Glasner says
So although the interest rate is in some sense the price of credit, it is, indeed, also the price that one has to pay (or of which to bear the opportunity cost) in order to derive the liquidity services provided by that unit of currency."In order to derive the liquidity services" of money, he says. It's not right. When I receive a dollar, it comes with the liquidity services attached. That's what makes it money: you can spend it. You don't pay extra for liquidity services. They come with the money.
That's why you can "part with liquidity for a specified period." Because when you have the money, you also have the liquidity, and if you lend out the money the liquidity goes with it.
When Glasner says the interest rate is the price you have to pay "in order to derive the liquidity services" of your money, he is talking fluent gibberish.
The rate of interest, Glasner says, "is the cost of holding money". But it's not. The rate of interest is the opportunity cost of not lending money. And it should be the other way around, and it needs two extra words: The opportunity cost of not lending money is equal to the rate of interest. That's as close as I can get to what Glasner said, and still believe I have it right.
"Lending" money is an action. "Holding" money is not an action, not a transaction. "Holding" money is what happens between transactions. If we all "hold" all our money, there can be no transactions, no economy, no GDP, and no income.
It's lending that's the action in this case. It's lending or not lending that's the choice. Clearness of mind on this matter is best reached, perhaps, by thinking in terms of decisions to lend (or to refrain from lending) rather than of decisions to hold money.
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