Book Description

Excerpt from The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1920, Vol. 34 The forces were not only complex; they were also enormous in volume. The ordinary mechanism of ad justment proved quite inadequate for regulating this cataclysmic overturn. It was simply impossible to find anywhere in the world means of remittance, of the usual kind, suficient in amount to provide payment for the exports demanded from the United States. The ortho dox analysis of the case is that an excess of exports will be paid for by inflow of specie, continuing until changes in prices lead to the refistablishment of equilibrium. But nothing of this kind was possible. If the gold flow into the United States had been allowed to continue until it thus came automatically to an end, all the avail able gold in allied countries would have been carried te the United States, and yet without bringing its own remedy. Here, as in so many other cases, time is of crucial importance. If the process had been spread over a decade or two, the results contemplated by theory would presumably have come about. Given time enough, prices and merchandise imports and exports would have shifted in the predicted way. But so enor mous a movement, concentrated in so short a period. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.