SINISTER FINANCE

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 133, 3 December 1930, Page 10

SINISTER FINANCE

Dark shadows are being cast over Australia in the expressed intentions of some in power to repudiate the financial obligations of the Commonwealth (no matter what else it may be termed), and to make money by printing it. The latest official advice from Melbourne is to the effect that the Board of Directors of the Commonwealth Bank "has agreed to consider the various proposals," i.e., for inflation of the currency. It is yet to be learned that the board and its chairman, Sir Robert Gibson, were unanimous in even seriously listening to such proposals, much less in giving them weighty consideration. Reference indeed is made in the report to the board's hostility to inflation. This is understandable, for most of its members, and certainly its chairman, will be familiar with inflation's disastrous results, not only in the past, but in our own time. Injury was done to Australia's good name in London when there j

was irresponsible talk of repudiation. Inflation will intensify that mischief, for it is in some sort akin to the device of the Unjust Steward whose wit, not his dishonesty, was commended by his master. But the likeness ends there, for the Master was obviously well-to-do, or he could not have taken so calmly the reduction of. what was due to him. With Australia it is different. Inflation is no parable, but a sinister fact, inevitably depreciating the purchasing power of wages and increasing the cost of living; it also means the disappearance of the savings of the thrifty and self-denying, and the dissipation of the reserves of corporations and societies invested in local securities. If it is imposed on Australia, the consequence for the people of the Commonwealth will begrave indeed.'