12.1 As an empirical instrument and one that can only remain so, money is served.

1. Currencies are instruments.

Currencies⁹⁴, both in their metallic (coins, ingots) and fiduciary (notes) and scriptural (bank accounts) forms, are instruments:

• for economic exchanges and transfers: on the one hand, exchanges of commodities for commodities by intermediary money⁹⁵, on the other hand, transfers of purchasing power (donations, taxes, legacies, thefts) as an alternative or complementary to the transfers of other objects that have a economic exchange value;
• for measuring economic exchange values, an expression strictly synonymous with economic exchange values, and therefore as such an instrument of measurement of prices in the economic sense of this word – prices, including those of individual supplies of labor services Travail_Ouvrage and investments in exchange for their remuneration;⁹⁶
• for storing purchasing power, this reserve function being all the more poorly fulfilled because, over time, the monetary unit quickly loses its exchange value through nominal price increases that are referred to as inflation (from the Latin, by English, inflatio : inflation), but which nevertheless constitute a monetary depreciation, generalized or niche (real estate and other investments).

2. There is no orthodoxy in monetary matters.

This statement is from Jacques Rueff⁹⁷:

"Contrary to what laymen believe, there is no orthodoxy in monetary matters. A large number of systems can be conceived, which are distinguished by their own virtues. It is only in relation to the ends that are assigned to society that one of them can appear preferable to the others. ".⁹⁸

Three paragraphs later, Rueff explains:

"The extreme types of monetary systems are: the 'realist', where each unit of money has as its counterpart in the balance sheet of the issuing institution an asset that can be sold on the market for an equal value, and the 'nominalist', where money is only a sign empty of substance. It is between these two models that all the systems that have been, are or will be in force are scaled. »

Paul Fabra, in The Best System for Getting Rid of Gold, notes that "a monetary system being by destination empirical in nature, it can never be entirely rational¹⁰⁰" and concludes one of his analyses with: "In a rational monetary system, the sign is as abstract as possible but the value it represents is as real as possible.¹⁰⁰ ".

3. A currency inspires all the more confidence when anchored to strong economic policy points.

It is also in this sense¹⁰¹that, as Jacques Rueff has said many times, money is served. To the extent that a country is able to maintain or re-establish economic policy strengths as quickly as possible as if by an innate mentality, protection against inflation, deflation and imported recessions of financial origin is raised to its highest level in that country. The history of people, even in its most difficult to recognize underground courses, means that some countries are more apt than others to economic practices that bring to the highest level the protection just mentioned and that protectionism in the sense attributed to this word in economics does not provide.

4. The highest level of monetary protection depends only in part on the governance of the market economy.

What is the burden of military spending for the country in question and its allies, both in terms of investments and expenses? And what is the weight of prestige spending? These and other burdens, including those of so-called social transfers, can be so high that they have become an abundant source of currency depreciation – as far as military spending is concerned, the greatest wars have administered the most resounding examples¹⁰². The prevention of these risks depends only, subsidiarily or very subsidiarily, on international agreements on good practices in the governance of the common good of the whole of humanity, which is the market economy.

5. The calibration of economic exchange values by economic policy strengths cannot be excluded.

The highest protection against inflation, deflation, and imported financial recessions is also contingent on exchange rate manipulation, which disrupts transcontinental and intercontinental trade flows. But succeeding in overcoming this obstacle is possible where, from one monetary zone to another, economic exchange values become calibrated by policies all endowed with the seven strong points that the proposals to be followed review. In the case of a monetary area common to several nations, such as those that are part of the euro area, it is all these nations whose economic policies must have these strengths.

6. Achieving such a convergence can only be very laborious.

Will giving each of the currencies most used in international trade a fixed price for the same product of human labor prove to be less laborious?¹⁰³. In terms of economic exchanges and transfers, the duration of the emergence of a change of guiding ideas is likely to be counted in generations, for many because of the affects that reason struggles enormously to reduce in everything related to money.