From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2008-12-27:
Keynes's prescriptions were guided by his conception of money, which plays a disturbing role in his economics. Most economists have seen money simply as a means of payment, an improvement on barter. Keynes emphasized its role as a "store of value." Why, he asked, should anyone outside a lunatic asylum wish to "hold" money? The answer he gave was that "holding" money was a way of postponing transactions. The "desire to hold money as a store of wealth is a barometer of the degree of our distrust of our own calculations and conventions concerning the future. . . . The possession of actual money lulls our disquietude; and the premium we require to make us part with money is a measure of the degree of our disquietude." -- Robert Skidelsky, quoting John Maynard Keynes in "The Remedist", New York Times, Dec 12, 2008.http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/magazi
ne/14wwln-lede-t.html]
(submitted to the mailing list by Chris Doherty)