Grey River Argus FRIDAY, April 29th, 1932. OUR OVERLORDS.

Grey River Argus, 29 April 1932, Page 4

Grey River Argus FRIDAY, April 29th, 1932. OUR OVERLORDS.

Justifiable though the protests from all quarters of the House were yesterday against the very tender treatment extended by the Government to the banks in thenproposals regarding interest reduction, it is probable no Member was surprised at the nature of the Ministerial excuses for such dis crimination. It is true that where wages have been in question there has been no such consideration—-

no discrimination, but a flat rate cut all round. The Minister oi Finance, who, admittedly, objected personally from the outset to the reduction of interest, met the proposal for a statutory reduction of banking as well as other interest with a confession which may be indeed a candid, but which is nevertheless a sad one. The banks, he said, are the Government’s last line of defence to-day. There is, of course, another way of putting it. The Government is not game to treat the banks as it treats the workers and a great many others. For the latter the cuts are mandatory, but for the bankers they are to be only voluntary ! Mr Forbes says that the Government must have “flexibility,” or, in other words, the power to discriminate in the taxation of the wealthy—or to let them decide for themselves! Manifestly it is presumed that some interest is going to be left uncut. Nobody, of course, will quarrel with the proposal to exempt from the stamp duty receivers of incomes

below £lOO, but nobody except the interested party can be said (to favour-exemptions where in--1 conies are very many times £lOO. annually. The Finance Minister did not offer a very ingenious answer when it was asked why interest cuts in the banks’ ease should not be statutory in view of the Ministerial promise that such cuts were as good as promised. lie said that after the National Expenditure Adjustment Bill was brought down, all manner of objections arose, implying those objections were the explanation. of the fact that the Government has since been repeatedly tinkering with certain of the cuts which were originally guaranteed. There were objections to spare against the wages and salary cuts, without any notice whatever being taken of them, whereas it seems that where interest is concerned every objector has been given a hearing. Independent Members no less than the Labour, ites in the Opposition were emphatic in the declaration that if the Government had to confess its subservience to the bankers in this important matter, the best thing to do would be to let the bankers run the country altogether. The Opposil ion Leader pointed out that if the banks are being regarded in the light of being a state within a state, the time has come to put an end to that sort of thing. The fact, of course, is that this Government, like a great many more, takes more notice of the bankers than il does of all the rest of Ihe population. Nothing, however, has happened heretofore in the country to make this so clear as it has just been made to appear.