The Age of Uncertainty

John Kenneth Galbraith was nearing retirement when he spent three years preparing a television series on economics with the BBC. THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTY is the book prepared as a companion. Galbraith's book, MONEY: WHENCE IT CAME, WHERE IT WENT (1975) was also published while the television series was being prepared, and attempts to cover material that coincides with Chapter 6, The Rise and Fall of Money in THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTY. As America has become a financial empire second to none in the global economy, economics and politics seem to be joining to form a consensus similar to the situation in Paris in 1719. `It is to that year that we owe the useful French word "millionaire." ' (p. 172). People who are familiar with the kind of balance currently thought necessary for public television in the United States might be surprised at how negatively Galbraith is able to spin the lessons he finds at the end of previous prosperities, like "There was no way to go but down, and presently this became evident." (p. 172). Galbraith also displays a tremendous amount of pleasure in pointing out contributions made by the Scotch economists, Adam Smith, David Dale, and Robert Owen who, "In time, the work day for children was reduced to ten and a half hours, and children under twelve were never employed. It's an indication of how things were elsewhere that this was considered lenient. Because of his compassion Owen was always in trouble with his partners. They would have much preferred a tough, down to earth manager who would get a day's work out of the little bastards." (p. 30). John Law, son of an Edinburgh goldsmith, established the Banque Royale in Paris in 1716, taking "over the debts of the Regent and of the realm." (p. 170). For a few years, everyone expected the bank's notes to be paid by silver and gold from "all the land north from the Gulf of Mexico to Minnesota and east from the Rockies to the Alleghenies." (p. 172). The Mississippi Company had absolute title to the territory, sold stock, and "Government creditors who were paid off in the notes then rushed to buy stock in the Banque Royale or in the Mississippi Company. From the money so invested more could be lent to the government, yet more notes could go out and yet more stock could be sold. It was a complete closed-circle system for recycling worthless paper." (p. 172). At the companies headquarters, "Those who got inside asked Law to sell them stock. Women investors, the histories tell, offered themselves as an added inducement. This must have been an unprecedented experience for someone from Scotland." (p. 172). As a companion book, not everything it contains was shown on television, and Galbraith might be exceeding the good taste of his presumed television audience when he records in print, "But nothing could disguise the elementary fact that the Banque Royale could not pay, that the notes were now worthless. Law only narrowly escaped Paris with his life. Parisians go