Another 'Barbarous Relic'

From the New York Sun
Thursday, August 27, 2015

That's the headline over a Financial Times editorial calling on authorities to consider phasing out the use of cash -- by everyone, not just governments. This is what it has come down to. The government has run down the value of the dollar to less than 2 percent of what it was worth when our parents were born. Now it is itching to ban the use of banknotes and gets an endorsement from, of all broadsheets, the "world business newspaper." The FT refers to the banknotes as "another 'barbarous relic,'" which, it says, is the "moniker Keynes gave to gold."

Actually, it was to the gold standard that Keynes gave that moniker. He did so in his 1924 "Tract on Monetary Reform," in which he wrote: "In truth, the gold standard is already a barbarous relic." Added he: "All of us, from the Governor of the Bank of England downwards, are now primarily interested in preserving the stability of business, prices, and employment, and are not likely, when the choice is forced on us, deliberately to sacrifice these to outworn dogma, which had its value once, of 3 pounds, 17 shillings, 10 1/2 pence per ounce." ...

... For the remainder of the commentary:

http://www.nysun.com/editorials/another-barbarous-relic/89266/ [1]