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Relief in Seven Years of Stable Money 183 
The “Money Illusion” 
In my book The Money Illusion 1 have fully 
described why it is that we simply take it for granted 
that “a dollar is a dollar’ —that “a franc is a franc,” 
and that all money is stable, just as centuries ago, be- 
fore Copernicus, people took it for granted that this 
earth was stationary, that there was really such a fact 
as a sunrise or a sunset, although we know that sun- 
rise and sunset are illusions produced by the earth 
rotating around its axis. The reason for the “money 
illusion” within one’s own country. is described in the 
first chapter of this book, as follows: 
“Almost everyone is subject to the ‘Money Illu- 
sion’ in respect to his own country’s currency. This 
seems to him to be stationary while the money of 
other countries seems to change. It may seem 
strange, but it is true, that we see the rise or fall 
of foreign money better than we see that of our 
own. 
“For instance, after the war, we in America knew 
that the German mark had fallen, but very few Ger- 
mans knew it. This was certainly true up to 1922, 
when, with another economist (Professor Frederick 
W. Roman), I studied price changes in Europe. On 
my way to Germany I stopped in London and con- 
sulted with Lord D’Abernon, then British Ambassa- 
dor to Germany. He said: ‘Professor Fisher, you 
will find that very few Germans think of the mark 
as having fallen. I said: ‘That seems incredible. 
Every schoolboy in the United States knows it." But