THE WORK OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE 
tures. Constant attempts have been made to attain this ideal 
through budget systems and the like, and on certain rare occa- 
sions an approximate equilibrium between income and expense 
has temporarily been achieved. But, at least in the hazardous 
world of today, only a relative success in exactly balancing the 
government's books without a remaining surplus or debt seems 
practically possible; for both the expenses and the revenues of 
modern government are necessarily variables. Wars in par- 
ticular may quite unexpectedly make necessary vast increases 
in governmental expenditure, while the actual sums to be real- 
ized through the various kinds of taxation in turn depend 
upon the veering course of economic development, business 
prosperity, and other uncertain factors. In the absence, then, 
of an ability consistently to pay the current expenses of gov- 
ernment out of its current taxation revenue, methods have 
naturally had to be devised for financing the sudden financial 
needs of government in excess of the amount of its current 
income. 
Financing with the Printing Press.—QOne age-old fallacy 
looking to this end—the printing of large quantities of irre- 
Jeemable paper money—deserves passing comment here. To 
those innocently or wilfully ignorant of the intricate and deli- 
cate mechanism of modern currency, such an inflation of the 
money system may seem a simple and obvious panacea. Their 
line of reasoning runs.somewhat as follows: “The govern- 
ment needs money—money is produced by the printing press— 
therefore we should print what we need.” While this is not 
the place to inquire into the complexities of modern currency 
sufficiently to explode this superficial but tremendously dan- 
gerous economic fallacy, it is enough to state that every gov- 
ernment which has followed this primrose path of financing 
has in the end discovered it to be not only a highly dangerous 
but a completely futile expedient. Never in history was the 
disruptive effect of fiat money on the whole economic structure 
of civilization illustrated on so extensive a scale, with such