Economic warning

Press, 25 February 1980, Page 6

Economic warning

PA ' • • ' Auckland The almost complete takeover of .finance companies by banks is paving - the way for the destruction of Competitive private enterprise and control of New Zealand by an alliance of monopoly credit and capital, according to Social': jCredit’k, economic spokesman 1 , Mr'Ll' W, Hun-

er. ; ; C‘ 1 : 'Y ■' “An aristocracy! ot corporations faking control of the New . Zealand economy■ j&T Can. alarming rate,” Mr- Hunter said at a meeting of the league in Auckland yesterday. Marac was now the only independent finance com-

pany, and v...s under threat from the C.B.A. bank or the Fletcher corporation, he said. All other finance companies were now controlled by the banks or corporations. The Challenge corporation was emerging as one of the most powerful, with its control over its own finance companies and Broadlands, Mr,.Hunter said. General Finance was about to be controlled by the NationaFßank,' U.D.C. by the A.N.Z: Bank, and A.G.C. was completely controlled by the Bank of New South Wales.

“The . corporate State of Nazi Germany was built on a monopoly of credit and

capital controlled by a handful of corporations and banks, and New Zealand is rapidly heading the same way,” Mr Hunter said. Trading banks were now charging 16 per cent for overdrafts, while finance companies were paying 15 per cent and more for savings to lend at more than 20 per cent true interest.

private enterprise cannot pay the present high interest rates and survive,” he said. “Recent financial developments will guarantee the maintenance of inflation, stagnant production, and the growth of unemployment and other social problems.”

Mr Hunter said that Social Credit would break the credit monopoly bi 7 denying trading banks the right to create money. They could continue as service organisations, “not manipulators of concentrated economic power.” Finance companies would be replaced by credit institutions controlled by and servicing the people whose money they used, he said. '