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.This is not the place to examine the problem of escape from the immediate financial crisis.The same assumption must be made as was made earlier in this essay that the inertia and momentum of theeconomic structure and of habit and custom will carry us somehow through for the moment and that we shall begiven a respite.Stable MoneyOne basic need of the new economic organization is the stabilization of the purchasing power of money.Stable money and conscious forward planning are mutually dependent.The elimination of violent fluctuations of the general price level will immensely facilitate improvedorganization of production and distribution.No question arises of fixing the prices of individual commodities.Once equilibrium between costs of production and prices to the consumer has been re-established, our firstefforts must be directed to securing stability of the purchasing power of our money.This question is dealt with at length in a separate essay and the conclusion must perforce be taken for grantedhere.Stable money cannot be secured without considerable extension of control on behalf of the community overthe flow of investment and the uses which the individual makes of his capital.While as consumer he can retain full freedom of choice as to which of his competing wants he will satisfy,there are real difficulties in leaving him entirely free to invest his savings in any way he chooses.It'is probable that many of these difficulties can be solved on the one hand by extension of the system ofinsurance, on lines to which recent developments of the motoring law again supply suggestive analogies, and onthe other hand by means which, while leaving the small capitalist untrammelled, will so canalise the flow ofboth long term and short term investment of the large sums which are at the disposal of banks and financialinstitutions, as well as funds in the hands of large insurance companies, as to ensure that adequate capital isavailable for the big industrial, agricultural and distributive corporations already envisaged.It is necessary toinsist that Finance shall take its proper place as the servant and not the master of industry and commerce.Thestabilization of the purchasing power of money will by itself go far to secure this subordination.The Banks and PlanningThe Bank of England has in the course of its history lost practically all of its original profit-makingcharacteristics and become in fact if not in form a leading example of a Public Utility Corporation devoted torendering public service.It has also many of the features of a self-governing institution, its relations to theGovernment delicately adjusted so as to combine both due subordination and administrative independence, soas to offer a significant parallel to the new institutions suggested earlier in the spheres of industry anddistribution.It would appear to be sufficiently flexible to enable it to adapt itself to filling its place in the neworder without requiring any radical changes in its constitution. The logical completion of the process of amalgamation which has reduced the number of the major JointStock Banks to five would clearly be to merge them all in one and to give them some monopolistic privileges inreturn for converting themselves into a real Public Utility Corporation.This is a delicate process and it may be unwise to force the pace, seeing that natural developments are tendingto bring about much the same results without outside intervention.Careful study is needed of the relations between planned industry and the Stock Exchange, the AcceptanceHouses, the Issuing Houses, and other parts of our financial machinery.It may well be that, with industry,agriculture, transport, etc., organized in the lines suggested, and with the adoption of the steps necessary tostabilise the purchasing power of money, the problems which are, in prospect, somewhat terrifying of bringingabout a suitable re-organization of our financial institutions will be found largely to have solved themselves.For Finance as the servant of industry can have no motive to do otherwise than adjust itself to the new needs.LabourLittle has been said hitherto on the subject of organized labour.Clearly Labour must have effective representation and play an adequate part in the new Statutory Councils andPublic Utility Corporations and in all the activities of the re-planned nation
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