OH. 6 CURRENCY STANDARDS 79

fact that a change in it ceteris paribus alters in thesame proportion the quantity of money required bythe public.

In practice the most important differences betweenthe Currency Standards and the Consumption Standardare that the former weight goods much higher andservices much lower than does the latter, and thatthe former includes, whilst the latter excludes, theobjects of financial transactions ; with the result thatwhen the value of transactions in capital goods ismoving relatively to that of consumption goods, orwhen the price of commodities is moving relativelyto the price of services, the fluctuations of the twotypes of Standard may be materially different. This,as we shall find, is of particular importance for theshort-period economic theory of trade and creditfluctuations. It also means that the relation of thePurchasing Power of Money to its quantity can varywithout loss (or gain) of convenience even thoughthere is no change in banking habits and practices.But this is to anticipate the subject-matter of laterchapters.

In some contexts the fluctuations of the WholesaleStandard may be nearer to those of the CurrencyStandards than are those of the Consumption Standard;but' the fact that the Currency Standards are in-fluenced by capital transactions whilst the WholesaleStandard is not, makes it impossible to place anyreliance on such correspondence.

(ii.) Is THERE SUCH A THING AS AN “ OBJECTIVEMean Variation oe General Prices ” ?

There is, however, a kind of Currency Standarddifferent from the above, which has played an im-portant part in the history of the subject and hasexercised a very great influence on the prevailingconceptions of the nature of index-numbers of prices.