Notes on the News

Hutt News, Volume 16, Issue 34, 17 February 1943, Page 2

Notes on the News

Sir William Beveridge, the orthodox British economist, who has been closely connected with banking groups for the pa3t thirty years, has a "plan" which is receiving widespread and favourable publicity in Britain. Quite a number of people had practical plans for abolishing poverty long before this war started, but the support of those in a position to remedy things was withheld. It is a sinister fact that associates of the bankers began devising plans to "save" the people only after a world war commenced. Credulity would have to be severely strained to believe that any such plans were for the benefit of the nation Abraham Lincoln when president of the United States of Anterica, did devise such methods and put them into practice. They were so successful and so beneficial to the people that international financiers took action, just as they are taking action today, to prevent the continuance of such methods. Lincoln said: "Government possessing the power tp create and issue currency and credit as money, and enjoying the power to withdraw both currency and credit' from circulation by taxation and otherwise, need not and should not borrow capital at interest as jthe means of financing Government work and private enterprise. Govern ment should create, issue and circulate, all the currency and credit to satisfy the spending power of the Government and the buying power of the consumers. The privilege of creating and issuing money is not only the supreme prerogative of Government, but it is th.e Government's greatest creative opportunity." This does not mean that our present efficient banks would not carry on their normal business. Mr. Reginald McKenna, Midland Bank chairman, commenting on the hidden reserves of banks, is quoted in the Melbourne "Sun" of December 14th, 1942, as saying that "they are much larger than is generally thought, the figures for the "Big Five" alone being £116 millions which almost equals their published reserves, capital and undistributed profits." He points out also thatj the bank credit continues to expand j rapidly, and that from the start of the war to date the private banks have taken up Treasury Bills to the extent of £1350 millions at an average rate of If per cent. This means that the people of Britain after the war will have to give £23 million of their production to the privatp bankers every year : — merely for writing figures in books. ; Sir Patrick Hannon, M.P., President. ©f the London Union of Manufacturers, makes the statement that "Britain's national debt of £20,000 millions makes industrial impoverish ment an absolute certainty/' and is advocating a New Order of full employment—and the postponement of social advancement. This member obviously fails to realise that if full employment does not automatically bring social advancement it would be better to have leisure It is men such as these—mesmerised by money symbols and with vision limited by closed minds from whom the idea of a decadent Britain arises. Woodrow Wilson once said "Liberty has never come from Government It has always come from the subjects. The history of liberty is the history of resistance."