MORE CONTROL

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 147, 18 December 1943, Page 6

MORE CONTROL

Sir, —I was much interested in Mr. Lefeaux's speech at the Chamber of Commerce, as published in your paper. From Mr. Lefeaux's remarks it would seem that there will be a very real danger of inflation in this country if the Government spends millions of pounds in building homes with Reserve Bank finance instead of raising the necessary money from private investors. The answer to this danger seems to me to be bound up in measures of control and I suggest that there cannot be any-danger of inflation, no matter how much money is put into circulation, provided that the following measures are adopted in conjunction with big construction programmes: (1) Import control (as in force now); (2) price fixation of all consumer goods (partially in force now); (3) manufacturing for ourselves all surplus goods, which, because of a limited excess of exports over imports, we are unable to import in full; (4) rationing of all goods required for consumption by the people, in order to ensure that all shall share equally those goods which we are able to import or manufacture. If the aforementioned precautions are taken I cannot see how we can have inflation no matter how much we increase the note circulation by embarking on schemes for homebuilding costing many millions. Maybe my reasoning is wrong, and I should like to have somebody's opinion on the above, preferably the opinion of a man of Mr. Lefeaux's calibre.—l am, etc., MAN IN THE STREET.