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To: Ilaine who wrote (216)	4/26/2001 10:28:01 AM
From: Thomas M.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 443

one of the causes of the Great Crash was shocks to the monetary system caused by international gold shipments - partly caused by competing policies between England, France, and Germany (with Austria). This isn't theory, it's fact. No, the two events may be facts, but the causal link is merely a theory. Tom

To: Ilaine who wrote (216)	4/26/2001 10:03:42 PM
From: JF Quinnelly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 443

The IMF had a function under Bretton Woods, when currencies had fixed exchange rates, but we've been on floating exchange rates since the Bretton Woods structure collapsed around 1973. So what's its point now? I've posted before that one of the causes of the Great Crash was shocks to the monetary system caused by international gold shipments - partly caused by competing policies between England, France, and Germany (with Austria). This isn't theory, it's fact. I don't understand the theories, but I can observe the facts without understanding the theories. What's fact is that there were international gold shipments in the 1920s. It's conjecture that these shipments had anything at all to do with causing the Great Depression. I've never seen anyone develop that argument. The only book I've seen deal with international gold movements of that era is Friedman and Schwartz in A Monetary History of the United States, which is to be expected considering their monetarist orientation. They tell you exactly how much gold was moving around. But they point out that the large gold inflows into the US were 'sterilized' by the Fed, and had little impact on the American banking system. Unsterilized, the incoming gold would have caused the American credit bubble of the late '20s to expand even more than it did.