LOAN TO BRITAIN.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 61, Issue 47, 5 December 1940, Page 5

LOAN TO BRITAIN.

PROPOSAL IN UNITED STATES.

PROMINENT BANKER’S MOVE.

NEW YORK, December 3

The “New York Herald-Tribune” states that Mr Marriner Stoddard Eccles, a prominent financier and banker, proposed, at a meeting of bankers,, industrialists, and economists, a loan to .Britain of 2,500,000',000 dollars against the security of « lien on the Empire’s gold production for five years, thus sterilising the gold and preventing it from inflating bank reserves in the United States. Mr Eccles outlined bis scheme at a meeting in camera of the beard of the National Industrial Conference. He declared that it could be expected that the flow of the Empire’s gold to the United States, where it is bought up through the Treasury, thus swelling hank reserves, would he increasing the danger of inflation. The funds which he proposed as a loan could be raised by the sale of securities, for which the gold could be earmarked as backing, instead of passing to the reserve. Mr Eccles’' views have been widely circulated by members of the conference because of the controversy about granting Britain credits and: also because Mr Eccles has departed from tho easy money policy. Mr Eccles is chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and has been chairman at different periods* of tho First National Bank of Ogden, the First Savings Bank, the First Security Corporation, and of numejrous industrial companies. He was assistant to the Secretary of tlie Treasury in 1934, and has been chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System since 1936.