The Theory & Its Origins

Bullionism is an economic theory that defines wealth by the amount of precious metals owned. Bullionism is an early or primitive form of mercantilism. It was derived from the 16th century, when England owed its gold and silver the excess on the balance of trade, but did not possess any gold or silver mines. Economics (deriving from the Greek words οίκω [okos], house, and νέμω [nemo], rules hence household management) is the social science that studies the allocation of scarce resources to satisfy unlimited wants. ... Theory has a number of distinct meanings in different fields of knowledge, depending on the context and their methodologies. ... The concept wealth usually refers to money and property. ... A precious metal is a rare metallic chemical element of high, durable economic value. ... Balance of trade figures, also called net exports (NX), are the sum of the money gained by a given economy by selling exports, minus the cost of buying imports. ...

Examples Of Bullionists

Thomas Milles (1550-1627) and others recommended accelerating exports in order to get an excess on the balance of trade, changing it into precious metal and hindering the drain of money and precious metal to other countries. Although England practiced the interdiction of exportation of £ or precious metals at about 1600, Milles desired to return to staple ports in order to force merchants from abroad to use their assets to buy English goods and to prevent them from transferring gold or silver from England homewards. But Milles was not viewed as one who had any valuable words to say on the subject, as one of his contemporaries wrote “…Milles was so much out of step with the time that his pamphlets had little influence...” // Events January January 1 - Scotland adopts January 1st as being New Years Day February February 17 - Giordano Bruno burned at the stake for heresy in Rome July July 2 - Battle of Nieuwpoort: Dutch forces under Maurice of Nassau defeat Spanish forces under Archduke Albert in a battle on the...

Gerard de Malynes (1586 - 1641), another bullionist, published a book, called A Treatise of the Canker of England's Common Wealth, in which he asserted that the exchange of foreign currency had been rather a trade of value than exchanging the weight of metals and therefore the deficit of English balance of trade would be a consequence of unfair exchanging precious metals by bankers and money changers. In order to ban the flow of exchange rates he demanded for strict fixing of exchange rates of coins only by the concentration of precious metals and weights and for strict regulation and monitoring of foreign trade. But de Malynes did not convince his contemporaries “…that the cambists were responsible for gold outflow or to elicit enthusiasm for a monopoly sale of exchange, par pro pari, by the royal exchanger…" But he succeeded in creating the first economic controversy: Edward Misselden opposed him 1623 in his book The Circle of Commerce: Or, the Balance of Trade. Gerard Joling (1586-1641) was a dependent merchant in foreign trade, an English commissioner in homo, a government advisor on trade matters, assay master of the mint, and commissioner of mint affairs. ... For other uses, see Bank (disambiguation). ... word coinage Coín (a town in Malaga province in Spain) 25¢ Canadian coin A coin is usually a piece of hard material, generally metal and usually in the shape of a disc, which is issued by a government to be used as a form of money. ... In economics, a monopoly (from the Greek monos, one + polein, to sell) is defined as a persistent market situation where there is only one provider of a kind of product or service. ... Events August 6 - Pope Urban VIII is elected to the Papacy. ...

See also

• Mercantilism
• Gold standard