It is surely idle, and probably dangerous, to attempt to control anything as vast and powerful as the national supply of money without knowing a good deal about its character, about the things which make it vary in quantity and composition.
Individuals differ in abilities. Some are bequest constrained even in a neo-Ricardian world. They vote taxes to issue bonds to be paid by taxes on future generations, thereby increasing current consumption, crowding-out capital, reducing wage rates, and increasing the interest rate. Therefore even unconstrained individuals are not indifferent to the size of government debt. Conditions conducive to larger debt and deficits are derived when each of the living generations determines current taxes, Social Security benefits and the national debt by majority rule.
IRVING AUERBACH'S PAPER REVIEWS the history of check collection procedures and recalls the important contribution that the Federal Reserve has made by improving the clearing process and by spreading par collection. It is easy to underestimate the powerful influence of improvements in the check-clearing methods on the spread of deposit banking, or the influence of the Federal Reserve System in reducing the time required for collection and their contributions to the advance of collection technology We are inclined to interpret his opening section in this way, rather than as a suggestion that the former slow and circuitous collection system would return if the Federal Reserve were to follow our recommendation and abolish float. The costs and returns arising from the various collection methods were not discussed in our report, and our recommendation was not intended to suggest that the Federal Reserve eliminate its check-collection service.
FOR ALMOST TWO DECADES a virtually impenetrable curtain has separated two groups of monetary economists. One group has engaged in a learned and apparently interminable discussion concerned with the subtleties of Pigou effects, Lerner effects, and Keynesian effects, the existence or absence of money illusions, dichotomization of real and money prices, Hicksian weeks, and related esoterica. The other is ostensibly concerned with the "world's work", a range of interests that encompasses the details of monetary policy operations. Included among the subjects of discussion in recent years have been the nature of open market operations, their restriction to Treasury bills, the nature and timing of other Federal Reserve actions, the comparative advantages of ad hoc institutional devices, the possibilities of "twistÃng"* the yield curve, and similar issues.