In years gone by, when someone advocated monetary reform, he was immediately ridiculed and branded as a crackpot or "funny money" advocate. However, those days are gone. Most people today know that there is something wrong with our monetary system. When they see the value of money fluctuating - going up and down like a yo yo - they know there is something wrong. They may not know the nature of the problem, but they know that there is no stability in our money.

Most people look upon money as a medium of exchange. But, money is more than a medium of exchange. It is also a measure of values, a standard of deferred payment, as well as a store of values. Therefore, if money is to be a true measure of value, it must have stability.

You can imagine what would happen if the pound was 16 ounces one day and 12 or 14 ounces the next day; or if the foot had 12 inches one day and 10 inches the next day. The same applies to the gallon measure. If this was done, chaos would follow. The same applies to money. Saving, borrowing and repayment become a highly risky business when money is unstable. We see what confusion was caused by changing to metric, although at least this was one stable method to another and there was no fluctuation in either system. No, there is no doubt we must bring back stability into our monetary system.

But at last news is coming from an increasing number of economists who are advocating a sound and stable monetary system. The governments made a bad decision back in 1936 when two systems were offered to them. One was by John Maynard Keynes, the other by Irving Fisher. Keynes wrote a book called The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money in which he advocated that the government should borrow huge sums of money and then spend this money on a public works program. He called it priming of the economic pump to get the economy rolling again.

Irving Fisher, an economics professor at Yale University, also wrote a book about the same time called 100% Money. In this book he advocated that the government should issue our money rather than let the banks create the money and have the government borrow it and pay interest on it as Keynes proposed. This is so important, let me repeat it. Fisher advocated that the government should issue the money, thereby creating neither debt nor the burdensome interest which must be paid through taxation. Had we followed Fisher rather than Keynes, Canadians would be in clover today.

Irving Fisher was not the only one at the time advocating that the government issue our money supply. Government issuance of the money supply was also advocated by the Chicago Group of economists. This group was comprised of Professors Harvey Simons, Lloyd Mints, A.G. Hart, Frank Knight, Garfield Cox, Henry Schultz and Paul H. Douglas. There are so many economists, businessmen and even former bankers in the U.S.A. now supporting this view that space does not permit the publishing of all their names.

There is one more outstanding economist who has backed monetary reform. It is Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman. He wrote a book in 1960 called, A Program for Monetary Stability. On page 65 he stated that he was in favor of what Henry Simons and Lloyd Mints were advocating, that is, 100% reserve. In other words, he advocated that governments, rather than private banks, issue the money supply.

We also have some outstanding Canadians advocating the same. John Hotson, Professor of Economics, University of Waterloo, Professor Gordon Borham of the University of Ottawa, (Economic Thinking in a Canadian Context, page 589), and Professor Warren Blackman of Calgary University.