INVESTMENT CONTROL

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXV, Issue 226, 23 August 1945, Page 5

INVESTMENT CONTROL

BRITISH LABOUR PLAN. LACK OF INCENTIVES. (Roc. 10.10 a.m.) RUGBY, Aug. 22. The speech by the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr Dalton) concerning Britain’s financial and economic policy attracts the main interest of London newspapers. The Times says that Mr Dalton’s intentions regarding the Bank of England were more in the nature of a precautionary measure, but it feels that on the subject of control of investment the Chancellor was less specific and less reassuring. The writer feels that Mr Dalton suggested that Labour opinion was still far too much concerned with the prevention of “wasteful” investment projects and far too little with the provision of incentives and opportunities for fruitful ventures. The News-Chronicle is pleased that the Government should be tackling the stupendous tasks before it with a sense of high responsibility. “The part the Treasury must play in getting industry on its feet, especially in reviving our export trades, is of supreme importance,” it says. “Prices must be kept on an even keel and national savings must be maintained. At the same time, capital must be made available as freely and quickly as possible.” The writer says that manufacturers anxious to play their part in postwar industry will not be able to formulate their plans until they know whether some sort of a national investment board is to he set up, what its machinery will be and by what principles it will be activated. “The Government’s intention is sound, but the machinery set up must work expeditiously and be guided by intelligible jirinciples,” the writer adds. The Daily Telegraph takes the view that Mr Dalton’s speech did not throw much light oil the Government’s intentions —“they evidently have either not yet made up their minds or find it inconvenient at present to say what they think,” it says. “On the maintenance of credit and cheap money and on keeping a middle path between inflation and deflation, Mr Dalton talked the same sound sense as we were wont to hear from his predecessor, Sir John Anderson.”

BANK NATIONALISATION,

The Daily Herald says there seems to be little agreement between Mr Churchill and Mr Lyttelton on the subject of the nationalisation of the Bank of England. “Last week,” isays, “Mr Churchill was suggesting that the nationalisation of the bank was a project of such negligible importance that it was not worth undertaking. To prove that the idea was certainly not revolutionary, lie cited the examples of other countries where the central bank was already under public ownership. Air Lyttelton, the Tory financial expert, based his attack on the umvisdom and perils of • the new measure. Tlie Chancellor of the Exchequer had little trouble in presenting the case that power must rest with the Government and not with a body of private stockholders. “He was 'also able to enlighten Air Churchill on the permanent nature of the plans which Labour proposed to introduce for the control of investment. New investment must continue to be guided in peace as in war by considerations of national interest. They could not he sure this would be so if there were -a return to the disorderly scramble for money which took place before the war and drove up rates of interest to a height very disadvantageous to those who had to borrow money.” . . .

Tlie Daily Express directs criticicisni at Mr Dalton’s pessimism about tax relief. “There ought to be and can be tax relief,” it says. “The war against Japan has come to an end months before anybody could reasonably have expected. The Alareli Budget gave hopes of relief, even though the Government was facing a whole year at least of war expenditure. Now the nation has the good fortune to be encompassed by peace before five months of the financial year have elapsed, yet we are warned not to expect too much—if anything.” The Daily Alail urges tlie voting of, a substantial sum for the development and exploitation of atomic energy in Britain, in full co-operation with the United States- and Canada, to ensure that it should be used for the benefit of humanity.