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Pastimes : Book Nook -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (138)	3/30/2001 11:56:12 PM
From: JF Quinnelly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 443

A lot of Europe's gold was already in the US, it had been shipped here for safekeeping as WWI threatened. Smoot-Hawley wasn't as bad as the Fordney-McCumber act of 1922. But there was no Depression right on the heels of Fordney McCumber. And Smoot Hawley built on Fordney McCumber, so it was indeed a higher tariff. Rothbard attributes the inflation of American financial assets after 1924 to F-M, so in good Austrian theory he's crediting F-M for some of the blame for the Depression. I haven't read Keyne's Economic Consequences of the Peace yet. I will amend my statement to say that the hyperinflation was not inevitable for economic reasons, and was caused by political reasons. Of course it was inevitable for economic reasons. The Treaty terms were set without any regard to economic logic. The victors couldn't absorb enough goods from Germany to enable the Germans to pay the reparations. The only possible alternative, other than scrapping the ill-conceived treaty, was to wreck the German currency.