力的货物或服务 - 即他们今天使用信用来换取货物和服务，用于比较有价值的货物，未来的服务。自从信贷开始以来，债权人基本上就是要求那些控制货币体系的人：“我们怎么知道你今后不会再打印很多钱，买不起我买的货物和服务呢？ “在不同的时间，这个问题的回答不一样。
Basically, there are two types of monetary systems: 1) commodity-based systems – those systems consisting of some commodity (usually gold), currency (which can be converted into the commodity at a fixed price) and credit (a claim on the currency); and 2) fiat systems – those systems consisting of just currency and credit. In the first system, it's more difficult to create credit expansions. That is because the public will offset the government's attempts to increase currency and credit by giving both back to the government in return for the commodity they are exchangeable for. As the supply of money increases, its value falls; or looked at the other way, the value of the commodity it is convertible into rises. When it rises above the fixed price, it is profitable for those holding credit (i.e., claims on the currency) to sell their debt for currency in order to buy the tangible asset from the government at below the market price. The selling of the credit and the taking of currency out of circulation cause credit to tighten and the value of the money to rise; on the other hand, the general price level of goods and services will fall. Its effect will be lower inflation and lower economic activity.
基本上有两种类型的货币体系：1）基于商品的制度 - 由一些商品（通常是黄金），货币（可以以固定价格转换为商品）和信贷（货币的索赔）组成的系统）;和2）法定制度 - 那些仅由货币和信贷组成的制度。在第一个系统中，创建信贷扩张更加困难。那是因为公众将抵消政府增加货币和信贷的企图，把政府作为回报他们可交换的商品的回报。随着货币供应量的增加，其价值下降;或者看待另一种方式，商品的价值可以转换成升值。当高于固定价格时，对于持有信用证（即货币的债权）的人来说，为了以低于市场价格的方式从政府购买有形资产，以货币出售债务是有利可图的。信贷和货币走出流通导致信贷收紧，货币价值上涨;另一方面，商品和服务的一般价格水平将会下降。其影响将是降低通货膨胀和降低经济活动。
Since the value of money has fallen over time relative to the value of just about everything else, we could tie the currency to just about anything in order to show how this monetary system would have worked.
由于货币价值相对于其他一切的价值已经下降了，所以我们可以将货币与任何事情挂钩，以显示货币体系如何运作。
For example, since a one-pound loaf of white bread in 1946 cost 10 cents, let's imagine we tied the dollar to bread. In other words, let’s imagine a monetary system in which the government in 1946 committed to buy bread at 10 cents a pound and stuck to that until now. Today a pound loaf of white bread costs $2.75. Of course, if they had used this monetary system, the price couldn’t have risen to $2.75 because we all would have bought our bread from the government at 10 cents instead of from the free market until the government ran out of bread.
例如，由于1946年的一磅白面包成本为10美分，我们可以想象我们将美元与面包联系起来。换句话说，让我们想象一下，一个货币制度，政府在1946年承诺购买面包，每斤10美分，直到现在为止。今天一磅白面包成本为2.75美元。当然，如果他们使用这个货币体系，价格就不会上涨到2.75美元，因为我们都会以10美分的价格从政府那里买下我们的面包，而不是从自由市场买到，直到政府用完了面包。
But, for our example, let’s say that the price of bread is $2.75. I'd certainly be willing to take all of my money, buy bread from the government at 10 cents and sell it in the market at $2.75, and others would do the same. This process would reduce the amount of money in circulation, which would then reduce the prices of all goods and services, and it would increase the amount of bread in circulation (thus lowering its price more rapidly than other prices). In fact, if the supply and demand for bread were not greatly influenced by its convertibility to currency, this tie would have dramatically slowed the last 50 years’ rapid growth in currency and credit.
但是，就我们来说，面包的价格是$ 2.75。我肯定愿意把我所有的钱，从政府那里买了10美分的面包，并以2.75美元的价格在市场上卖出，其他的也会这样做。这个过程会减少流通量，从而降低所有商品和服务的价格，并且会增加流通面包的数量（从而降低价格比其他价格更快）。事实上，如果面包的供应和需求不受其兑换货币的影响，这种关系在过去50年的货币和信贷快速增长方面将大大放缓。
Obviously, what the currency is convertible into has an enormous impact on this process. For example, if instead of tying the dollar to bread, we chose to tie it to eggs, since the price of a dozen eggs in 1947 was 70 cents and today it is about $2.00, currency and credit growth would have been less restricted.
显然，货币可转换对这一进程有巨大的影响。例如，如果不是把美元绑在面包上，我们选择把它捆绑到鸡蛋上，因为1947年的十几只鸡蛋的价格是70美分，而今天的价格大约是2.00美元，货币和信贷增长就会受到限制。
Ideally, if one has a commodity-based currency system, one wants to tie the currency to something that is not subject to great swings in supply or demand. For example, if the currency were tied to bread, bakeries would in effect have the power to produce money, leading to increased inflation. Gold and, to a much lesser extent, silver, have historically proven more stable than most other currency backings, although they are by no means perfect.
理想情况下，如果一个货币系统具有商品货币体系，那么人们就想将货币与供给或需求的波动无关。例如，如果货币与面包相连，面包店实际上有能力生产资金，导致通货膨胀上升。黄金，而在一个较小的程度上，银，历史上证明比大多数其他货币背景更稳定，尽管它们绝非完美。
In the second type of monetary system – i.e., in a fiat system in which the amount of money is not constrained by the ability to exchange it for a commodity – the growth of money and credit is very much subject to the influence of the central bank and the willingness of borrowers and lenders to create credit.
在第二种货币体系中，即在一种法定制度下，货币量不受商品交换能力的约束 - 货币和信贷的增长非常受中央银行的影响以及借款人和贷方创造信贷的意愿。
Governments typically prefer fiat systems because they offer more power to print money, expand credit and redistribute wealth by changing the value of money. Human nature being what it is, those in government (and those not) tend to value immediate gratification over longer-term benefits, so government policies tend to increase demand by allowing liberal credit creation, which leads to debt crises. Governments typically choose commodity-based systems only when they are forced to in reaction to the value of money having been severely depreciated due to the government’s “printing” of a lot of it to relieve the excessive debt burdens that their unconstrained monetary systems allowed. They abandon commodity-based monetary systems when the constraints to money creation become too onerous in debt crises. So throughout history, governments have gone back and forth between commodity-based and fiat monetary systems in reaction to the painful consequences of each. However, they don’t make these changes often, as monetary systems typically work well for many years, often decades, with central banks varying interest rates and money supplies to control credit growth well enough so that these inflection points are infrequently reached. In the next two sections I first describe the long-term debt cycle and then the short-term debt cycle.
政府通常更喜欢法定制度，因为它们通过改变货币价值提供更多的印刷资金，扩大信贷和重新分配财富。人性是什么，政府（而不是那些）本身就倾向于重视对长期利益的即时满足，所以政府政策倾向于通过允许自由的信贷创造来导致债务危机来增加需求。政府通常选择以商品为基础的制度，只有当它们被迫对经济严重贬值的货币的价值做出反应时，由于政府“打印”了很多钱，以减轻其无限制的货币体系所允许的过度的债务负担。当货币创造的制约因素在债务危机中变得过于繁重时，他们放弃了以商品为基础的货币体系。所以在整个历史上，各国政府都是以商品为基础的和法定的货币体系之间来回的，以反映每一种货币的痛苦后果。然而，它们并不频繁地进行这些变化，因为货币体系通常在多年（通常是数十年）的情况下运行良好，中央银行不断利用利率和货币供应量来控制信贷增长，这样就很少达到这些拐点。在接下来的两节中，我首先描述了长期债务周期，然后描述了短期债务周期。