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Интересный анализ. https://www.dartmouth.edu/~dirwin/French%20Gold%20Sink.pdf
Одной из причин начала Великой депрессии было безудержное аккумулирование огромных запасов золота США и Франции, более 60% на двоих. Причем доля Франции в мировом запасе возрастает с 7% в 1926 до 27% в 1932 и почти сравнивается со Штатами. Самый быстрый рост запасов в мире. На какие шиши интересно
While the link between the gold standard and the Great Depression
is widely accepted, it begs the question of how the international
monetary system produced such a monumental economic catastrophe.
Structural flaws in the post–World War I gold standard and the
fragility of international financial stability are often blamed for the
problems of the period. However, it is not clear why such factors
should have necessarily led to the massive price deflation experienced
between 1929 and 1932 and the enormous economic difficulties
associated with the decline in prices. In particular, there was no
apparent shortage of gold in the 1920s and 1930s—worldwide gold
reserves continued to expand—so it is not obvious why the system
self-destructed and produced such a cataclysm.
Economic historians have traditionally singled out the United
States for instigating the deflationary shock that led to theworldwide Depression.
The standard explanation for the onset of
the Depression is the tightening of U.S. monetary policy in early
1928, which led to gold inflows from the rest of the world that were
sterilized by the Federal Reserve so that they did not affect the monetary
base ( Friedman and Schwartz 1963, Hamilton 1987). This forced
other countries to tighten their monetary policies as well, without the
benefit of a monetary expansion in the United States. From this initial
deflationary impulse came banking panics and currency crises that
merely reinforced the downward spiral of prices.
Yet France was accumulating gold reserves at a much more rapid
rate than the United States. France’s share of world gold reserves
soared from 7 percent to 27 percent between 1926 and 1932.Figure 3. By contrast,
although the U.S. share of world gold reserves rose slightly
during a crucial period from 1928 to 1930, it generally fell in the late
1920s. The sheer size of the French gold accumulation in the late
1920s and early 1930s has led some economists to give its policies
a closer look. Eichengreen (1990, 269–70) found that France’s gold
reserves were orders of magnitude larger than one would have predicted
based on the country’s economic attributes and concluded
that “the exceptional demands for gold by the Federal Reserve and Banque de France placed downward pressure on global money supplies....
U.S. and French gold policies must therefore share the blame
for exacerbating the monetary aspects of the Great Depression.”
Even Milton Friedman later said that, had he been fully aware of
France’s policy, he would have revised his view on the origins of the
Great Depression Scholars of French monetary history have even concluded that
France deserves more blame than the United States for increasing
the world’s monetary stringency in the late 1920s and early 1930s. In
Gold, France, and the Great Depression, Clark Johnson (1997, 147) contends
that “while the United States did little to hinder the decline in
world prices, especially after 1928, French policy can be charged with
directly causing it.” “That French gold policy aggravated the international
monetary contraction from 1928 to 1932 is beyond dispute,”
Kenneth Mouré (2002, 180) argues. “The magnitude and timing of
French gold absorption from mid-1928 to 1930 imposed a greater
constraint on systemic monetary expansion than the gold accumulation
in the United States during the same period.”
During World War I, most major countries abandoned the gold
standard in order to use fiat currency to fund the war effort. As a
result, those nations experienced high rates of inflation. The desire to
bring inflation under control and restore monetary stability led most
countries to plan on returning to the gold standard at some point
after the war. Unfortunately, many of the international monetary
difficulties of the late 1920s can be traced to decisions regarding the
resumption of the gold standard in the mid-1920s.
However, the Genoa resolutions were simply recommendations
and were never formally adopted as policy. There was no international
agreement on the “rules” of the gold standard game, particularly
the fundamental point that countries with increasing gold reserves
should inflate their money supplies. In addition, while some smaller
countries agreed to hold foreign exchange reserves in currencies that
were convertible into gold, the largest economies, such as the UnitedStates, Britain, and France, only held gold as reserves. Indeed, France
rejected the gold exchange standard as inflationary and was firmly
committed to a pure gold standard.
Many countries began rejoining the gold standard following
Britain’s decision to do so in 1925. As Figure 2 shows, the number of
countries on the gold standard increased significantly between 1924
and 1928.
While there was no major problem with the supply of gold,
there was a problem with the demand for gold when many countries
returned to the gold standard at the same time. In particular,
the distribution of gold reserves changed dramatically as the
Bank of France began to accumulate gold at a rapid rate. Between
1923 and 1926, France’s share of world gold reserves was stable
and virtually the same as Britain’s. However, after the de facto
stabilization of the franc in 1926 (de jure in 1928), France’s share
took off, growing from 7 percent of world reserves in 1926 to
27 percent in 1932. By 1932, France held nearly as much gold as
the United States, though its economy was only about a fourth
of the size of the United States. Together, the United States and
France held more than 60 percent of the world’s monetary gold
stock in 1932
Meanwhile, after enduring a traumatic bout of inflation in 1924–26,
France stabilized the franc at an undervalued rate. There is some
debate about whether the undervaluation was deliberate or not. 8
French policymakers certainly debated which exchange rate the
country should choose. Once the franc had been stabilized, foreign
exchange markets put upward pressure on the franc as confidence in
its value was restored. Finance Minister Raymond Poincaré wanted
to allow the franc to appreciate before formally establishing the peg
to gold, while Bank of France Governor Emile Moreau wanted to
resist the exchange market pressure and keep the franc at the lower
rate. France formalized its adoption of the gold standard with the
Monetary Law of June 1928, which officially restored convertibility
of the franc in terms of gold at the rate set in December 1926.
The evolution of gold reserves in Figure 4 reveals much about the
monetary policies and exchange rate choices in the major countries. The
United States lost reserves (relative to other countries) between 1926
and 1928 in part because of large capital exports to Europe. This foreign
lending was largely directed to Germany, which used the loans to repay
reparations to Britain and France, which in turn repaid its war loans from
the United States. These capital flows also allowed Germany to rebuild
its gold reserves, which steadily increased between 1923 and 1928. France
began accumulating gold reserves once the franc was stabilized at an undervalued
rate in late 1926, while Britain with its overvalued pound had
to make do with an ever smaller share of the world’s gold stock.
However, when the Federal Reserve began to tighten policy in
early 1928, U.S. foreign lending dried up, the net export of gold reversed
itself, and the U.S. share of reserves stabilized in 1929 and
1930. As American lending came to a halt, Germany’s gold reserve
position began to deteriorate. The United States began losing reserves
to other countries again in 1931 and 1932, after Britain left the
gold standard in September 1931.
Thus, France’s stabilization in 1926 and America’s tightening of monetary
policy in 1928 allowed the two countries to accumulate and retain
a large share of the world’s gold reserves. This reduced the absolute
amount of gold reserves available for the rest of the world, as Table 2
shows. In 1928, the flow of gold to France and from the United States
almost exactly offset each other, allowing the gold reserves of the rest of
the world to grow by 4 percent. In December 1928, world gold reserves
were 5 percent larger than they had been in December 1927; France
gained 3 percentage points of that increase, the United States lost 2
percentage points, allowing the rest of the world to gain 4 percentage
points.
The situation changed in 1929 when, instead of offsetting one
another, the United States joined France in attracting gold away from
the rest of the world. As a result, the rest of the world lost 3 percent
of the world stock. The same thing happened in 1930 as well. In 1931,
the world gold stock rose 3 percent, but France accumulated 8 percentage
points, taking 2 percent of the world gold stock away from
the United States and 3 percent from the rest of the world.
Одной из причин начала Великой депрессии было безудержное аккумулирование огромных запасов золота США и Франции, более 60% на двоих. Причем доля Франции в мировом запасе возрастает с 7% в 1926 до 27% в 1932 и почти сравнивается со Штатами. Самый быстрый рост запасов в мире. На какие шиши интересно
While the link between the gold standard and the Great Depression
is widely accepted, it begs the question of how the international
monetary system produced such a monumental economic catastrophe.
Structural flaws in the post–World War I gold standard and the
fragility of international financial stability are often blamed for the
problems of the period. However, it is not clear why such factors
should have necessarily led to the massive price deflation experienced
between 1929 and 1932 and the enormous economic difficulties
associated with the decline in prices. In particular, there was no
apparent shortage of gold in the 1920s and 1930s—worldwide gold
reserves continued to expand—so it is not obvious why the system
self-destructed and produced such a cataclysm.
Economic historians have traditionally singled out the United
States for instigating the deflationary shock that led to theworldwide Depression.
The standard explanation for the onset of
the Depression is the tightening of U.S. monetary policy in early
1928, which led to gold inflows from the rest of the world that were
sterilized by the Federal Reserve so that they did not affect the monetary
base ( Friedman and Schwartz 1963, Hamilton 1987). This forced
other countries to tighten their monetary policies as well, without the
benefit of a monetary expansion in the United States. From this initial
deflationary impulse came banking panics and currency crises that
merely reinforced the downward spiral of prices.
Yet France was accumulating gold reserves at a much more rapid
rate than the United States. France’s share of world gold reserves
soared from 7 percent to 27 percent between 1926 and 1932.Figure 3. By contrast,
although the U.S. share of world gold reserves rose slightly
during a crucial period from 1928 to 1930, it generally fell in the late
1920s. The sheer size of the French gold accumulation in the late
1920s and early 1930s has led some economists to give its policies
a closer look. Eichengreen (1990, 269–70) found that France’s gold
reserves were orders of magnitude larger than one would have predicted
based on the country’s economic attributes and concluded
that “the exceptional demands for gold by the Federal Reserve and Banque de France placed downward pressure on global money supplies....
U.S. and French gold policies must therefore share the blame
for exacerbating the monetary aspects of the Great Depression.”
Even Milton Friedman later said that, had he been fully aware of
France’s policy, he would have revised his view on the origins of the
Great Depression Scholars of French monetary history have even concluded that
France deserves more blame than the United States for increasing
the world’s monetary stringency in the late 1920s and early 1930s. In
Gold, France, and the Great Depression, Clark Johnson (1997, 147) contends
that “while the United States did little to hinder the decline in
world prices, especially after 1928, French policy can be charged with
directly causing it.” “That French gold policy aggravated the international
monetary contraction from 1928 to 1932 is beyond dispute,”
Kenneth Mouré (2002, 180) argues. “The magnitude and timing of
French gold absorption from mid-1928 to 1930 imposed a greater
constraint on systemic monetary expansion than the gold accumulation
in the United States during the same period.”
During World War I, most major countries abandoned the gold
standard in order to use fiat currency to fund the war effort. As a
result, those nations experienced high rates of inflation. The desire to
bring inflation under control and restore monetary stability led most
countries to plan on returning to the gold standard at some point
after the war. Unfortunately, many of the international monetary
difficulties of the late 1920s can be traced to decisions regarding the
resumption of the gold standard in the mid-1920s.
However, the Genoa resolutions were simply recommendations
and were never formally adopted as policy. There was no international
agreement on the “rules” of the gold standard game, particularly
the fundamental point that countries with increasing gold reserves
should inflate their money supplies. In addition, while some smaller
countries agreed to hold foreign exchange reserves in currencies that
were convertible into gold, the largest economies, such as the UnitedStates, Britain, and France, only held gold as reserves. Indeed, France
rejected the gold exchange standard as inflationary and was firmly
committed to a pure gold standard.
Many countries began rejoining the gold standard following
Britain’s decision to do so in 1925. As Figure 2 shows, the number of
countries on the gold standard increased significantly between 1924
and 1928.
While there was no major problem with the supply of gold,
there was a problem with the demand for gold when many countries
returned to the gold standard at the same time. In particular,
the distribution of gold reserves changed dramatically as the
Bank of France began to accumulate gold at a rapid rate. Between
1923 and 1926, France’s share of world gold reserves was stable
and virtually the same as Britain’s. However, after the de facto
stabilization of the franc in 1926 (de jure in 1928), France’s share
took off, growing from 7 percent of world reserves in 1926 to
27 percent in 1932. By 1932, France held nearly as much gold as
the United States, though its economy was only about a fourth
of the size of the United States. Together, the United States and
France held more than 60 percent of the world’s monetary gold
stock in 1932
Meanwhile, after enduring a traumatic bout of inflation in 1924–26,
France stabilized the franc at an undervalued rate. There is some
debate about whether the undervaluation was deliberate or not. 8
French policymakers certainly debated which exchange rate the
country should choose. Once the franc had been stabilized, foreign
exchange markets put upward pressure on the franc as confidence in
its value was restored. Finance Minister Raymond Poincaré wanted
to allow the franc to appreciate before formally establishing the peg
to gold, while Bank of France Governor Emile Moreau wanted to
resist the exchange market pressure and keep the franc at the lower
rate. France formalized its adoption of the gold standard with the
Monetary Law of June 1928, which officially restored convertibility
of the franc in terms of gold at the rate set in December 1926.
The evolution of gold reserves in Figure 4 reveals much about the
monetary policies and exchange rate choices in the major countries. The
United States lost reserves (relative to other countries) between 1926
and 1928 in part because of large capital exports to Europe. This foreign
lending was largely directed to Germany, which used the loans to repay
reparations to Britain and France, which in turn repaid its war loans from
the United States. These capital flows also allowed Germany to rebuild
its gold reserves, which steadily increased between 1923 and 1928. France
began accumulating gold reserves once the franc was stabilized at an undervalued
rate in late 1926, while Britain with its overvalued pound had
to make do with an ever smaller share of the world’s gold stock.
However, when the Federal Reserve began to tighten policy in
early 1928, U.S. foreign lending dried up, the net export of gold reversed
itself, and the U.S. share of reserves stabilized in 1929 and
1930. As American lending came to a halt, Germany’s gold reserve
position began to deteriorate. The United States began losing reserves
to other countries again in 1931 and 1932, after Britain left the
gold standard in September 1931.
Thus, France’s stabilization in 1926 and America’s tightening of monetary
policy in 1928 allowed the two countries to accumulate and retain
a large share of the world’s gold reserves. This reduced the absolute
amount of gold reserves available for the rest of the world, as Table 2
shows. In 1928, the flow of gold to France and from the United States
almost exactly offset each other, allowing the gold reserves of the rest of
the world to grow by 4 percent. In December 1928, world gold reserves
were 5 percent larger than they had been in December 1927; France
gained 3 percentage points of that increase, the United States lost 2
percentage points, allowing the rest of the world to gain 4 percentage
points.
The situation changed in 1929 when, instead of offsetting one
another, the United States joined France in attracting gold away from
the rest of the world. As a result, the rest of the world lost 3 percent
of the world stock. The same thing happened in 1930 as well. In 1931,
the world gold stock rose 3 percent, but France accumulated 8 percentage
points, taking 2 percent of the world gold stock away from
the United States and 3 percent from the rest of the world.
