A Book

MONETARY REFORM--John Maynard Keynes--Harcourt Brace ($2.50).

Mr. Keynes, famed British economist, has never before emphasized so clearly the fact that he is a fiscal bolshevik.

Monetary Reform analyses the functions of money, shows how it affects the investing and business classes, the earner, production. It discusses inflation and its relation to taxation and a capital levy. It delves into the whole theory of money and the foreign exchanges. It suggests "alternative aims in monetary policy," and then advocates inflation, neatly garbed.

Mr. Keynes wants a devaluation of currency, which means stabilization of money at present values. He wants internal purchasing power fixed on a commodity-value basis related to unemployment, state of trade, etc.,* while the external purchasing power shall be controlled by gold whenever necessary.

Those readers who have followed Mr. Keynes' recent course will not be surprised at this attack on the present fiscal policies of most countries. Mr. Keynes would have the world embark upon great experiments. He apparently imagines that the clarity of his expression stimulates not the imagination but the common-sense of men. His contentions are a subversion of established fiscal policies in use for more than 100 years, a period in which, as Mr. Keynes agrees, the gold standard of currency became the unquestioned foundation of "the stability and safety of a money contract." It is inconceivable that rabid progressivism should be regarded favorably in the conservative world of money.

The author is fortunately being ignored, because every country in the world is seeking to claim parity with the dollar and to fix its internal values to the gold value of its currency, or, in other words, to deflate. Furthermore, if the signs of the times be read aright, the Federal Reserve Bank/- has already adopted a policy of discounting European notes in large amounts, which is a policy more calculated to assist the recovery of European currencies than any vet operated.

*Professor Irving Fisher advocated stability of money on commodity values in his "compensated dollar." Mr. Keynes' plan differs mainly in that it is not governed by hard and fast rules.

/- Mr. Keynes has much to say about the function of the Federal Reserve Bank. Other critics have proved his views fallacious.