ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the aspect of Henry Whitcomb Sweeney explanation and illustration of stabilised accounting are subjected to a closer scrutiny than they appear to have been in the past, with the view to disposing of some misleading descriptions of his proposals. Homogeneous measurement is just as primary a matter and ordinary accounting could be equally as irrelevant and incomplete under deflationary, as under inflationary conditions. Sweeneys hypothesis that the main object of economic activity was to gain greater command over goods and services in general predicated his argument that income could not be calculated unless a charge was made for the maintenance of real capital based on movements in a general index. Unawareness of Sweeneys preference for stabilisation based on replacement or reproductive costs is supported also by circumstantial evidence. In particular the mathematical impropriety of the reproductive cost version has gone completely unnoticed, even by those who indicated their understanding of it.
