THE GOLD STANDARD

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21649, 20 May 1932, Page 7

THE GOLD STANDARD

BRITAIN’S RETURN CERTAIN"

REVIEW OP FINANCIAL PROBLEMS.

LONDON, May 18.

The Westminster Bank’s Review, discussing the world’s financial problems, says: “ Our return to the gold standard sooner or later is morally certain, but only on conditions which will ensure that the standard should not again be called upon to function under impracticable conditions'; The world as a whole has sunk deeper into the trough of depression while Britain has been preoccupied in the task of saving her so alive. It would be dangerous to ignore the contingency that, if the world outside these islands continues indefinitely to relax its grip on the standards of life, it may be impossible to maintain the position that we have gained with so much effort and self-sacrifice in the past few months.” POSITION IN UNITED STATES PROMINENT FINANCIER’S STATEMENT.

WASHINGTON, May 18. (Received May 19, at 5.5 p.m.) Mr Meyer, Governor of the Federal Reserve Board, testifying before the Senate Banking and Currency Committee against - the advisability of the Goldsborough Bill, confidently predicted that the United States would not go off the gold standard. There is not the slightest doubt in the mind of any responsible official of the ability or the intent of the United States to stay on the gold standard,” he said, “No nation has gone off except through necessity. There is none that does not want a return to a metallic basis. Mr Neville Chamberlain recently said that his country must return to a metallic basis.”

' Mr Meyer said that the Goldsborough Plan would do harm. The United States could not alone control the world price level, especially in the face of conditions “more serious than we have ever previously known.”

A previous message, dated May 3, stated: Dollar exchanges on the European markets to-day suffered the sharpest break since before Easter. The decline is attributed to the passing in the House of Representatives at Washington yesterday of the Goldsborough Bill, which instructs the Federal Reserve to restore and maintain the prices at about the 1926 level by controlling credit and the currency volume. Although the opponents of the Bill expect the Senate to defeat or greatly modify it, fears of inflation are expressed in many quarters.