Wilhelm Lautenbach

Wilhelm Lautenbach (born 12 January 1891 in Oelde, † May 24, 1948 in Davos ) was Speaker of Finance in the Ministry of Economics in the 1930s, where he primarily with monetary issues, the German banking crisis, the impact of the reparations and the prevailing mass unemployment employed.

Lautenbach at that time was Germany's leading economic theorists and is still regarded as the most important of the precursors of Keynesianism.

According to him, the Lautenbach Plan is named, the Lautenbach 16-17. September 1931 on the secret conference of the Friedrich List Society explained to the participants in detail and a double strategy is based on: wage cuts in order to expand employment ( at steady macroeconomic wage costs) and economic measures that could motivate companies to invest ( at the latest outbreak of the German banking crisis were net investments and Ersatzinvesitionen by the companies mostly refrain ). Lautenbach was totally clear: "Only if new credit is created in addition to or unused funds will be set in motion, such an action of the economy as a whole could provide an invigorating lift. "

However, since the German monetary policy was subjected to restrictions due to the internationally -bound central bank law and because of the reparations after the First World War, was not assumed that the Lautenbach Plan would agreed internationally and was therefore initially not implemented.

1944 reflected Lautenbach: "As simple in theory, and in a closed system and practical, the task is to achieve full employment, so problematic it is, if it is not a closed economy, but one that inevitably with other economies must take care of transportation and exchange of goods. The smaller a country is, the less it stand its own raw materials available and the less diverse is its processing, the greater its dependence on other countries and their prosperity, the less you can back it up by its own investment policy employment transition and thrive in their own country. "

When in 1944 in Bretton Woods IMF and World Bank were established, Lautenbach criticized the backgrounds of the International Monetary Fund vehemently: " That one 's made of Keynes plan to move back to the IMF, seems to show that the United States are not willing to exploit their financial power of disposition to do without. "

As Keynesians or vorkeynesianischer Keynesians Lautenbach is usually called, with Borchardt does not consider these designations for appropriate since Lautenbach employed with solutions far more complex issues.

The German economist Wolfgang Stützel, who developed the balances mechanics, Wilhelm Lautenbach recognizes regarding "his" credit mechanics, call them " Lautenbachsche credit Mechanics".

Works (selection)

• Possibilities of economic recovery by investing and credit expansion ( " Lautenbach Plan" ). September 9, 1931 (PDF).
• About credit and production. Frankfurt 1937.
• Volume of credit and bank liquidity. In: Bank Archives in 1939.
• Interest rate, credit and production. (Ed. Wolfgang Stützel ) Tübingen 1952. (PDF)