CHAMBERS OF COMMERCE AND FINANCE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 40, 17 February 1943, Page 2

CHAMBERS OF COMMERCE AND FINANCE

Why are New Zealand business men, as represented through their Chambers of Commerce, much more conservative and orthodox in their view on finance and economics than those of Great Britain? Must we plumb the economic depths that the more highly industrialised countries have experienced before our commercial leaders are ready 'to abandon the doctrines of boom-and-slump economics and debt-finance? Those who look forward to the promised new order after victory certainly hope not. Compared with statements from the London . and Associated British Chambers of Commerce recently, the published views of the Canterbury Chamber of Commerce (or' is it Professor Tocker?) this week indicate a deplorable adherence to outworn ideas and standards. The theories advanced on the Reserve Bank and publicborrowing in particular defy all the experience gained in the successful liberal financing of this war. It is argued that the Government should borrow from the public or • from overseas, to repay such advances of national credit as the Reserve Bank has made, or will have made at the end of the war. This to "control the expected post-war boom," Surely we can look forward to a complete % revision of accumulated debts and a simplification of the whole system rather than thus making confusion worse confounded. The British Chambers of Commerce advocate that we should "treat money as a bookkeeping technique." This simply means an end to arguments about the gold standard, reserve formulae, and similar abstractions. It means making work without perpetual debt, and money a servant, issuing it to do removing the principal obstruction to internal and international economic harmony.. JOHN HOGAN. •