Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/297



, the basis of our present empirical currency, can be hoarded by the foolish or exported by the well-informed, and as a consequence the supply can be diminished by individual action. We are informed later. This private reduction of supply affects our so-called “value,” particularly those vital estimates of value expressed in our currency and credit instruments. It also affects our whole illogical basis of value, since the less well-informed holders of so-called gold currency, or other contracts to pay in gold, are left helpless and in the shadow of panic. All gold-standard governments, not excepting the United States, are technically bankrupt in terms of gold, and yet the more lowly citizen creditor finds in a crisis that some of the elementary equities of insolvency are not observed, since a few of the more powerful creditors who are often aliens have been able to collect their accounts in full, even though the fact of insolvency was common knowledge. This