Inflation and High Prices Author:Henry Rogers Seager Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: TREASURY METHODS OF FINANCING THE WAR IN RELATION TO INFLATION R. C. LEFFINGWELL Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Financing the War THE Treasury's ... more »war problem was to meet the financial requirements of the Governments of the United States and the Allies promptly and without stint, and to meet them so far as possible from the saved incomes of the people, avoiding avoidable inflation. These objectives must be pursued in such ways as would not interfere with, but on the contrary facilitate, the mobilization of the nation for war purposes and the production and transportation of munitions and supplies. It was necessary that the Treasury should reach its determinations without the possibility of knowing the duration of the war or, consequently, the magnitude of the ultimate financial effort which the country would be called upon to make. The Allies had about reached the end of their tether because of their dependence upon imports for an important part of their munitions and supplies. They had nearly reached the limit of their ability to finance these through private channels in America and the neutral world. The Central Empires, more self-contained in fact and aided by the blockades maintained by the Allies, appeared to be less subject to the risk of economic breakdown. The United States, the last great nation to enter the war, was also the last great reservoir of available wealth which could be tapped in the Allied cause. If America failed to meet the financial and economic demands upon her, the war was lost. For about a year after our declaration of war our loans to the Allies were our principal effective contribution to winning the war which they were fighting. During the first six months the loans we made to Russia and the knowledge of our willingness to make furthe...« less