Well, I am both a fan of K-waves to some degree and not much of a monetarist. But, the deflation of the late nineteenth century certainly can be explained on monetarist grounds. There was an international gold standard and the gold supply was not growing sufficiently until the Alaska/Yukon strike at the end of the 1890s. Any remember William Jenning Bryan's "Cross of Gold" speech?
Of course the broader political economic aspect was global economic domination by British capitalists. It was the Bank of England that was the enforcer of the international gold standard. The pathetic attempt to return to the old peg in the 1920s was the sign of the Brits wanting to go back to what they had but couldn't. Barkley Rosser On Tue, 18 Aug 1998 21:42:40 +0100 Mark Jones <Jones_M at netcomuk.co.uk> wrote:
> The essence of the deflationary forces at work in last qtr C19 and last qtr C20 is
> the same: inter-imperialist rivalry in conditions where the hegemonic power, which
> controls global money and military force-of-last-resort, has too small an economy
> to guarantee global demand rising at the productivity trend-rate (a contradiction
> between global forces and global relations of production). British maritime
> imperialism competed with the inner (rather than inter-) continental
> (railway-driven) development of Central Europe, USA and to a lesser extent, Russia.
> All the latter powers resorted to widespread protectionism, of course. But the
> underlying mechanics were the same. The constraints on the world-market represented
> by US weakness today can only result in similar explosive resolution. The impasse
> is total.
>
> Mark
>
> michael perelman wrote:
>
> > The economy grew during the "fast deflation" of the late 19th C. Profits fell,
> > wages did not increase much, but the economy grew, leading some to deny that
> > any depression occured.
> >
> > Brad De Long wrote:
> >
> > > The *slow* deflations were accompanied by strong real growth. The *fast*
> > > deflations (1873-75 in the U.S., 1893-96 in the U.S.) were not very
> > > pleasant...
> > >
> >
> > --
> > Michael Perelman
> > Economics Department
> > California State University
> > Chico, CA 95929
> >
> > Tel. 530-898-5321
> > E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
> >
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Mark Jones
> http://www.geocities.com/~comparty
>
>
-- Rosser Jr, John Barkley rosserjb at jmu.edu