GAPS IN THE PATMAN COMMITTEE REPORT

• Author: John D. Clark
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6261.1953.tb01158.x
• Published date: 01 May 1953
• Date: 01 May 1953

GAPS IN THE PATMAN COMMITTEE REPORT

JOHN D. CLARK

Council of Economic Advisers

IT IS TOO BAD that the

Patman Committee hearings

were concluded

before the

publication

of

Herbert

Hoover's burning

volume, The

Great

Depression,

in

which

he unloads

responsibility

for the crack-

up upon

Federal Reserve

monetary policy, and

mourns his failure

to induce action by the President because Mr. Coolidge believed

that the Federal Reserve

Board had been set up by

Congress as an

agency independent

of

the Chief Executive. My own

timidity about

parading my

heresies

in

public hearings might have

been overcome

if I could

have

been

shielded

by the judgment of

the ex-President

that open-market operations

and changes

in interest rates had

"proved incapable

of either checking booms or checking depres-

sions."

The great

merit

of

the

Patman

investigation

is that it

strips the

status

of

a sacred

cow

away

from

monetary

theory

and makes it

subject

to continued

objective study

as actual

experience

unfolds.

One who

eagerly

welcomes

this

service

must

seem

captious

if he

also suggests

that the

committee

has not been

thorough enough,

and he

must seem reckless

if he

intimates

that there

are

important

gaps

in a record,

the

very sight

of

which should be enough

to

con-

vince

one

that no

aspect

of

the

subject

is missing

therefrom.

It is just

because

Henry Murphy engineered

such

a magnificent

job in building up the Patman

Committee record

that one finds

reason

to

regret

that some matters

were not dealt with more

fully

in

the committee report

itself. The record is so comprehensive

that

it

will

be the

historical

and theoretical

hunting-ground

for

years

to

come

of students

taking part

in the

controversy

which the com-

mittee

report

is bound

to keep

alive. The very

size of

the record

will,

however,

all too frequently dispose

students to center

their

attention

upon

the

report,

and to dig

into the

record

only

where

references

thereto

are

made in

the

report.

Of

greater import

is the

fact

that the

committee

report

will

be

the

only product

of the

inquiry

which

will be given

attention

by

individual

legislators

and citizens.

There is undeniable need for

authoritative

and

fully

informative

material

to

guide

them

in

reach-

ing sound judgment upon

a subject

which was thrown into the

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