WHAT’S IN A NAME?

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21632, 30 April 1932, Page 14

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —What's in a name? A good deal, if we may judge by the saying that “ to give a dog a bad name ” is as good, or as bad, as to hang him. Witness also the way in which certain words can be invested with a sense of awfulness and disrepute that makes them sound like a trump of doom in the ears of people who have only the vaguest idea of their meaning It is found necessary, however, at times, to rescue them from the mire. At least so we may judge by the new; fortune being prepared for the term “ inflation.” According to Mr J. M. Keynes, in the Atlantic Monthly (so.says n cable message), the policy of inflation “may prevent an almost complete collapse of the financial structure of modern capitalism,” and further “ the best bankers see the need for inflation.” , . How about when Mr Lang sees the need •for it? Then, we presume, it is inflation with a difference, the all-important difference that it is an infringement of the credit monopoly. But if the best ’bankers” are being featured as seeing the need for inflation, are we presently to see the credit monopoly engineering a boom period of sorts, in the effort to. prevent oi postpone the final discrediting of its conduct of world affairs?—l am. etc., Dunedin, April 27. INQUIRER.