Keynes on Domestic and International Monetary Reform

Abstract

First paragraph: Within a capitalist economy, the institution of money both enables and constrains. It enables by providing a safe asset as the basis for contracts and as a refuge from uncertainty. But by the same token it constrains by providing an alternative to effective demand, creating unemployment, and by forming the basis for a financial system which can promote inequality of income and wealth. It was to address these concerns that Keynes put forward ideas for monetary reform, to create structures which would discourage the propensity to hoard money, 'a first approximation to the concept of liquidity preference' (Keynes [1936] 1973, p. 174) and to reduce the impact of such a propensity.