A SURFEIT OF GOLD.

Auckland Star, Volume LIII, Issue 62, 15 March 1922, Page 4

A SURFEIT OF GOLD.

The remarks of the British Ambassa- ' dor in Washington on the connection ■between. American gold holdings and : American trade, redirect attention to j ■ the extraordinary fiscal conditions in the United States. America is suffering from a surfeit of gold, which has been poured into the United States in exchange for goods and in payment for loans. "With a diminishing foreign trade," a British bajiking journaj I observed last year, "America is accept- j ing payment for her surplus exports largely in gold, and, while deploring the falling-off in trade through Europe's inability to purchase, is apparently | about to impose a protective tariff . against the import of foreign commodities, thus restricting the only method ' by which Europe can secure the exports America desires to sell." The United States has not waftted all this gold, but the country has had to accept it as the only method by which much of the world's debt to her can be liquidated, j "American finance and trade," said a writer more recently, "are succumbing 'beneath the weight of the world's stocks of gold." The alternative is to rweive payment in goods, but the Government, partly because powerful inter-e-.s wish i', and partly because it is afraid of increasing the large volume of unemployment, has raised the already high barriers against imports. One result of this policy has been to check the American export trade, and this lias , helped to cause or swell this unemployment. Now the United States has demanded £48,000,000 of reparation from Oermany. "How will you have it?" Oermany and the Allies may well ask. If Germany offers gold, the U-iited States is already over-supplied with gold; if goods are offered, the United States does not want good?. I