Tape 11 - Difference of opinion between Samuelson and Friedman
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- | Hello, Instructional Dynamics Incorporated welcomes | 0:02 |
you to this weekly series of commentaries | 0:05 | |
on the current economic scene. | 0:07 | |
Reporting to you will be one of the nation's | 0:09 | |
leading economists, Professor Milton Friedman, | 0:11 | |
of the University of Chicago. | 0:13 | |
Doctor Friedman, the flurry of finals messages | 0:16 | |
by President Johnson touch on quite | 0:19 | |
a number of economic issues. | 0:21 | |
One that's received much attention is his request | 0:23 | |
for a continuance of the 10% surtax. | 0:25 | |
What is your reaction? | 0:28 | |
- | The motto of President Johnson and the whole group | 0:30 |
of people who have been, who are urging a continuation | 0:33 | |
of the 10% surtax seems to be that once wrong, twice right. | 0:36 | |
The surtax was originally sold on the ground | 0:41 | |
that it would be an effective measure | 0:44 | |
to halt the inflationary pressure. | 0:46 | |
This was by all odds the most important issue | 0:48 | |
that was stressed by President Johnson | 0:51 | |
and by the myriads of commentators who came out in favor | 0:54 | |
of the surtax last year. | 0:57 | |
In practice, it appears not to have had that effect. | 1:01 | |
In practice, what happened was that whatever repressive | 1:05 | |
effect the rise in the tax might of had | 1:10 | |
was much more than overbalanced | 1:14 | |
by the very easy money monetary policy, | 1:16 | |
as I've commented on at great lengths in earlier tapes. | 1:19 | |
But despite the fact, | 1:25 | |
that the surtax seems not to have had the desired, | 1:28 | |
the effect on the basis of which it was sold, | 1:33 | |
President Johnson and other people are now reselling | 1:36 | |
it on exactly the same basis. | 1:38 | |
They are saying, well now inflation is still proceeding | 1:41 | |
at a terrible rate, at a tremendous rate, | 1:44 | |
you must not take off the surtax | 1:47 | |
because to do so would stimulate further inflation. | 1:49 | |
However, despite the fact that that's what | 1:53 | |
all the talk is about, it seems to me very clear | 1:55 | |
that that is not in anyway whatsoever the basic reason | 1:59 | |
why Mister Johnson and other people are in favor | 2:02 | |
of continuing the surtax. | 2:05 | |
The inflationary issue is in many ways a smokescreen, | 2:09 | |
the real issue is a very different one. | 2:12 | |
The real issue has to do with the size | 2:14 | |
of governmental expenditures in general. | 2:16 | |
The major reason why Mister Johnson wanted | 2:19 | |
in his final message, | 2:21 | |
to suggest continuation of the surtax, | 2:25 | |
was because he wanted in that final message | 2:29 | |
also to suggest a very high-level | 2:31 | |
and an increasing level of government spending. | 2:34 | |
You will notice that his budget message | 2:36 | |
calls for a very much larger increase in federal spending | 2:38 | |
from this year to next than occurred from last year to this. | 2:42 | |
Of course, the fact that the expenditures did not rise | 2:47 | |
anymore than they did from last years | 2:50 | |
to this was not of Mister Johnson's doing. | 2:52 | |
It was because Congress imposed as a condition | 2:54 | |
of raising the surtax, a reduction in government spending. | 2:57 | |
And of course, the actual figures are not yet in, | 3:02 | |
and my own guess is that actual government spending | 3:05 | |
is likely to turn out higher | 3:07 | |
than Mister Johnson forecasted. | 3:09 | |
But all that is beside the point, | 3:12 | |
he wanted to propose a continuation at a high-level | 3:14 | |
of the various programs that had been introduced | 3:17 | |
during his administration. | 3:18 | |
He wanted to propose an increase in the amount | 3:20 | |
of money going forward. | 3:21 | |
He did not want to do that and at the same time | 3:23 | |
appear to be irresponsible by suggesting a deficit. | 3:25 | |
As a result, the only way he could combine those desires | 3:30 | |
was by urging a continuance of the surtax. | 3:36 | |
There was as you know an enormous amount to do, | 3:40 | |
between Mister Johnson on the one hand | 3:43 | |
and Mister Kennedy and Mister Paul McCracken, | 3:45 | |
Mister Nixon on the other, | 3:48 | |
about the form in which the statement would be made. | 3:50 | |
Mister Johnson was unwilling to urge continuance | 3:53 | |
of a surtax unless he could get at least some kind | 3:55 | |
of a nominal indication from President Nixon, | 3:58 | |
from President Nixon, that he would not, | 4:01 | |
immediately move to an opposite recommendation. | 4:07 | |
They finally worked out a form of phrasing | 4:12 | |
which commits Mister Nixon to absolutely nothing | 4:14 | |
and only commits him to saying that he won't recommend | 4:16 | |
a different course of action unless his, | 4:19 | |
until he has studied it, | 4:22 | |
which of course he would not do in any event. | 4:24 | |
But nonetheless, Mister Johnson was able under cover | 4:26 | |
of that statement to urge a continuation of the smoke, | 4:29 | |
of the surtax. | 4:33 | |
The reason why I have been opposed, | 4:38 | |
I was originally opposed to the surtax, | 4:40 | |
and why I now am in favor of dropping the surtax | 4:43 | |
at the earliest possible moment | 4:46 | |
is precisely for, because on the one hand I do not myself | 4:49 | |
believe that the surtax has much effect | 4:53 | |
on inflationary pressure, that monetary policy | 4:55 | |
is far more important from this point of view, | 4:58 | |
and on the other I believe that the present size | 5:00 | |
of the government is much too large | 5:03 | |
and we are not getting our money's worth out of it. | 5:04 | |
And therefore, that we must take whatever measures | 5:06 | |
are effective in trying to get a curtailment, | 5:10 | |
a prompt curtailment, in the size of government. | 5:13 | |
The most effective way of doing that, | 5:16 | |
I think the experience of the past several decades | 5:18 | |
has demonstrated, is to keep tax receipts from rising, | 5:22 | |
to cut them if possible. | 5:28 | |
I think experience has demonstrated that Congress | 5:31 | |
is going to spend whatever the tax system will raise | 5:33 | |
plus a little more, and in recent years a lot more. | 5:36 | |
If spending is to be cut, the politically effective way | 5:39 | |
to do so is to hold down government revenues. | 5:43 | |
And that is why, I on my side have been in favor | 5:46 | |
of not imposing the surtax and indeed of cutting taxes. | 5:50 | |
But in discussing this view, one point should be made | 5:53 | |
that perhaps is not obvious at the onset, | 5:56 | |
and that is that continuing the surtax | 5:59 | |
at its present 10% rate in effect | 6:02 | |
means a higher level of taxes. | 6:04 | |
It means a higher level of taxes for two reasons. | 6:07 | |
In the first place, the 10% surtax was effective | 6:11 | |
only for part of the calender year 1968. | 6:15 | |
It amounted to something like a 7.5% tax for that year, | 6:20 | |
not to a 10% tax. | 6:24 | |
Continuing it at the 10% rate will mean that it will amount | 6:27 | |
to a 10% tax for the whole of the year 1969. | 6:32 | |
The second reason why it means an automatic rise in taxes | 6:38 | |
is because as incomes rise, in nominal terms, | 6:42 | |
both because real output is going up, | 6:47 | |
and because of the inflationary price rise, | 6:50 | |
as nominal incomes rise people tend to get pushed | 6:54 | |
up into higher and higher income tax brackets. | 6:57 | |
The rates that become applicable to them get higher. | 7:00 | |
As a consequence if you hold the tax rate schedule, | 7:05 | |
the tax schedule constant, the effective tax rate | 7:09 | |
imposed on people automatically rises as income rises. | 7:12 | |
But if the effective tax rate rises, | 7:18 | |
the basic effective tax rate, | 7:21 | |
then clearly so also does the surtax | 7:23 | |
because the surtax is 10% of the tax. | 7:26 | |
In consequence, holding the surtax unchanged | 7:29 | |
is equivalent to letting taxes, effective taxes, rise. | 7:36 | |
While in my own view is that the best thing | 7:42 | |
you could possibly do would be to let the surtax expire | 7:45 | |
completely on June 30th and not renew it. | 7:48 | |
I am by no means sure that that is the conclusion | 7:51 | |
to which Mister Nixon and his advisors will come | 7:54 | |
when they face out both of the economics | 7:57 | |
and the politics of the problem in the coming months. | 7:59 | |
Mister Nixon is very anxious indeed | 8:03 | |
to get rid of the surtax as soon as he can. | 8:05 | |
But he also, | 8:08 | |
must accept the fact that informed economic opinion | 8:11 | |
on the one hand and general public opinion on the other, | 8:17 | |
does not accept the kind of view about the role | 8:20 | |
of taxes and inflation that I have been expressing. | 8:25 | |
They do not agree with me, | 8:27 | |
or let me say I have not yet persuaded them of that view. | 8:29 | |
As a result, allowing the tax to expire, | 8:34 | |
to expire completely, will appear to be to many | 8:38 | |
to be a step courting inflation. | 8:43 | |
Mister Nixon from a political point of view, | 8:49 | |
would like to, needless to say, to avoid that point of view. | 8:52 | |
Especially since he is firmly committed to trying | 8:56 | |
to hold down the inflationary price rise. | 8:59 | |
As a result, my own guess is that what you | 9:02 | |
will end up with is a kind of a compromise. | 9:04 | |
Namely, the continuation of the tax but at a lower rate, | 9:06 | |
rather than a complete elimination of the tax, | 9:11 | |
could be that events between now and June will order that. | 9:14 | |
Much depends on whether actual tax expenditures | 9:18 | |
turn out to be higher, as I suspect they will | 9:22 | |
and has been for, actual government expenditures | 9:24 | |
not taxes, turn out to be higher than they will. | 9:26 | |
Much depends on the course of the economy during | 9:29 | |
the next six months, whether as I anticipate | 9:31 | |
we shall have a continued expansion | 9:33 | |
in continued inflationary pressure and so on. | 9:35 | |
But that at any rate would be my guess as of the moment. | 9:38 | |
- | What are your reactions to the economic report? | 9:42 |
- | Well the Council of Economic Advisors, | 9:45 |
or the outgoing Council of Economic Advisors, | 9:47 | |
has just submitted of course its final economic report. | 9:49 | |
And apparently there is nothing that is so conducive | 9:51 | |
to frankness and candor, | 9:57 | |
as going out of office. | 10:02 | |
The reports of the Council of Economic Advisors | 10:05 | |
have always been, to some extent, a political document. | 10:07 | |
The extent to which they have been a political document | 10:13 | |
has varied greatly over the years. | 10:16 | |
Under the Eisenhower Administration | 10:21 | |
they were put out as a report of the president, | 10:25 | |
not of the Council of Economic Advisors, | 10:28 | |
and so were explicitly political. | 10:30 | |
But in recent years, the Council of Economic Advisors | 10:33 | |
has been a highly political council | 10:36 | |
that has testified before Congress, | 10:40 | |
made speeches in promoting particular kinds | 10:42 | |
of legislation and so on. | 10:45 | |
And its reports have shown that. | 10:47 | |
There has been a discrete silence in the reports | 10:49 | |
about issues in which it was not politic to talk. | 10:53 | |
This year, the council doesn't have to worry | 10:59 | |
about the political implications, it's out of office. | 11:02 | |
This is a testament, not a document, | 11:07 | |
that the members of the council today | 11:11 | |
will have to live with as part of government. | 11:12 | |
And the amusing and interesting thing about it is, | 11:15 | |
that as a result they have spoken frankly on issues | 11:18 | |
which in the past they have been very circumspect about. | 11:21 | |
There are three such issues that it's kind of interesting | 11:24 | |
to know because they have, all have this character. | 11:27 | |
One of these is a minimum wage rate. | 11:32 | |
It is clear that the members of the council being economists | 11:35 | |
have all along recognized that minimum wage rates | 11:38 | |
produce unemployment among unskilled people, | 11:42 | |
particularly among teenagers, | 11:46 | |
and particularly among Negro teenagers. | 11:49 | |
When there was pressure to raise the minimum wage rate | 11:52 | |
a couple of years ago to a $1.60 as was in fact done, | 11:56 | |
the Council of Economic Advisors, | 12:03 | |
the Democratic Council of Economic Advisors, | 12:06 | |
within the halls of government, | 12:08 | |
was in favor of moderating that increase, | 12:10 | |
keeping it as small as possible. | 12:15 | |
They did add their voice to the pressures | 12:16 | |
within the administration, precisely on the grounds, | 12:19 | |
that increasing the minimum wage rates | 12:23 | |
would cause unemployment among particular groups. | 12:25 | |
But in their public positions they invariably | 12:30 | |
and understandably, I'm not criticizing them for this, | 12:33 | |
you or I would of done the same thing | 12:36 | |
if we had been in their position | 12:38 | |
as part of the administration, | 12:39 | |
they understandably and public supported | 12:41 | |
the administration's stand in favor | 12:43 | |
of a higher minimum wage rate. | 12:45 | |
But in this final, shall I say Valedictory Report, | 12:47 | |
or Last Will and Testament, | 12:54 | |
I'm not sure what you want to refer to it as, | 12:55 | |
they have come out with a much more explicit statement | 12:59 | |
about the adverse consequences of further increases | 13:07 | |
in the minimum wage rate. | 13:11 | |
With much stronger statements than ever before, | 13:13 | |
that the way to solve the unemployment problem | 13:17 | |
and to promote the interests of the low-income people | 13:20 | |
is not by legislative enactment of higher | 13:24 | |
and higher minimum wage rates. | 13:27 | |
On a second topic that I have been particularly | 13:29 | |
interested in is their treatment of exchange rates, | 13:32 | |
of international trade. | 13:34 | |
Some years back the council managed | 13:37 | |
an extraordinary intellectual feat. | 13:42 | |
They had a section in their annual report | 13:45 | |
in which they purported to be presenting | 13:48 | |
an economic discussion of the alternative ways | 13:51 | |
of resolving balance of payments difficulties. | 13:55 | |
And in the course of that they managed | 13:58 | |
to be able to carry through the whole analysis | 13:59 | |
without once just commenting on, or even referring to, | 14:02 | |
the possibility of changes in exchange rates. | 14:06 | |
This time they proceed in a very different way indeed. | 14:09 | |
This time they have a explicit discussion of exchange rates, | 14:13 | |
they even refer to the possibility | 14:19 | |
of complete exchange rate flexibility. | 14:21 | |
Though, obviously people can't change completely overnight | 14:24 | |
and they can't go all the way in that direction. | 14:28 | |
They say that that is a alternative to be considered | 14:31 | |
only as a desperate last resort, | 14:35 | |
when international cooperation has completely broken down. | 14:37 | |
But they do stress the desirability of at least considering | 14:41 | |
wider fluctuation in exchange rates. | 14:45 | |
They discuss in particular, | 14:49 | |
the two ideas that have been the most popular Fed's | 14:51 | |
recently in the, among the people who are shifting | 14:54 | |
from unquestioning faith, | 14:57 | |
in rigid exchange rates to some desire for flexibility. | 15:02 | |
Namely, the two expedients are a wider band | 15:06 | |
and a crawling peg, that is the fact that exchange rates | 15:10 | |
should be permitted to fluctuate | 15:13 | |
more than plus and minus 1% about the parity | 15:14 | |
established with the IMF, that's the wider band. | 15:17 | |
They talk about 2%, they talk about possibly wider ranges. | 15:21 | |
And the other is a crawling peg which is the idea | 15:25 | |
that the parity itself should change | 15:28 | |
in a gradual way over time, | 15:30 | |
either by being expressed as an average | 15:32 | |
of prior exchange rates or by, | 15:35 | |
in a announcement by the country in question | 15:38 | |
that it is going to change the exchange rate | 15:41 | |
at a certain time, pattern over time. | 15:43 | |
My present point is not so much to discuss the merits | 15:47 | |
or demerits of these, | 15:50 | |
these arrangements would be better than what we have now, | 15:52 | |
but from my point of view they are far from ideal. | 15:54 | |
I much prefer a straight flexibility, | 15:56 | |
a completely free market in exchange rates. | 15:58 | |
But my purpose is not to discuss the pros and cons | 16:00 | |
but only to call to your attention the fact | 16:03 | |
that the outgoing council does have something to say | 16:05 | |
about this and it has something to say about it | 16:07 | |
which is quite different from the line | 16:10 | |
which it has taken in the past. | 16:12 | |
It's fair to item on which they have some discussion | 16:14 | |
that I think it's worth a bit of comment here, | 16:17 | |
is the Federal Reserve Board, its independence | 16:22 | |
and its relation with the executive. | 16:26 | |
It comes out with a proposal that was first made, | 16:30 | |
I shouldn't say first, | 16:35 | |
but which was made in a formal public way | 16:36 | |
a number of years back by the private Commission | 16:42 | |
on Money and Credit which was established, | 16:45 | |
I've forgotten the exact date, | 16:49 | |
but the reports with the commission were published | 16:51 | |
in something like 1961 or 62, | 16:53 | |
and there were then hearings at that time | 16:57 | |
before the Joint Economic Committee, | 16:59 | |
or perhaps it was the Banking and Currency Committee | 17:02 | |
on that report. | 17:04 | |
In their report the Commission on Money and Credit | 17:06 | |
at that time recommended that the term of the Chairman | 17:08 | |
of the Federal Reserve Board be made coterminous | 17:11 | |
with the term of the President of the United States. | 17:15 | |
The idea of this being that this would be a step | 17:20 | |
whereby you could get a greater coordination | 17:22 | |
of other governmental policies with monetary policies. | 17:27 | |
At present, as you may know, | 17:30 | |
the President names the Chairman, | 17:32 | |
but the term of the Chairman is not coterminous | 17:35 | |
with that of the President. | 17:37 | |
Mister William McChesney Martin has testified | 17:40 | |
before Congress on a number of different occasions | 17:43 | |
that he also favors such an arrangement. | 17:46 | |
He has discussed some variance of it, | 17:49 | |
one of which under, would involve the term of the Chairman | 17:53 | |
ending six months after a new President took office | 17:57 | |
in order to separate the appointment of the Chairman | 18:01 | |
of the Federal Reserve Board from the Cabinet appointments. | 18:03 | |
The council, I believe for the first time, | 18:07 | |
to the best of my knowledge they have not made | 18:13 | |
this recommendation before but I am not certain | 18:14 | |
on that and I may be wrong, | 18:17 | |
but the council in their report this time | 18:18 | |
does come out with a recommendation of exactly the same kind | 18:20 | |
that the term of the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board | 18:24 | |
be made coterminous with the term of the President. | 18:27 | |
That is a recommendation which would be, | 18:32 | |
all three of these recommendations | 18:35 | |
I may say are fascinating, | 18:36 | |
all three of these areas I emphasize | 18:38 | |
because they all go against the line which the council | 18:40 | |
has taken in the past, but are very much in the line | 18:45 | |
of what Mister Nixon has expressed | 18:49 | |
and what the Nixon Administration is interested in. | 18:50 | |
The Nixon Administration is clearly anxious | 18:53 | |
to try to get down high unemployment rates | 18:56 | |
among the disadvantaged groups, | 18:59 | |
and Mister Shultz in testifying in his hearings | 19:02 | |
for confirmation of Secretary of Labor made a special point | 19:05 | |
of stressing the importance of getting down the 25% | 19:09 | |
unemployment rate among Negro teenagers. | 19:13 | |
And one way to do this is to keep | 19:16 | |
the minimum wage rates from rising. | 19:17 | |
In the international area the Nixon Administration | 19:20 | |
is strongly opposed to the present direct controls, | 19:23 | |
and the only way to do something satisfactory | 19:26 | |
about that is to provide for more flexibility. | 19:29 | |
And similarly, in the area of monetary policy, | 19:32 | |
as I've stressed repeatedly, one of the great disadvantages | 19:34 | |
of the next administration is that it has no control | 19:38 | |
over the Federal Reserve Board | 19:40 | |
which dominates monetary policy. | 19:42 | |
That situation would be greatly improved | 19:44 | |
if the recommendation of the council were to be taken, | 19:47 | |
or if Mister Martin were to act in accordance | 19:51 | |
with his own recommendations of some years back | 19:54 | |
and make it possible for the President Nixon | 19:56 | |
to appoint his own Chairman of the Federal Reserve. | 19:59 | |
- | The price of gold in London | 20:03 |
has been hitting new peaks recently Doctor Friedman, | 20:04 | |
does that mean that a new crisis is coming? | 20:07 | |
- | It may or may not, | 20:10 |
a new crisis may be coming, | 20:11 | |
but the fact that the price of gold | 20:13 | |
has reached new peaks is no sign of a new crisis. | 20:15 | |
I have been very much interested in the way | 20:18 | |
in which the newspapers and commentators have been handling | 20:20 | |
the price of gold and the whole gold situation. | 20:23 | |
They have been treating it in the way in which people | 20:27 | |
tend to treat the stock market, | 20:31 | |
with a very, very short-term point of view. | 20:32 | |
Every time that the price in gold hits a new peak | 20:35 | |
they talk about some temporary scare | 20:37 | |
in the international market | 20:42 | |
or some other particular event which might occasion. | 20:43 | |
And every time it falls, they talk as if you're on the verge | 20:46 | |
of going back to $35 an ounce. | 20:50 | |
I think that to get a fair understanding of the gold market | 20:53 | |
and what's happening in the price of gold, | 20:56 | |
one must look at it in a much, much longer-term context. | 20:58 | |
From that longer-term context there are two facts | 21:03 | |
that are critically important. | 21:07 | |
The first fact is that the commercial non-monetary demand | 21:10 | |
for gold has been rising and rising | 21:15 | |
at a rapid rate over recent years. | 21:19 | |
This commercial demand, I should say the non-monetary demand | 21:22 | |
consists not only of the use of gold in an industry, | 21:26 | |
though that is rising at a very rapid rate. | 21:28 | |
It consists not only of the use of gold in adornment | 21:30 | |
and decoration as jewelry in our countries. | 21:34 | |
It consists also of the demand for gold as a way | 21:38 | |
in which people should keep part of their assets, | 21:41 | |
the demand for gold on the part of the Indian citizen, | 21:43 | |
not the great, in amount of great wealth, | 21:51 | |
but the ordinary upper class or middle class Indian citizen | 21:54 | |
who as a ordinary and regular matter keeps part | 21:59 | |
of his wealth in the form of gold. | 22:02 | |
Or of the citizens of Africa, or the Middle East, | 22:05 | |
people throughout the world in underdeveloped countries | 22:10 | |
who have no great confidence in their country's | 22:13 | |
monetary system or in such financial institutions | 22:15 | |
as savings institutions and the like, | 22:18 | |
who have no such alternatives as bonds and stocks | 22:20 | |
that we're accustomed to. | 22:24 | |
And who as a regular matter keep part | 22:25 | |
of their wealth in the form of gold. | 22:27 | |
They are not foolish to do this, | 22:30 | |
it's a very sensible thing for them to do. | 22:31 | |
This regular demand, this permanent demand, | 22:34 | |
this demand from commercial purposes | 22:37 | |
and for this kind of hoarding, | 22:38 | |
has been rising as world income and wealth | 22:41 | |
has been rising over recent years. | 22:44 | |
On the other hand, the supply of gold, | 22:47 | |
the amount of gold being mined has reached a peak | 22:50 | |
and in recent years has been declining a little. | 22:53 | |
The result of this is, that this regular standard | 22:55 | |
commercial demand has in recent years | 22:58 | |
been larger than current output. | 23:01 | |
That's fact number one. | 23:04 | |
Fact number two is that, that I think is crucial, | 23:06 | |
is that of total world holdings of gold | 23:11 | |
roughly half are in monetary holdings of central banks. | 23:17 | |
That's not the fact number two, | 23:21 | |
the crucial fact number two is that the central banks | 23:23 | |
show no disposition to let their | 23:26 | |
monetary gold holdings decline substantially. | 23:29 | |
Had they been willing to do so, | 23:33 | |
they could've prevented the going to a two-tier system | 23:34 | |
last March, they could've kept the price of gold | 23:38 | |
at $35 an ounce, but they were not willing to do so. | 23:40 | |
And the fact that they were not willing | 23:44 | |
to do so is the most important second fact. | 23:46 | |
Given those two facts, the conclusion follows inescapably | 23:50 | |
that the long-run price of gold must rise. | 23:56 | |
At $35 an ounce, the former fixed price, | 24:03 | |
the demand for current gold is greater than the supply | 24:09 | |
and there is no stock from which the difference | 24:12 | |
is going to be supplied. | 24:13 | |
What is a long-run equilibrium price? | 24:16 | |
I have made some calculations, starting not from 1933, | 24:18 | |
when the price of gold was raised to, or 34, | 24:23 | |
when the price of gold was raised to $35 an ounce | 24:26 | |
because at that time that was much too high a price. | 24:29 | |
But I have made some calculations starting from 1929, | 24:32 | |
and these lead me to believe that at the moment | 24:35 | |
the equilibrium price, the price that would clear the market | 24:37 | |
of current production and current demand, | 24:41 | |
must be somewhere in the neighborhood | 24:43 | |
of 60 to 70 to $75 an ounce. | 24:44 | |
Now today the price of gold is $42 an ounce, | 24:49 | |
if this analysis is right it means | 24:52 | |
that the long-term price trend is up. | 24:54 | |
What determines the rate of that price trend? | 24:57 | |
What determines the rate of that price trend | 24:59 | |
is that in the great Monetary Gold Crisis | 25:02 | |
of the early part of 1968, | 25:06 | |
something like three to three and half billion dollars | 25:09 | |
was drawn out of monetary hoards, | 25:12 | |
most paid out of the US Monetary Reserves | 25:14 | |
and went into private hands. | 25:16 | |
This amount of gold did not go into the strong private | 25:18 | |
hands, not into the private hands of people | 25:21 | |
that wanted to keep it permanently, | 25:23 | |
it went into the private hands of short-term speculators. | 25:25 | |
The people who were holding it for a short-term movement | 25:29 | |
in the price of gold. | 25:31 | |
This gold overhanging the market | 25:33 | |
is what is holding down the present price of gold. | 25:36 | |
But it also tells us something about the rate | 25:40 | |
at which the price of gold will rise. | 25:45 | |
People will not hold such gold in storage | 25:47 | |
unless they expect to get recompensed for doing so. | 25:50 | |
The cost of holding gold must run | 25:53 | |
somewhere around 10 to 12, 13% a year | 25:55 | |
if you count storage cost plus foregone interest. | 25:58 | |
As a result one would expect an omni-average, | 26:02 | |
the price of gold would be rising at the rate | 26:05 | |
of about 10 to 12 to 15% a year. | 26:10 | |
In this way the excess gold, the short-term gold hoards, | 26:14 | |
which overhang the market, would be drawn into final use. | 26:20 | |
Partly this is being helped along of course | 26:26 | |
by South Africa's hoarding of gold, | 26:28 | |
and this would continue until the price, | 26:31 | |
until this gold overhanging the market, | 26:34 | |
which was three and half billion, | 26:39 | |
which by now has probably been reduced | 26:41 | |
to something like one and half, two billion dollars, | 26:43 | |
until it has been completely absorbed. | 26:45 | |
At that point there is every reason for the price of gold | 26:48 | |
to get up to 65, $70 an ounce. | 26:50 | |
That will occur on this analysis in the course | 26:54 | |
of the next three or four years, | 26:57 | |
and the gradual trend will be up. | 26:58 | |
And therefore you could be absolutely sure | 27:00 | |
that the free market price of gold in London | 27:02 | |
will be making new highs year after year, | 27:04 | |
if not month after month. | 27:08 | |
I should emphasize that I am talking | 27:10 | |
about the free market price in London, | 27:13 | |
not the official price of $35 an ounce. | 27:15 | |
There is no reason why that should change at all, | 27:19 | |
that's a purely artificial thing | 27:21 | |
which has almost no relevance to anything | 27:27 | |
as the monetary system is now being run. | 27:30 | |
This is Milton Friedman reporting. | 27:33 | |
- | Thank you sir. | 27:36 |
If you have questions or comments or suggestions | 27:37 | |
for topics you would like discussed in this series, | 27:40 | |
please send them to Instructional Dynamics Incorporated | 27:43 | |
166 East Superior Street, Chicago 60611. | 27:46 |
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