THE INFLATION DRAGON

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 77, 28 September 1942, Page 4

THE INFLATION DRAGON

(To the Editor.) > v- Sir'irJ would like to quote a passage from "AJNew Deal" by the American economist Stuart Chase, to be read in comparison with your article on inflation in Tuesday's "Post." It reads: The hysterical objection to inflation is made by bankers, bondholders, and solid citizens generally. One peculiar aspect is that so many active business men join it. They have not yet learned to be class conscious; they are too confused to know where their interest lies. Reasonable inflation is good for them as it is bad for their creditors. Yet with a strange dumb loyalty they line up with their creditors." There appear to be two sides to the story then. You join the hysterical group surely, when you carry on the childish foolishness of trying to frighten grown-ups with stories of dragons. While not believing in the process of inflation I think that it is surely time that the matter could be discussed objectively and not be presented on the childish plane of dragons and hobgoblins. With regard to , President Roosevelt's attitude to inflation would one be wrong in remembering that one of the greatest cirticisms made against his New Deal programme was that it was inflationary, or are we to forget these- things and only remember voodoos of childhood.—l am, etc.,. HOOEY. fHooey" omits to state that Stuart Chase's "A New Deal" was published in 1932 and is not therefore a comment on the special conditions ai'ising from the war-expanded industrial programme. The reference to President Roosevelt's.New Deal is apposite, but not in the way "Hooey" intends. If President Roosevelt showed himself, by his New Deal ■programmerundeterred by an inflation bogy, there is all the more reason for concluding that the danger he is now strongly fighting is ;no mere bogy but very real. If "Hooey" really wishes to. discuss the subject objectively, he should not begin by confusing the metaphorical reference to dragons with a literal fairy tale. That is surely putting the argument on "a childish plane"—or "hooey." —Ed.] ■ ; ■• ■■-■ ■•■■■:■:■•. ,:•.■-