Thinking in Terms of Money the Cause of Many Financial Fallacies

Abstract

I took a solitary walk last Sunday in Rock Creek Park, and as I walked I began to ponder on what I had to say in this paper. The sun was warm and after a while I sat down by the bubbling stream on a rustic bench, when suddenly I saw approaching me one of the famous bankers who have taken service at the Treasury during the war. The fact that he was on foot has made me wonder since whether it was a dream. Fortunately I refrained from hailing him, for just then there appeared from the opposite direction a figure which I knew somehow to be King Solomon. He was not gorgeously arrayed and was evidently war-saving, but there was no mistaking the regal presence and the intellectual brow. My friend the banker-for some queer reason my memory fails now to identify him with any particular one of the several eminent bankers at the Treasury, so that in a way he seems to be an embodiment of them all-recognized King Solomon at once and called joyfully to him: My dear King: This is indeed a pleasure, you're just the man I wanted to see. The perplexities of war finance and the problems which confront the United States Treasury are gigantic. We're asked to find $20,000,000,000 or more in a year, and we must borrow some $12,000,000,000 to $15,000,000,000 in the next eight or nine months. I simply don't know how the money is to be raised. You were dead right, King, when you said that money is the root of all evil.