Business & Economics Collection: Thorstein Veblen Edition (30+ Works in One Volume). Thorstein Veblen
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ramification of credit in the way of contracts (orders); at the same time the volume of loan credit, in set form, is also greatly increased during an era of prosperity.116
An era of prosperity is an era of rising prices. When prices cease to rise prosperity is on the wane, although it may not promptly terminate at that juncture. This follows from the fact that the putative increase of earnings on which prosperity rests is in substance an apprehended differential gain in increased selling price of the output over the expenses of production of the output. Only so long as the selling price of the output realizes such a differential gain over the expenses of production, is the putative increased rate of earnings realized; and so soon as such a differential advantage ceases, the era of prosperity enters on its closing phase.
Such a differential advantage arises mainly from two causes: (1) The lines of industry which are remote, industrially speaking, from the point of initial disturbance, - from which, that is to say, the lines of industry first and chiefly affected by the rise draw supplies of one kind or another, - these remote lines of industry are less promptly and less acutely affected by the favorable disturbance of the price level; this retardation of the disturbance affords the industries nearer the seat of disturbance a differential advantage, which grows less the farther removed the given enterprise is from the point of initial disturbance.117 (2) The chief and most secure differential advantage in the case is that due to the relatively slow advance in the cost of labor during an era of prosperity. Wages ordinarily are not advanced at all for a considerable period after such an era of prosperity has set in; and so long as the eventual advance of wages does not overtake the advance in prices (which in the common run of cases it never does in full measure), so long, of course, a differential gain in the selling price accrues, other things equal, to virtually all business enterprises engaged in the industries affected by the prosperity.
There are, further, certain (outlying) lines of industry, as, e.g., farming, which may not be drawn into the movement in any appreciable degree, and the price of supplies drawn from these outlying industries need not rise; particularly they need not advance in a degree proportionate to the advance in the prices of the goods into which they enter as an element of their expenses of production. To an uncertain but commonly appreciable extent there is also a progressive cheapening of the processes of production during such an era, and this cheapening, particularly in so far as it affects the production of the goods contracted for, as contrasted with the appliances of production, serves also to maintain the differential advantage between the contracted sale price and the expenses of production of the goods contracted for.
In the ordinary course, however, the necessary expenses of production presently overtake or nearly overtake the prospective selling price of the output. The differential advantage, on which business prosperity rests, then fails; the rate of earnings falls off. the enhanced capitalization based on enhanced putative earnings proves greater than the earnings realized or in prospect on the basis of an enhanced scale of expenses of production; the collateral consequently shrinks to a point where it will not support the credit extension resting on it in the way of outstanding contracts and loans; and liquidation ensues, after the manner frequently set forth by those who have written on these subjects.118
At some point in the system of investment and business extension will be found some branches of industry which have gradually lost what differential advantage they started out with when they entered on the era of prosperity; and if these are involved in large contracts and undertakings which are carried over into the phase of the movement at which this particular branch of industry has ceased to have a differential advantage in the price of its output over the cost of its supplies of material or labor, then what may have been a conservative capitalization of their holdings at an early phase, while their earning-capacity rested on a large differential advantage, will become an excessive capitalization after their earning-capacity has declined through loss of their differential advantage. Some branch or branches and some firms or class of firms necessarily fall into this position in the course of a period of phenomenally brisk times. A business concern so placed necessarily becomes a debtor, and its liabilities necessarily become, in some degree, bad debts. It is forced by circumstances to deliver its output at prices which preclude its obtaining such a margin as its extension of business presupposed. That is to say, its capitalization becomes excessive through shrinkage of its earning-capacity (as counted in terms of price). A concern of this class which is a debtor is precluded from meeting its obligations out of its current earnings; and if, as commonly happens in an appreciable proportion of cases, its obligations have already been augmented to the extent which its recent earning-capacity would warrant, then the concern is insolvent for the time being. If the claims against it are pressed, it has no recourse hut liquidation through forced sales or bankruptcy. Either expedient, if the case is one of considerable magnitude, is disastrous to the balanced sequence of credit relations in which the business community is involved. The system of credit relations prevailing at such a time has grown up on the basis of an earning-capacity transiently enhanced by a wave of differential price advantage; and when this wave has passed, even if it leaves prices higher all around, the differential advantage of at least most concerns is past. The differential price advantage has come to the several branches or firms in succession, and has, in the typical case, successively left each with an excessive capitalization, and has left many with a body of liabilities out of proportion to their subsequent earning-capacity. This situation may, evidently, come about in this manner, even without lowering the aggregate (pecuniary) earning-capacity of the business community to the level at which it stood before the wave of prosperity set in.119
But when such a situation has come, all that is required to bring on the general catastrophe is that some considerable creditor find out that the present earning-capacity of his debtor will probably not warrant the capitalization on which his collateral is appraised, In self-defence he must decline the extension of a loan, and forced liquidation must follow. Such a liquidation involves cutting under the ruling prices of products, which lessens the profits of competing firms and throws them into the class of insolvents, and so extends the readjustment of capitalization.
The point of departure for the ensuing sequence of liquidation is not infrequently the failure of some banking house, but when this is the case it is pretty sure to be a bank whose funds have been "tied up" in "unwise" loans to industrial enterprises of the class spoken of above.120
The abruptness of the recapitalization and of the redistribution of ownership involved in a period of liquidation may be greatly mitigated, and the incidence of the shrinkage of values may be more equably distributed, by a judicious leniency on the part of the creditors or by a well-advised and discreetly weighted extension of credit by the government to certain sections of the business community. Such measures of alleviation were had, with happy effect, in the case of a recent stringency which is sometimes spoken of as an averted crisis. But where the situation answers the specifications recited above, in respect of a large and widely prevalent discrepancy between earning-capacity and capitalization, a drastic readjustment of values is apparently unavoidable.
The point has already been adverted to once or twice that the most substantial immediate outcome of such a liquidation as is involved in a crisis is a redistribution of the ownership of the property concerned in the liquidation, whereby creditors and similar claimants gain at the expense of the solvent debtors. Such being the case, it would logically follow that the large creditors should see and follow up their advantage by concertedly pushing the body of debtors to an abrupt liquidation, and so realizing as large a gain as possible with the least practicable delay, whenever the situation offers.
Such may be the logic of the circumstances, but such is not the course practically taken by the large creditors under the circumstances. For this there is more than one reason. It is not, apparently, that human kindness overrules the creditors' impulse to gain at the expense of the debtors. The ever recurring object-lessons afforded by operations in the stock and money market enforce the belief that when one business man gets the advantage of another he will commonly use the advantage without humanitarian reserve, if only the advantage is offered hIm in terms which he can comprehend. But short-sightedness and lack of insight beyond the conventional routine seem to be fairly universal traits of the class of men who engage in the larger business activities. So that, while it would be to the unequivocal advantage of the large creditor, in point