第三编 货币与银行
第十六章 信用媒介的演进
章节大纲
一、发行信用媒介的两种方式
Fiduciary media may be issued by banks or by non-banks (primarily the government). Banks can issue fiduciary media either through banknotes or by granting deposits in a current account (i.e., a modern-day checking account). Banks treat their outstanding fiduciary media as liabilities on their balance sheets, and must loan or directly invest them wisely.
信用媒介可以由银行或非银行（主要是政府）发行。银行可以通过纸币或在活期账户（即现代支票账户）中的存款来发行信用媒介。银行将其未偿付的信用媒介视为资产负债表上的负债，必须明智地将其用于贷款或直接投资。
Governments may also issue fiduciary media such as convertible Treasury notes and token coins. Governments often do not set aside a credit fund out of their capital to “cover” the increased obligations. Instead governments will pocket the seigniorage as income just as surely as tax revenue.
各国政府也可以发行信用媒介，例如可转换国库券和代币。各国政府通常不会从其资本中拨出信贷基金来“偿还”增加的债务。相反的是，政府将把铸币税作为收入，与税收一样确定地放进口袋里。
二、信用媒介与清算体系
The use of fiduciary media can reduce the demand for money in the narrower sense. For example, in the modern United States, the demand to hold actual Federal Reserve notes (green pieces of paper with pictures of dead presidents) is much lower, because people can open checking accounts with commercial banks and write checks or use debit cards (where these deposits are partly fiduciary media, because they are not fully backed up by cash in the vault).
使用信用媒介可以减少对狭义货币的需求。例如，在现代美国，持有实际美联储钞票（带有死去的总统照片的绿色纸片）的需求要低得多，因为人们可以在商业银行开立支票账户并写支票或使用借记卡（ 这些存款有一部分是信用媒介，因为它们没有完全被金库中的现金支持。）
However, an entirely different phenomenon is the reduction in the demand for money in the broader sense—including money proper and even money substitutes (including fiduciary media)— brought about by the development of credit and the clearing system. If one party to a transaction is willing to defer receiving payment, he has thus granted credit. If the other party later delivers goods or performs services such that the original debt is partially or fully offset, only the difference needs to be settled by actual money or money substitutes. As more such transactions are incorporated into such arrangements, the community’s demand for money in the broader sense falls below what it otherwise would have been.
但是，另一个完全不同的现象是，信贷和清算系统的发展带来了广义上的货币需求的减少，包括狭义货币和货币替代品（包括信用媒介）。如果交易的一方愿意推迟收款，那么他就授予了信贷。如果另一方以后通过交付货物或提供服务以使原始债务被部分或全部抵销，则仅需通过真实货币或货币替代品来清算差额。随着越来越多的此类交易被纳入这种安排，社区对广义货币的需求将低于原本应有的水平。
三、国内贸易中的信用媒介
So long as a country has a stable legal framework that permits the building of trust in issuers, the use of clearing operations and fiduciary media can grow to dominate transactions and almost completely displace the use of money in the narrower sense.
只要一个国家有稳定的法律框架，可以建立对发行人的信任，清算业务和信用媒介的使用就可以增长，逐渐主导交易并且几乎完全取代狭义货币的使用。
四、国际贸易中的信用媒介
The practice of using claims and counter-claims in clearing operations to reduce the need to transport money was of particular benefit in international trade, because of the longer distances and time involved. However, fiduciary media themselves are still limited by national boundaries. For example, a particular supplier in the United States might grant credit to a merchant in France, but the claim on the French merchant would not circulate from hand to hand in the same way that a banknote in the United States (or in France) could. Only with the development of a world bank, with clientele drawn from every country, could fiduciary media transcend national boundaries.
在清算业务中使用债权和债权对销来减少运输货币的需求，这种做法在国际贸易中特别有益，因为涉及的距离和时间更长。但是，信用媒介本身仍然受到国界的限制。例如，美国的特定供应商可能会向法国的某个商人提供信贷，但是对法国商人的债权却不会像美国（或法国）的钞票那样，能够进入市场流通。只有随着世界银行的发展，并吸引来自每个国家的客户，信用媒介才能超越国界。
技术说明
On page 278 Mises writes, “[Bank fiduciary media] are entered as liabilities, and the issuing body does not regard the sum issued as an increase of its income or capital, but as an increase on the debit side of its account, which must be balanced by a corresponding increase on the credit side if the whole transaction is not to figure as a loss. This way of dealing with fiduciary media makes it necessary for the issuing body to regard them as part of its trading capital and never to spend them on consumption but always to invest them in business.” This is a crucial point that newcomers to fractional-reserve banking often miss. Even though such bankers in a sense “create money out of thin air,” they can’t simply open up a new account for $100,000 and then write checks to buy themselves sports cars and designer clothes. The reason is that the merchants in the community would then have $100,000 in claims on the actual cash reserves of the bank, and ultimately the bank’s vault would run out of the genuine money. What fractional bankers do instead is loan out the $100,000 to a productive business at (say) 5 percent interest. When the $105,000 is repaid in a year, the $100,000 that was initially created can be “destroyed” (through book-keeping) and the $5,000 in interest income can be safely spent without draining the bank’s cash reserves. Thus fractional-reserve bankers create money out of thin air not to directly spend it—which would be incredibly reckless and short-lived—but instead to earn interest income from it.
米塞斯在第278页写道：“ [银行信用媒介]作为负债入账，发行机构不将其发行金额视为收入或资本的增加，而视为其帐户借方的增加，如果要整个交易不算作亏损，必须通过贷方的相应增加来平衡。这种与信用媒介打交道的方式，使得发行机构必须将其视为自己交易资本的一部分，从不将其用于消费，而始终将其投资于商业。”这是部分准备金银行的初学者们经常遗漏的一个关键点。尽管这些银行家在某种意义上是“凭空创造货币”，但他们不能简单地开一个10万美元的新账户，然后开支票给自己买跑车和名牌服装。原因是社区中的商人随后将对银行的实际现金储备有10万美元的索偿要求，最终将耗尽银行金库中的真实货币。部分准备金银行真正会做的是将这10万美元以（例如）5％的利率借给生产性企业。当105,000美元在一年内被偿还时，最初创造的10万美元可以“销毁”（通过记账），并且5,000美元的利息收入可以安全地用掉，而不会耗尽银行的现金储备。因此，部分准备金银行凭空创造货币，但不是直接花掉它（这将是非常鲁莽和短命的），而是从中赚取利息收入。
On page 291 Mises rejects the claim that India and other Asiatic countries used gold as a “measure of prices” while retaining silver as a medium of exchange. For one thing, the modern subjective value theory explodes the very notion of money as a measure, since value is not an objective property like length or weight that can be measured. Yet of more relevance to this passage, Mises is pointing out that even in the classical gold standard countries, people rarely used actual gold when buying goods and services. Instead, they employed claims to gold. But this is precisely what happened in India, which retained silver coins in circulation that could be redeemed for the official money, gold, at a certain exchange rate.
在第291页，米塞斯（Mises）驳斥了这种说法：印度和其他亚洲国家使用黄金作为“价格衡量标准”而保留白银作为交换媒介。一方面，现代主观价值理论颠覆了货币作为衡量标准的概念，因为价值不是一种如长度或重量般可以测量的的客观属性。米塞斯指出，即使在古典金本位国家，人们在购买商品和服务时也很少使用实际的黄金。取而代之，他们使用了对黄金的债权。但这正是在印度发生的事情，印度保留了流通中的银币，这些银币可以按照一定的汇率兑换成官方货币黄金。
新术语
Convertible Treasury notes: Paper notes issued by the government that entitle the bearer to redemption in money upon demand.
可兑换国库券：政府发行的纸质票据，持有人有权根据需求赎回货币。Seigniorage: The difference between the market value of money and the cost to produce it.
铸币税：货币的市场价值与生产成本之间的差额。Credit: The ability to receive present goods in exchange for the promise of delivering (typically a greater number of ) future goods.
信用：以未来商品的交付承诺（通常数量更多）来换取接收当前商品的能力。
研究问题
Explain: “To complete [a] transaction . . . by full or partial cancellation of counter-claims offers important advantages in comparison with direct exchange: all the freedom connected with the use of money is combined with the technical simplicity that characterizes direct exchange transactions.” (p. 282)
解释：“利用债权债务的全部或部分抵消...来完成[a]交易，与直接交易相比具有巨大的优势：一切因使用货币而获得的自由均伴随着直接交换技术的简单化。（英文版第282页）What does Mises think is the importance of credit for the monetary system? (p. 282)
米塞斯认为信用对货币制度的重要性是什么？（英文版第282页）Explain: “Money in these cases [of international clearing operations] is still a medium of exchange, but its employment in this capacity is independent of its physical existence. Use is made of money, but not physical use of actually existing money or money substitutes. Money which is not present performs an economic function; it has its effect solely by reason of the possibility of its being able to be present.” (p. 283)
解释：“在（国际清算业务的）这些情况中，货币仍是一种交易媒介，但其被作为交易媒介的使用与其实际存在无关。货币会被使用，但并非实际使用真实的货币或货币替代品。并未出现的货币发挥了一项经济功能，它之所以能够发挥作用，完全是因为它有可能存在。”（英文版第283页）Does Mises classify bills of exchange as fiduciary media? (pp. 285–86)
米塞斯是否将汇票归类为信用媒介？（英文版第285-86页）If a hypothetical world bank had deposits and notes that were backed up 100 percent by money on reserve, could it economize on money payments? (p. 294)
如果一个假想的世界银行拥有以100％储备金支持的存款和票据，那么它能节省货币支付的开支吗？（第294页）
