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3 - MONETARY REFORM AND UNEMPLOYMENT

from PART I

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 November 2012

John Maynard Keynes
Edited by
Elizabeth Johnson  and
Donald Moggridge
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Summary

Keynes's Tract on Monetary Reform (JMK, vol. IV) was published on 11 December 1923. Keynes took advantage of its publication and a winter series of lectures at the National Liberal Club organised by the Liberal Summer School to discuss ‘Currency Policy and Social Reform’ on 13 December. He gave the same lecture in Edinburgh the next evening to the Young Scots Society.

Notes for a speech at the National Liberal Club, 13 December 1923

I have so big a subject today that I cannot hope to cover it. It falls naturally into two parts.

The importance of controlling currency and credit policy in the social interest.

The technical methods to be employed

I propose this evening to concentrate on the first of these topics.

I am not addressing an audience solely of experts.

Technical matters of some complexity are more easily apprehended in writing and [than?] by word of mouth. And I have the better excuse for adopting this course in that I have just published a book where my proposals are set forth in detail.

To begin with a few words about what should be the attitude of Liberalism towards social policy.

We are traditionally the party of laissez-faire.

But just as the economists led the party into this policy, so I hope they may lead them out again.

It is not true that individuals acting separately in their own economic interest always produce the best results.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes , pp. 158 - 237
Publisher: Royal Economic Society
Print publication year: 1978

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