Forbes Attacks David Gordon

This is going to be fun.

John Tamny is out with an article in Forbes attacking David Gordon. The article is actually titled, David Gordon Takes Aim At Steve Forbes, But Hits Ludwig von Mises.

Gordon has a special knife he uses for such attacks, it's his razor sharp mind. Tamny is about to find out what a real shock and awe attack is like,

Gordon will have little problem in fending off this attempted mugging. Tamny seems to either have a reading comprehension problem or likes to run things through a minor league distortion machine.

Here Tamny's charge:

Last week Mises Institute senior fellow David  Gordon reviewed Money, the book released last summer by Steve Forbes and Elizabeth Ames. Gordon described it as “odd” in the sense that he disagreed with how the authors have chosen to define money. What struck this writer as odd is that in lightly attacking Forbes and Ames, Gordon only succeeded insofar as he perhaps unintentionally revealed a strong disagreement about money with the intellectual father of the Institute which employs him, Ludwig von Mises.

Gordon has a problem with the Forbes and Ames assertion that money is merely a measure meant to facilitate exchange. Notable here is that the authors are simply stating what’s obvious, something that surely predates even Adam Smith (“the sole use of money is to circulate consumable goods”), that money isn’t wealth. It’s what we use to exchange actual wealth.

So what is this so-called evidence that Mises disagreed with Gordon's point on money as a measure of value.. Tamny says:

 As Mises wrote in Human Action, “One must disregard the intermediary role played by money in order to realize that what is ultimately exchanged is always economic goods of the first order against other such goods. Money is nothing but a medium of personal exchange (my emphasis).” In short, Mises saw money just as Forbes and Ames do, as a measure that fosters the exchange of actual economic goods.

Say what? Again, Tamny either has a reading comprehension problem or is running his stuff through a minor league distortion machine. Money being a medium of personal exchange is not the same as it being a measure to facilitate exchange.

Tamny needs to do a little more reading of Mises. Here's what Mises really thinks about money as a measure. From The Theory of Money and Credit:

Although it is usual to speak of money as a measure of value and prices, the notion is entirely fallacious.