Modern monetary systems

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1753210836

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-128414

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Nogaro, Bertrand http://d-nb.info/gnd/117039713

Title:: Modern monetary systems

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: King

Year of publication:: 1927

Scope:: XII, 236 S.

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Part III. Monetary theory and its application in practice

Collection:: Economics Books

198 MODERN MONETARY SYSTEMS coinage at a variable rate but with simultaneous variations, so as to maintain a par rate as between different gold currencies, it is indeed to be supposed that buyers and sellers who will be less anxious to know the gold content of their national monetary unit than to estimate the quantity of goods represented at home or abroad by the sum of money of account in question, would be quite indifferent to changes in the amount of gold theoretically contained in the dollar or in any other currency. We have indeed seen that before the French Revolution when very different currencies circulated concurrently— as indeed at the present day in China and for the same reasons—the public was interested in the content of fine metal in the currency, the value of which was determined by weighing. Similarly, exchange brokers in the most advanced countries are still concerned with the weight of coin in international payments. Butitis tobe observed that in general the public is completely indifferent to the metal content of currencies. The public may have a general pre- ference for metal currencies, of which the future value is more secure; but the man in the street at the present day, who can very well conceive what different kinds and quanti- ties of commodities are represented by the monetary unit in ordinary use, is incapable of any direct understanding of the value of a given weight of metal; and if he prefers for export a heavy coin instead of a light coin, the reason is that heavy coins represent a larger number of monetary units in the legal currency of foreign countries than light coins. Setting aside then, on the present assumption, the question of international settlements, it may be admitted that the public, having to receive or pay a given number of units of account, would not be inclined to give or exact a larger or smaller number according as this unit repre- sented a larger or smaller quantity of gold. And variations in the content of gold in the dollar would doubtless have no effect on prices except through the quantity of dollars in circulation, and except in the unlikely event of the variations in quantity being such that the Quantity Theory would come into play.

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