[Excepts of #22 Maynard Keynes: An Economist's Biography] International Affairs and The Arts

자료: [구글도서] D.E. Moggridge's Maynard Keynes: An Economist's Biography

Chapter 22_ International Affairs and The Arts

^The Means to Prosperity^ had brought together two stands of Keynes's developing ideas. Not only did it contain proposals for a programme of internal expansion in Britain to raise incomes and business profits to such a level that private investment would revive under the influence of cheap money, but it also contained proposals to make such programmes possible elsewhere and suggested that the achievement of such programmes should 'be the central theme of the World Economic Conference' due to meet in London on 12 June.[1] Keynes laid great stress on the importance of simultaneity in such programmes as a means of reducing the adverse implications of such programmes for the balances of payments of individual countries. He also emphasised the need for cheap and abundant credit as an underpinning for the schemes.

This is where his version of the Keynes-Henderson Plan came in.[2]

• (1) The plan, like Henderson's original proposal, envisaged an internatinal authority issuing gold-convertible notes up to a limit of $5,000 million, 
• (2) although unlike Henderson he favoured using a new institution rather than the Bank for International Settlements. 
• (3) He also followed Henderson in stipulating that countries receiving the notes would agree to a fixed parity with gold. 
• (4) There was, however, to be a margin for exchange rate fluctuation of up to 2.5 per cent on either side of parity. 

※ (1): 케인스가 The Means to Prosperity에서 제안한 국제 준비금 및 지불수단 성격의 ‘gold-note’는 ‘금과 동등하게(equivalent to gold)’ 취급되는 국제통화의 성격을 지닌다. 하지만 개인과 민간이 이 gold-note를 보유하지 못하며 따라서 금으로 바꿔갈 수 없도록 하고 재무부, 중앙은행, 국내은행권 발행자만이 준비금으로 보유하도록 하자고 제안했으므로 금태환권(gold-convertible note)라고 부르기는 곤란하지 않은가?

Moreover, Keynes continued,

The ^de facto^ parity should be alterable, if necessary, from time to time if circumstances require, just like bank-rateㅡthough by small degrees one would hope. An unchangeable gold parity would be unwise until we know much more about the future course of international prices, and the success of the board of the new international authority in influencing it; and it would, moreover, be desirable to maintain permanently some power of gradual adjustment between national and international conditions.[3]

To make the note issue have a wider impact, Keynes's scheme saw for each country a maximum quota equal to its gold reserves at the end of 1928 or $450 million, whichever was smaller, rather than Henderson's less precise formula. In both plans the volume of the note issue should be varied to prevent prices rising above a certain levelㅡin Henderson's that of 1928, in Keynes's 'some agreed norm between the present level and that of 1928'.

Keynes was pleased by the general reaction to ^The Means to Prosperity^. On domestic policy, he told Richard Kahn, then in the United States, on 10 March

It is hardly an exaggeration that there are no longer any serious obstacles to a reasonable policy, except Neville Camberlain, Hilton Young and, perhaps, the Governor. But, of course, they hold the key positions.[4]

Six days later, Neville Chamberlain, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, invited him to discuss his ^Times^ articles. Before Keynes did so at the Treasury on 17 March, he noted to Richard Kahn, 'Could it be that the Walls of Jericho are flickering?' He regarded the talk as 'Very satisfactory'. The Chanceloor 'seemed to be pretty virgin soil and to hear everything with an open mind and an apparently sympathetic spirit, but quite for the first time'.[5] The walls might be 'flickering', but, as Howson and Winch remark, 'not tumbling'. The Treasury was continuing to shit its ground on public works, but slowly.[6] As Keynes told Kahn on 7 April, 'But you mustn't suppose that all is beautiful in the garden. They will move a little in the right direction, but only a very little'. He was to call Chamberlain's Budget of 26 April 'A Budget that Marks Time' and to remark of the Chancellor:

Mr Chamberlain boasted that he had made no attempt to ^present^ things as other than they are. He might also have added that he has done nothing to ^make^ them other than they are.[7]

On the Keynes-Henderson Plan there was more movement, in that the Treasury had a more modest version of it for presentation at the World Economic Conference.[8]

Keynes's involvement in issues facing the Conference went beyond the Keynes-Henderson Plan. Another subject to be discussed at the Conference was trade policy. In the months before the Conference Keynes turned once again to the issue of free trade versus protection.[a] He gave two major talks, both of which he publishedㅡan introduction, 'Pros and Cons of Tariffs' (published on 25 November 1932), to a series of BBC programmes and the first Finlay Lecture at University College, Dublin (19 April 1933) on 'National Self-Sufficiency'.[9] In both he accepted the basic logic of the free-trade positionㅡthe gains from specialisation and exchange.

The free trader starts with an enormous presumption in his favour. Nine times out of ten he is speaking forth the words of wisdom and simple truthㅡof peace and good will alsoㅡagainst some little fellow who is trying by sophistry and sometimes by corruption to sneak an advantage for himself at the expense of his neigbours and his country. The free trader walks (... ....)

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