Currency

"...froman increasing number of economists who are advocating a sound and stable monetary system. The governments made a bad decision back in 1936 when two systems were offered to them. One was by John Maynard Keynes, the other by Irving Fisher. Keynes wrote a book called The General Therory Of Employment, Interest and Money in which he advocated that the government should borrow hugh sums of money and then spend this money on a public works program. He called it priming of the economic pump to get the economy rolling again.

Irving Fisher, an economics professor at Yale University, also wrote a book about the same time called 100% Money. In this book he advocated that the government should issue our money rather than let the banks create the money and have the government borrow it and pay the interest on it as Keynes proposed. This is so important, let me repeat it. Fisher advocated that the government should issue the money, thereby creating neither debt nor the burdensome interest which must be paid through taxation. Had we followed Fisher rather than Keynes, Canadians would be in clover today.

Irving Fisher was not the only one at the time advocating that the government issue our money supply. Government issuance of the the money supply was also advocated by the Chicago Group of economists. This group was comprised of Professors Harvey Simons, Lloyd Mints, A.G. Hart, Frank Knight, Garfield Cox, Henry Schultz, and Paul H. Douglas. There are so many economists, businessmen, and even former bankers in the U.S.A. now supporting this view that space does not permit the publishing of all their names.

There is one more outstanding economist who has backed monetary reform. It is our Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman. He wrote a book in 1960 called, A Program For Monetary Stability. On page 65 he stated that he was in favor of what Henry Simons and Lloyd Mints were advocating, that is, 100% reserve. In other words, he advocated that governments, rather than private banks, issue the money supply.

We also have some outstanding Canadians advocating the same, John Hotson, Professor of Economics, University of Waterloo, Professor Gordon Burnham of the University of Ottawa, (Economic Thinking in a Canadian Context, page 589), and Professor Warren Blackman of Calgary University."
- excerpted from "Billions for the Bankers, Debt for the People"