The Speeches of the Bank Chairmen (1924–1927)

Abstract

We have an admirable custom in this country by which once a year the overlords of the Big Five desist for a day from the thankless task of persuading their customers to accept loans and, putting on cap and gown, mount the lecturer’s rostrum to expound the theory of their practice—a sort of saturnalia, during which we are all ephemerally equal with words for weapons. These occasions are of great general interest. But they are more than this. They have a representative significance; they hold up, as it were, financial fashion plates. What have they found to say this year about monetary policy?

Published as ‘The Speeches of the Bank Chairmen’ in the Nation and Athenaeum, 23 February 1924, and signed ‘J.M.K.’. Reginald McKenna was Chancellor of the Exchequer when Keynes was employed at the Treasury in 1915–16, and became a personal friend.