Quotation of the Day…

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… is the closing paragraph, on page 17, of Edwin Cannan’s excellent November 13th, 1931, Sidney Ball Lecture – a lecture titled “Balance of Trade Delusions“:

But even so we manage to carry on, and whether on or off the gold standard we certainly shall not benefit by reviving the three-hundred-year-old and long-ago exploded superstition that the balance of trade must be watched over and kept right by Parliament – a superstition which can only be ranked with the once equally widespread belief that witchcraft must be smelt out and witches burnt at the stake.