In one sense, the sub-title of this volume may appear to be misleading: the contents of the book have in fact been written between the middle thirties and the middle sixties, so that they cover a little less than thirty years. In spite of this seeming contradiction, the sub-title, for reasons set down below, seems to me to be fully justified.

A.Introductory Remarks

The problem of maintaining the equilibrium of balances of international payments, and of restoring it once it has been disturbed, is one of the most discussed questions in the field of international economics.

Preface

The pages that follow represent an attempt to define the principal issues in contemporary monetary policy in their relation to the problem of world peace. The various types of policy aim at a variety of patterns in the organization of international monetary relations.

Introduction

1.

IGeneral Statement of Findings

The present inquiry examines the connexions between the war financing of certain European countries in World War I and the spectacular inflations that followed in the wake of that war.

Inflation and overproduction are words whose meanings are too unsettled in current usage to be at all clear. Inflation itself is a particularly uncertain term, for it is a word that can be made to mean almost anything.

I Inflation: A National or an International Problem?

The term ‘inflation’ will be used throughout this chapter to denote a sustained and progressive decline of the buying power of the monetary unit, a decline either generated or made possible by the credit policies of the banking system, or by fiscal polici