monetary policy is a blunt, unreliable, discriminatory and somewhat dangerous instrument of economic control. It survives in esteem partly because so few understand it, including so few of those—builders, smaller businessmen who must finance inventories, farmers—on whom it places the prime burden of its restraint. It survives, also, because an active monetary policy means that, at times, interest rates will be high—a circumstance that is far from disagreeable for those with money to lend.
