The Neo-Mercantilist Movement Brushed Aside the Theory of the Wage Fund and Say's Law; Hence, the Foundations of the Theory of Finance Have Remained in an Unsatisfactory State for Decades

The youthful and boastful neo-mercantilist movement of the 1930s and the early postwar period did not bother to refute the classical conceptions in any detail. The theory of the wage fund was brushed aside, rather than carefully analyzed and criticized, just as Keynes had brushed aside Say’s Law without even making the attempt to dissect it. As a consequence, the foundations of the theory of finance have remained in an unsatisfactory state for many decades. A newer vision of finance had supplanted the older one. But was the latter without merit? The new theory appeared to be new. But was it true?

The present book is one of the very first modern discussions that attempts to come to grips with these basic questions. Steeped in the tradition of the Austrian school, Dr. Eduard Braun delivers a sweeping and original essay on the foundations of finance. Relying on sources in three languages, and delving deeply into the history of capital theory — most notably the neglected German-language literature of the 1920s and 1930s — his work sheds new light on a great variety of topics, in particular, on the history of the subsistence fund theory, on the relation between monetary theory and capital theory, on economics and business accounting, on price theory and interest theory, on financial markets, on business cycle theory, and on economic history.

--Jörg Guido Hülsmann, foreword to Finance Behind the Veil of Money: The Economics of Capital, Interest, and the Financial Market, by Eduard Braun (West Palm Beach: Liberty.me, 2014), e-book.