| the credit’s influence
on an enterprise’s prosperity: chance or burden
Introduction
"consumer society": payment
of interest and liquidation of debts, as a sign of poverty and a moment
of further impoverishment for the private debtor
Welcome! I’ve decided to publish my
articles and travel reports on a homepage so you can read them.
For more than 15 years I’ve been investigating the economic history
of Austria in the 19th century, focusing on the credit system, banks,
the stock exchange and securities. "Austrian history" in this
period of course covers the events in territories that now belong to
other states, to the Czech Republic, Slovakia, the Ukraine, and others.
For this reason I needed to extend my research activities to some of
the states now neighbouring Austria, most of all to Hungary.
Nobody in Austria today is interested in the investigation of the credit
system’s history, although our archives are packed with files that
offer all the insight you might want. There is no one who has really
dealt with this theme during the last 50 or 60 years. Austrian historians’
attitude towards the history of Hungary is similar.
The people who make decisions about the allocation of funds, such as
scholarships and grants, or the filling of university chairs evidently
do not attach importance to a part of Austria’s history that is
not one of it’s glorious chapters. Austria never was an economic
superpower and the clumsy efforts of several of it’s statesmen
as well as the poor intellectual foundation of some of Austria’s
theorists of national economy often have a ridiculous streak, sometimes
almost moving in their helplessness. In contrary to the widespread assumption
that economic history is dry and boring I can assure you: as far as
Austria is concerned, it can be quite entertaining!
I decided to focus on the history of money
because I consider money to be a harmful thing – It determines the
relationships of people in a detrimental way. Those who have too little
of it – nowadays the overwhelming majority of the world’s
population – are thereby restricted in meeting their wants and
needs, and forced to submit themselves to the outrageous demands of
their (ab)users. The latter, the ones who have too much of it, use it
for giving others a hard time: either they employ people to work for
them in order to get even richer, or they fire them, leaving them with
nothing to live on.
(In most parts of the world there is no "dole", and even in
European countries it is increasingly regarded as an unnecessary gift
to the unemployed …)
The state reserves for itself the monopoly of the production of this
primary good: it prints the banknotes, which are valid only by the power
and sovereignty of the state. Those who also print money without the
authority of a state are subject to legal persecution and sooner or
later end up in prison.
The thing gets really exciting when states themselves forge the currency
of other states, something that happens even today. It leads to severe
diplomatic complications …
If someone is really in a bad shape nowadays,
he or she may resort to all kinds of weird explanations: There is the
unhappy childhood that determined you and made you become such a failure.
Then there are the phases of the moon that are always getting in the
way when you really want to get things moving. You have, of course,
envious neighbours or a mean mother-in-law. Let’s not forget about
the battle of the sexes: bad men suppressing poor women, or malicious
women, giving men hell. You may have a bad Karma that you have to bear
all your current life, as a hard trial for the next one. And so on.
But the idea that something is wrong with our economical system is rather
unpopular, even more the heretic thought that what might be to blame
is the money we are running after day by day. It makes us follow a bunch
of aims that are detrimental to our well-being.
This is why I have decided to investigate this universal theme as thoroughly
as possible. In the end, one wants to know the enemy!
I’m not a follower of any popular
school of economics, nor of any less popular one. I’m not an adherent
of the ideas of Proudhon, J.M. Keynes or Silvio Gesell. The only literature
on economics I consider worth reading is Das Kapital. Still I have often
been told – both by detractors as well as by supporters –
that I am not a Marxist. If you have read my articles, you can decide
for yourself. Only, of course, if this question matters to you at all
...
My interests, research activities and personal friendships have led
me to travel to the socialist countries even before the fall of the
Iron Curtain and this has furthermore inspired me to work on the economy
of Real Socialism and its clash with the free market economy. On the
breakdown of the socialist and the victory of the capitalist system
I have written a few articles in the course of the last 15 years, but today all
possibilities of publication in the German speaking press have ceased
for me, for various reasons. Some periodicals simply ceased to exist.
Others stopped communicating with me without giving any reasons. I can
only assume that either I was too left wing, or too much of an economist,
or too negative, or not enough feminist.
In other, non-German language organs I was slightly more successful,
but as it is more trouble to write an article in a foreign language
I haven’t been too active recently. But if you keep looking at
my website it might be that I will publish something again.
Some of my publications were on Nietzsche, on whom I wrote my thesis.
And then I have a lot to tell about the countries I’ve been to,
so have a look at those pages. This, at least, is in English, while
most of my previously printed (or unpublished) articles are not.
If you have questions, suggestions or criticisms, write to me:
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