Capitalism - Money Interest and Assets

A critical approach to discern inconsistencies

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2009 in the subject Economics - Monetary theory and policy, grade: 1,0, Ashcroft International Business School Cambridge (Anglia Ruskin University), language: English, abstract: The bachelor thesis has been written in an attempt to combine knowledge about economic interdependencies and the commonly unknown economic view of free economists (,Freiwirtschaft') including the following: Various economic views reaching from Mercantilism to Keynesian economics and Monetarism to present a basis for further evaluation of the topic (,Literature Review' Chapter 1) Chapter 2 dealt with basic economic rules, e.g. the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU) in an attempt to prove the prevalence of unemployment, inflation and others in modern economies Money and its various, partially contradictory definitions, interest and compound interest and growing financial assets (vs. real economy) regarding the latest financial crisis (Chapter 3) Besides quantitative textbook research in chapters 1 to 3, chapter 4 includes personally conducted qualitative research asking members of the free economists' movement for some of the basic consequences that emerge from the currently running capitalistic economic system: Societal tensions within industrialised countries (growing gap between rich and poor) The connection between environmental abuse and capitalism Growing national debts (which is currently big in the news =) The industrialised world vs. developing and third world countries Reasons for financial crises and business cycles in general What does not become clear from the above is the author's belief in the founder of the Freiwirtschaft Silvio Gesell and that his view of the matter played a leading role throughout the thesis. In an attempt to analyze and synthesize the economic world order and to then compare it to the free economists view to prove the current instabilities and to give an alternative to the current system. The findings of the thesis can be summarized as follows: A demurrage on money is needed to break the downward rigidity of interest rates This, in turn, would increase the velocity of money Which could lead to the abolishment of price instability Which could - depending on the marketplace - abolish unemployment Generally, the marketplace in any economy could eventually respond to reality, e.g. a saturated market has a negative growth, so the financial assets are able to lose in value correspondingly.