efforts to deflate in a hurry might do as much harm as inflation; and that what was wanted was that the volume of currency and credit should be kept steady and that the gradual fall in prices, for which justice seemed to call, should be brought about by an increase in the volume of goods, which should very slowly restore the proportion between goods and money to something like that which had ruled before the war. To Professor Cassel, a Swedish economist who has won world-wide fame by his handling of after-war monetary problems, this method seemed to be a "particularly vain expectation." (World's Monetary Problems, page 63.) But he comes on our scene later.
In the meantime much more drastic measures seemed good to the powers that ruled us, and to an important body of lofty browed opinion among the economic theorists. It has already been recorded, at the end of the last chapter, that in November 1919 the Bank Rate was suddenly put up from 5 per cent. to 6 per cent., with a corresponding advance in the rate of discount at which purchases were invited of Treasury Bills, which were then put up for sale in weekly batches at a rate fixed by the Treasury. No special demands for credit from the Bank of England accounted for an increase in its price for accommodation; no shyness on
