remember that a 10 per cent. Bank Rate was accompanied by a consumers' panic and a scramble both for money and for goods.
It should be noted that Mr. Keynes expresses himself much more cautiously than Mr. Hawtrey on this subject of price regulation through control of credit. In a letter published in the Times of August 7, 1923, he only claims to be "supported by expert opinion in the belief that . . . it lies in the power of the Bank of England and the Treasury, within wide limits to determine in the long run how much credit is created," and he argues that "the policy of the Cunliffe Committee assumes that the authorities have the power in the long run to fix the price level, just as much as the policy of price-stabilization assumes it."
And Mr. Carl Snyder, statistician to the Federal Reserve Board New York, shows doubt of the efficacy of mere movements in the discount rate by proposing, in a scheme published in the American Economic Review of June 1923, to reinforce them by automatic increases and decreases in the Central Bank's holdings of securities and acceptances. But surely if there is one thing that a Central Bank cannot do, it is to refuse to lend or discount at a price. If it is to become a merely automatic machine, with no elasticity or power of dis-
