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© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Cambridge Political Economy Society. All rights reserved.
Summary of an Address by Lord Keynes to the Political Economy Club, Trinity College, Cambridge on the 2nd February 1946
Address for correspondence: The Managing Editor, Cambridge Journal of Economics, Faculty of Economics, Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge, CB3 9DE; email: apn1000@econ.cam.ac.uk
Manuscript received May 9, 2005;
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Lord Keynes prefaced his remarks by saying how glad he was to be attending a meeting of the Political Economy Club once again. He must have run three or four hundred meetings of the Club, and was glad to see it flourishing. As he was among friends, this would be a strictly ‘off-the-record’ talk.
Before the late war, we had come to a parting of the ways and, broadly speaking, two alternatives faced us, multilateral trade or the growth and development of two or three major economic blocs. There were enormous objections to the former, as we all know. We have therefore concentrated our attention on the latter in recent years, and I was at one time much tempted. What are the advantages of the latter system? They can be seen very clearly in the wartime sterling area, with sterling virtually an inconvertible paper currency. We tend, however, now to