ABSTRACT
The Chicago Plan is associated with thirteen individuals. Pen portraits are provided of: eight principal contributors (Garfield Cox, Aaron Director, Paul H. Douglas, Frank H. Knight, Lloyd W. Mints, Henry Schultz, Henry C. Simons, Jacob Viner); four minor players (Harry D. Gideonse, Harry A. Millis, Chester W. Wright, Theodore O. Yntema); and one ‘outlier’ Frederick Soddy (a Nobel Prize-winner in Chemistry). Without Knight’s review of Soddy’s Wealth, Virtual Wealth and Debt (1926), it is unlikely that any relevance to the Chicago Plan would have been noted. Soddy clearly overplayed his hand in attributing ‘war and all other evils to fractional reserve banking’. Apart from Knight’s review, there is no acknowledgment of Soddy’s prescience of Chicagoan precepts for monetary stability: for 100 percent reserve banking, for monetary policy targeted upon a constant price index and for flexible exchange rates.
