IN the field of currency and banking the past six months have been a period of standing fast. Policies previously adopted have been on the whole maintained. Money rates have been firm on a high level in most countries, moderate or low in a few others. Recently a few increases have occurred. In central and eastern Europe inflation has continued rampant. In Belgium, Italy, and Spain there has been further currency expansion. Generally elsewhere, expansion has either slowed down, or contraction has begun to appear where, as in Japan and America, the business reaction has gone farthest. Restrictions on gold movements have not been modified, except to tighten them where, as in Spain and Argentina, the exchanges have moved strongly against a country and threatened to cause gold export. Gold movements have been of slight significance for currency purposes, chiefly swelling the reserves of the United States, Japan, and Argentina, which were already abundantly supplied. No obvious progress has been made toward solving the currency problems left by the war inconvertible paper, fluctuating price levels, dislocated exchanges. The critical related problems of increased production and normalized trade are equally unsolved. The turn of the year in most countries is a season of marked financial strain. This year it is complicated by the reaction in business which has now been in progress for several months almost throughout the world. Cuba and South American countries have experienced financial panics, such as Japan suffered last spring. Elsewhere the liquidation has been more orderly, though painful enough. Meanwhile, the serious damage to the world's economic machinery has not been made good: some parts have been replaced; Belgium has made good strides toward resuming normal activities; and France has accomplished some reconstruction; but in several lands the whole mechanism is rusting out or deteriorating further for lack of proper repairs and use. There have been good harvests; much quiet constructive work has been taking place; but, taking the world as a whole, it may be doubted whether the aggregate productive forces are more effective than they were a year ago. A turning point in a world cycle of prosperity and depression may have been reached last spring; a more fundamental turning point, from declining to increasing productivity, seems to lie ahead. Before I92I is far advanced new developments must be expected. World conditions are still fundamentally so abnormal that pre-war experience affords only moderate aid in forecasting these developments. Far more than before the war, they depend upon government policies, national and international action, and the judgment of men of finance upon measures which will best facilitate the essential readjustments. It is therefore pertinent to review an outstanding event of the autumn -the International Financial Conference which sat at Brussels from September 24 to October 8.1 Proposed last January in memorials submitted simultaneously to leading governments; approved by those governments with varying degrees of caution or enthusiasm; called by the Council of the League of Nations; successively postponed from May to July, and from July to September the Conference finally assembled, grappled seriously with the world's financial problems, and reached certain unanimous conclusions. Eighty-six delegates were present, representing 39 nations containing three-fourths of the world's population and including practically all the important countries except Russia, Turkey, Mexico, and Chile.2 The representatives were in the main leading bankers and treasury officials, who attended as experts and not as spokesmen of [existing] official policy. Invaluable preliminary spade work had been done by the Secretariat of the League of Nations, assisted by eminent economists, in providing statistical and other evidence, and economic analyses, bearing upon conditions and prospects. It was therefore a workable body, representative, able, informed. Despite considerable advance skepticism as to its potentialities, and a deal of sneering while it was in session, the Conference seems fully to have justified its existence, and to have made a genuine and considerable contribution toward solving theworld's economic riddle.