No-one takes up hint by Sir Robert

Press, 1 March 1984, Page 3

No-one takes up hint by Sir Robert

NZPA staff correspondent New York The Prime Minister, Sir Robert Muldoon, yesterday addressed students and faculty members at Columbia University, New York, on his ideas for reform of the international trade and payments system, telling the discussion chairman that “they can even throw things at me if they want.” Nobody did, and one middle-aged academic must have approached the record for the world’s longest question — it seemed to go on for almost as long as Sir Robert’s speech, and was eventually cut off by the chairman. Sir Robert delivered a standard speech on his proposals for a “new Bretton Woods.” In answer to questions, he called for “rather more discipline” on the linkage between the exchange rates of the five main Powers, and said he would like to see International Monetary Fund Special Drawing

Rights established as a world currency. Of the world economic scene, he said, “I belive that by this time next year we will be very, very worried.” Sir Robert said he did not believe the Soviet Union or the Eastern bloc countries associated with it economically needed to be included in the discussions on reform of the world trade and payments system. He believed, he said, that the private banks in the West which had made loans to Third World countries now deeply in debt would eventually have to write off some of those debts. “Somewhere along the line the banks will have to take some losses to balance their ledger sheets,” he said. Sir Robert also called for the I.M.F. to work more closely with private banks on the issue, and said he believed the I.M.F. was trying too fast to turn round the balance-of-payments problems of the countries with enormous overseas debts.