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Friday, July 4, 2008

Demand for money

At first, the idea of a demand curve for money seems odd. Isn't the demand for money unlimited? Won't people take as much money as they can get? But this confuses what people would be willing to accept as a gift (which is indeed unlimited) with their demand in the sense of how much they would be willing to give up for the money. Or: how much money they would be willing to keep in their cash balances rather than spend. In this sense their demand for money is scarcely unlimited. If someone acquires money, he can do two things with it: either spend it on consumer goods or investments, or else hold on to it, and increase his individual money stock, his total cash balances. How much he wishes to hold on to is his demand for money.
(c) Murray N. Rothbard, The Mystery of Banking
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