Credit

Credit transactions are in fact nothing but the exchange of present goods against future goods.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 47

Credit expansion is not a nostrum to make people happy. The boom it engenders must inevitably lead to a debacle and unhappiness.

Planning for Freedom, p. 189

No one should expect that any logical argument or any experience could ever shake the almost religious fervor of those who believe in salvation through spending and credit expansion.

Planning for Freedom, p. 63

The essence of a credit-expansion boom is not overinvestment, but investment in wrong lines, i.e., malinvestment.

Human Action, p. 556; p. 559

What is needed for a sound expansion of production is additional capital goods, not money or fiduciary media. The credit boom is built on the sands of banknotes and deposits. It must collapse.

Human Action, p. 559; p. 561

If the credit expansion is not stopped in time, the boom turns into the crack-up boom; the flight into real values begins, and the whole monetary system founders.

Human Action, p. 559; p. 562

The final outcome of the credit expansion is general impoverishment.

Human Action, p. 562; p. 564

Credit expansion is the governments’ foremost tool in their struggle against the market economy. In their hands it is the magic wand designed to conjure away the scarcity of capital goods, to lower the rate of interest or to abolish it altogether, to finance lavish government spending, to expropriate the capitalists, to contrive everlasting booms, and to make everybody prosperous.

Human Action, p. 788; p. 794