Category: Economists

Economist Joseph Herbert Furth (1899-1995) was born in Vienna. He was a student friend of Friedrich Hayek and later became the brother-in-law of Gottfried Haberler. In 1943 he was hired by the Federal Reserve Board in Washington D.C. and retired in 1966. Throughout his life he corresponded extensively with his fellow ex-pat Austrians. His papers are found at the University of Albany’s German and Jewish Intellectual Émigre Collections and the Hoover Institution archives. I found a printed copy of the complete NBC Meet the Press interview with Friedrich Hayek from June 22, 1975 in Furth’s Hoover Institution archived papers. 

When I checked to see if there was an on-line copy of this interview available, I discovered that the first portion of the interview that took place before station identification and commercial break was not included in either the audio or printed copies that I was able to find.

Economics in the Rear-view Mirror now provides for the digital record both halves of the Hayek interview.

Fun fact: the only living witness as of this posting is Washington Post columnist, George Will, who was 34 years old when the Hayek interview was broadcast.

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The existing incomplete transcript

Only the second half of the interview (after the commercial announcements) has been posted on-line up to this time.

Transcript prepared by Karen Y. Palasek in the Free Market Minute of the John Locke Foundation. Reposted at the mises.org website.

Two versions of the corresponding audio are out there to choose from:

1. 1. • Archived version from the mises.org website
      • Copy at YouTube

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The National Broadcasting Company Presents

MEET THE PRESS
America’s Press Conference of the Air
Volume 19, Number 25
Sunday, June 22, 1975

Produced by Lawrence E. Spivak

Guest: Dr. Friedrich A. von Hayek,
Co-recipient, 1974 Nobel Prize in Economic Science

Panel:

Hobart Rowen, The Washington Post
Eileen Shanahan, The New York Times
George F. Will, The National Review
Irving R. Levine, NBC News

Moderator: Lawrence E. Spivak

Merkle Press Inc., Printers and Periodical Publishers
Subsidiary of Pubco Corporation
Box 2111, Washington, D. C. 20013
25 cents per copy

Permission is hereby granted to news media and magazines to reproduce in whole or in part. Credit to NBC’s MEET THE PRESS will be appreciated.

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SPIVAK: Our guest today on MEET THE PRESS is the winner of the 1974 Nobel Prize for Economics, Dr. Friedrich von Hayek.
Dr. von Hayek was a Professor at the London School of Economics for 20 years and at the University of Chicago for 13 years. Most recently he has been a visiting professor at the University of Salzburg. He is the author of the international best. seller, “The Road to Serfdom.”
Dr. von Hayek is a native of Austria and a citizen of Great Britain. He is completing a three months’ visit in this country.
We will have the first questions now from Irving R. Levine of NBC News.

LEVINE: Dr. von Hayek, through your long career you have consistently warned about the dangers of government policies that contribute to inflation. Last year this country had an increase in the cost of living of over 12 per cent. This year, because of the recession, so far the cost of living has gone up about half that rate, about 6 per cent. Do you think that the danger of inflation has passed in this country?

VON HAYEK: Oh, very far from it. People will be aware that as a result of stopping inflation there is unemployment, and they still believe that they can cure inflation by unemployment, which is wrong, because in the long run it only creates more unemployment.

LEVINE: How do you cure inflation?

VON HAYEK: You stop printing money.

LEVINE: Dr. von Hayek, you have pointed out that continued inflation over a period of time would lead to anarchy and to a form of dictatorship.
Is that a theoretical danger or do you see that as some kind of a real danger in this country?

VON HAYEK: Its connection is not so simple. I have been stressing that central planning has these effects, and inflation is likely to produce central planning, but inflation by itself is not likely to have any such direct consequences, because while inflation proceeds people are much too busy just coping with the changes.

LEVINE: You have cited a stop to the printing of money as the way to end inflation. That seems simple, as stated. How could the government actually accomplish that?

VON HAYEK: Well, you give orders to the printing press. Exaggerating. We can give orders to the Federal Reserve System. The only trouble is that stopping inflation has immediately some very unpleasant effects, and the question is always whether the government is willing to incur these effects, such as the unemployment, and perhaps, the necessity of reducing some expenditures.

(Announcements)

WILL: Dr. von Hayek, in the 30 years since World War II, some nations’ economies have done very much better than others. West Germany’s, for example, has done much better than Great Britain’s. Are there any generalizations you can draw from these? What is the secret to success and the secret to problems?

VON HAYEK: It is a very complicated issue, but there is one simple point. The German trade unions were extraordinarily sensible, and they were sensible because they remembered what inflation meant. I think it has certain implications. This sense may not last long, because the generation which remembers it is now going off, and I am rather apprehensive about the future.

WILL: Dr. von Hayek, we have a basically conservative administration in the United States today, but even it is facing planned deficits more or less planned deficits exceeding perhaps $100 billion in the next two years. Do you think this will cause a renewed and perhaps socially destructive inflation?

VON HAYEK: It is not unlikely, I am afraid. As long as the governing people are persuaded that inflation of this sort is even beneficial in its effect, the tendency in that direction will be very great. I think it all depends on persuading the responsible people of the danger of inflation.

ROWEN: Dr. von Hayek, you talked in response to Mr. Levine of a painful adjustment, of the unpleasant effects that we would have to endure in order to beat inflation. With all due respect, sir, aren’t your theories somewhat unrealistic in a political sense? Do you visualize governments today being able to take such steps as you recommend?

VON HAYEK: Perhaps, I’m unrealistic. As long as people do not fully realize the danger of inflation, they may well pressure for more inflation as a short term remedy for evils, so we may well be driven into more until people have learned the lesson. What it means is that inflation will still do a great deal of harm before it will be cured.

ROWEN: To be specific, what rate of unemployment do you think this country ought to be willing to tolerate in order to beat inflation? 12 percent, 15 percent?

VON HAYEK: It is not a question of what the country is willing to tolerate. The longer you have inflation, the greater unemployment becomes inevitable. You will have to choose. It is not a matter that government can avoid the unemployment that is caused by the previous misdirection of labor which the inflation has produced

ROWEN: But when you speak of unpleasant effects, just what are you talking about that the country would have to endure? It must be some level of unemployment that you are thinking of that would result if we do cure inflation.

VON HAYEK: In a period of inflation, a lasting inflation, when, if you want to achieve a tolerably stable position, you will have to go through a period of unemployment which may well last more than a year,

ROWEN: And how high could that get?

VON HAYEK: I couldn’t say. I would have to know much more about the specific conditions, but it would not exclude a temporary rise to 13, 14 percent, or something of the sort.

ROWEN: Do you think the social fabric of this country could tolerate a 14 percent rate of unemployment?

VON HAYEK: For a few months, certainly.

SHANAHAN: Professor von Hayek, your fellow Nobel laureate, Professor Leontiev [sic], is an advocate of planning, and two of our prominent Senators, Humphrey and Javits, have introduced legislation to implement his idea, which is largely a matter of study by various government agencies and recommendations, nothing compulsory.
Do you see in that kind of planning the same dangers that you see in a more mandatory form?

VON HAYEK: If it is really nothing compulsory, it will also be completely ineffective and therefore will do no harm. I think there is a very simple answer. He really imagines that somehow people are being made to do what he is planning.

SHANAHAN: The thought I believe that they have expressed is that such things as foreseeing shortages of industrial productive capacity could be highlighted and the industries encouraged to go ahead with the building of new plants, that sort of thing. Do you encompass that in your thought that it would be completely ineffective?

VON HAYEK: Why call it planning? If you can, give industry better information, by all means do.

SHANAHAN: Can we then say you support that legislation despite your fears of planning?

VON HAYEK: It has nothing to do with planning.

SPIVAK: Dr. von Hayek, did I understand you to say in answer to Mr. Levine’s question that the way to stop inflation is to stop the printing presses? Are you suggesting that that is what we are doing here, that we are just printing money and that is the way this inflation has started and that is the way this is continuing and that is the way it will continue.

VON HAYEK: In a sense, stopping the printing presses is a figurative expression, because it is being done now by creating credit by the Federal Reserve System. By this government action all inflation is ultimately a part of activities which government determines and can control, and all inflations have been stopped in the past by the government stopping creating money or preventing central banks from creating more money.
May I add just one thing. You see, all inflations have been stopped by people who believed in a very naive form of the quantitative [sic] theory and acted on that. It may be wrong, but it is the only adequate theory effectively to stop an inflation.

SPIVAK: You have been a student, I am sure, of the United States, because you taught here for many years. What do you think has started our inflation? We have had inflation for a number of years, and I don’t think that we were printing money at that time or that the Federal Reserve was necessarily dumping a great deal of money. What do you think was responsible for the beginning of our inflation?

VON HAYEK: The belief in the deliberate increase of aggregate demands as a means of creating employment. In effect, what is popularly called belief in Keynesian policies to create employment.

LEVINE: Dr. von Hayek, the general belief among administration economists is that we are near or at the bottom of the recession that we have been going through. Do I understand you to be saying we should be willing to experience a continuation of this period of low economic activity for another year or so rather than to take the kind of efforts that the government has taken of a tax cut in order to stimulate the economy?

VON HAYEK: The matter of the tax cut again aims at increasing aggregate amounts, and the present difficulty is not due to a deficiency of aggregate demand. It is due to the fact that without continued inflation you cannot maintain the people in the new employment in which they have been drawn by the inflation of the past.

LEVINE: I would like to pursue the first part of my question. Do you see a necessity, in order to avoid a resurgence of inflation, that the government undertake policies which will continue us at the present low level of economic activity for a period of a year or more?

VON HAYEK: Not necessarily at the low level, but we should not produce more than a very slow recovery. I would like to add this: The slower the recovery is, the better are the chances that it will last.

LEVINE: In a speech before a congressional group not long ago, you said that the threat to the free enterprise system of our society has never been more imminent than it is now. What did you mean by that?

VON HAYEK: Because I am afraid that government will continue to inflate to combat unemployment and try to meet the effects by imposing price controls, and if we use price controls for that purpose, we are driven into a centrally planned system.

WILL: Thirty years ago, Dr. von Hayek, you stressed and have subsequently stressed that political and economic liberties must either flourish together or perish together. Do you see signs, specifically in the United States today, or in Great Britain, with which you are familiar, that political liberty is endangered?

VON HAYEK: In Great Britain certainly. When it is quite clear that by the established democratic process you cannot conduct that kind of economic policy the present governing party wants to conduct, the danger of a reduction of political liberty in Great Britain is considerable.
In this country this is not so imminent, very largely for the reason that the efforts have not been directed so much towards a nationalization and direct government controls of industry, but the attempts have been made by a redistribution of incomes by taxation, and that is a much slower process. I think it tends in the same direction, but much more slowly than the other one.

ROWEN: Dr. von Hayek, how do you rate the impact of market power wielded by either unions or corporations as a factor in inflation? You seem to be putting all of the stress on the quantity of money and the printing press. Isn’t part of our inflation and part of the inflation in some other parts of the world due to the excessive market power of labor unions and corporations?

VON HAYEK: Never directly, when it may well be and frequently happens that because of the power of the unions, perhaps of the corporations, government feels compelled to inflate. It becomes the inducement for government action, but the immediate cause is always increase of the quantity of money by government, whatever the inducement to do so.

ROWEN: Returning to the crisis in Great Britain, the Chancellor of the Exchequer told me on Wednesday that the Cabinet will consider a return to a formal wage-price-incomes policy. What effect, if any, do you think that would have on the very high level of British inflation in wages and prices?

VON HAYEK: I don’t think it will help at all. You see, it might be necessary as a temporary measure, at the moment when you are in a position to stop the increase of the quantity of money. I do not see any prospect at all in the near future of the British government effectively stopping an increase in the quantity of money. In that situation you just disguise the effects of inflation for a time.

ROWEN: What would be your prescription for the ills that afflict Great Britain?

VON HAYEK: It is a problem of first persuading the public that in the present situation the pressure of the trade unions does not deserve public support. That you must achieve before you can do anything by legislation, reducing the powers of the trade unions. It must be a long process. I don’t see any immediate cure.

SHANAHAN: Professor von Hayek, you have always stressed government actions that inflate and government planning and controls as a great danger to our political freedom.
Many Americans see another scenario for loss of freedom in this country, which is economic policies that now have unemployment in the center cities among black youths over 40 per cent and that their anger and frustration can lead to violence which in turn will lead to repressive governmental action.
What do you say to that scenario? Can we just sit idly by and let that happen?

VON HAYEK: No, but it is with respect to the same cause. The unemployment of which you speak, which is the initial cause, is due to labor being temporarily directed into places or activities or industries where they cannot be maintained without further inflation. Therefore you can only cure that by achieving a new redistribution of labor between employments, adaptation to a condition in which aggregate demands need not progressively increase to maintain their employment.

SHANAHAN: You have said in everything you have written and said lately that this is a lengthy process, that we won’t get back to stable money quickly. Meanwhile, what do you do with these urgent problems and human hardships?

VON HAYEK: We must not assume that all problems are solvable in this short period. There are problems which we cannot solve or which trying to solve quickly may do more harm than good.

SHANAHAN: But in the meantime, what do you do with the human hardship and the mounting rage that is certainly building up?

VON HAYEK: I don’t think there is anything I can do about it. We will have to tide over the storm which may be threatening.

SPIVAK: Dr. von Hayek, may we get a bit specific on one particular thing, and that is Great Britain? You are a citizen of Great Britain. You have taught there and I think you know something about the economy there. As I understand it, their inflation rate may hit as high as 50 per cent. What is the consequence of something of that kind? What do you see is going to happen in the country of which you are a citizen?

VON HAYEK: You’ve got a very severe economic crisis with very extensive unemployment the moment inflation stops. We will probably have repetitive attempts to restart the process by returning to inflation. We will probably combat the wrong thing, the effect of inflation on prices by price controls. That will lead to centrally-directed economy, which will weaken the international economic position of Britain even worse, and that will probably result in the position that somebody may decide that the direction of economic policy has to be completely changed.
I almost hope that the severe crisis will come soon, won’t be a long, dragged out process of misery, but I don’t see any immediate chance with the present political situation in England of such a complete change in the economic policy as would be required.

SPIVAK: Are you saying that England is either going to go bankrupt or England is going to become a dictatorship? What specifically do you mean is going to happen in Great Britain?

VON HAYEK: The English people are beginning to experience, which they hardly have yet, that they have become very much poorer and are rapidly getting poorer still and that will lead to the resolution or the recognition that the policy of the past was wrong.
The amazing fact is that a great majority of the British people are not yet consciously aware that they are living in a very severe economic crisis, and for that reason they are not willing to consider themselves a complete change in policy.

SPIVAK: But what do you think is going to happen since you believe that? What is going to happen there? Are they going bust, or are they going into a dictatorship?

VON HAYEK: No country can go bust. All that can happen is that the economic conditions of daily life get much worse through scarcities. People will find their income is no longer sufficient to maintain their standard of life. They will come to distrust both the present government and the present policies and may then be willing to return to an altogether different system. But I am not a prophet. I can’t say how soon.

SPIVAK: And do you think if we follow along our present footsteps the same thing is going to happen to us?

VON HAYEK: Yes, but in 10 or 20 years’ time. It is not a problem for the immediate future.

LEVINE: Dr. von Hayek, to try to translate some of the things that you have been saying into the terms of the pocket-book of the average American, what advice would you give an American with savings of 20, 30, maybe 100,000 dollars? What should he do with that money to protect it against the problems of inflation that you have been discussing?

VON HAYEK: I still believe there is nothing better than putting it into equities, although that even doesn’t promise him today that it will actually preserve it, but it gives him a good chance of preserving a substantial portion of it.

LEVINE: Dr. von Hayek, these theories which you have gained such recognition for over a period of years have warned consistently, as has been pointed out, of the dangers and threats of inflation, and yet this country has undergone inflation for a great many years and the standard of living has consistently increased.
Does this lead you to question in any way your thesis?

VON HAYEK: Not in the least, because the dangers of inflation are very different ones. They are exactly the kind of unemployment which is now arising. I mean in the usual discussion there is quite a wrong emphasis. There are many bad effects of inflation, but the worst is that it draws labor into employments where they can be kept employed only by accelerating inflation, and the point inevitably arises when inflation cannot be accelerated sufficiently fast to keep them in that inflation. Inflation is like overeating and indigestion. Overeating is very pleasant. So is inflation. Indigestion comes only afterwards, and therefore people do not see the connection.

SPIVAK: We have less than two minutes.

WILL: Dr. von Hayek, capitalism, and particularly American capitalism would seem to have a good record at giving people a rising standard of living.
Why are so many intellectuals and particularly so many economists skeptical about and even hostile to capitalism?

VON HAYEK: I have been puzzling about it for a long time, particularly about the economists who also understand better, and it is very difficult to know why they don’t. I think it is an attraction of a system an intellectual attraction of a system which you can deliberately control, which is fascinating to the intellectual.

ROWEN: Dr. von Hayek, coming back quickly to Great Britain, isn’t it possible if we pursued your philosophy and theory that we might destroy capitalism there, rather than save it, looking at the analogy of the Italians?

VON HAYEK: No, it is not likely to become worse. The present tendency would destroy capitalism inevitably. I think the important thing is that people are given a chance to change their mind before it is irrevocably destroyed.

SPIVAK: I am sorry to interrupt, but our time is almost up, and we won’t be able to get another question and another answer.
Thank you, Dr. von Hayek, for being with us today on MEET THE PRESS.

Source: Hoover Institution Archives. Papers of J. Herbert Furth, Box 6.

Image Source: Los Angeles Daily News, E-Edition. May 10, 2024. “Friedrich Hayek tried to warn us about the ‘social justice’ left.” Photo credit: AP Photo/Charles Harrity). Note: the date of this Meet the Press photo is incorrectly given as June 23, 1975 (which was a Monday).