ECONOMIC REVIEW

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 35, 9 August 1930, Page 12

ECONOMIC REVIEW

BANK OF NEW SOUTH WALES

The Bank of New South Wales will in future occasionally issue a review of the economic, position of the Commonwealth. The first number is received. It is full of promise that succeeding issues will be helpful to the business community in taking an aeroplane view of the trading and financial situation.

The review has been issued in answer to "the numerous inquiries as to the present position, the cause of it, its possible duration, and the remedies to bring about a turn: to prosperity." It is proposed to include statistical and other information and signed articles by "leading economists and others expressing their views on questions that may be of interest to the business world and the public generally." ° Australia's "economic position" is discussed, and it is shown that the Commonwealth is by no means singular in its trade depression. The severe,tariff obstacles to the free course of trade generally are mentioned. "Through need of revenue and love of local industries, tariff barriers are stopping the exchange of cheap goods and 'beggaring my neighbour' all round the globe," states the review. "Seeing, too, that people in every continent are offering masses of goods, and all at bedrock prices, the difficulty must lie in arranging terms and media of exchange— i.e., money.' The essence of trade is an exchange of surplus goods. There are goods in plenty, but men cannot buy from others till they sell their own. It is not lack of physical means of' transport. Never was there so much idle tonnage rusting in port; never such a variety of rail and road vehicles, nor so many wellmade roads. The goods are there. The prices asked for them are low." The literary style of the review is free and characteristically Australian, forceful and .full-of facts presented in a simple and attractive fashion, and facts hard for Governments to refute or justify.