DOUGLAS SOCIAL CREDIT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22295, 22 June 1934, Page 2

DOUGLAS SOCIAL CREDIT

DUNEDIN BRANCH. There was a large attendance at the weekly meeting of the Douglas Social Credit Movement on Tuesday evening. A proposal from the Wellington branch for direct economic action to bring about Social. Credit in New Zealand, involving the formation within the community of New Zealand of a Social Credit group composed of voluntary members producing and trading among themselves on Social Credit lines and treating their relations with the rest of the population on the basis of exports and imports, was described by the.' lecturer, Miss M. H. M. King, M.A., as sound theoretically although the practical difficulties might prove great. Its feasibility would depend on how far the members of the group by the possession of land, tools and skill could establish a foundation of "real credit "—i.e., could actually produce and deliver goods and (Services, and then on what arrangements they could make for their " exchange" with the outside world. The scheme offered a very interesting, and if proved practicable in any degree a very valuable, stepping stone to the achievement of saner conditions in the community at large. Miss King commented on the recently published balance sheet of the Bank of New Zealand, especially with regard to the matter of amount of loans and investments and of the " concealed reserves" in connection with the published bank valuation of landed property and premises in its possession. She said it was useless to-day for even a bank chairman to expect people to look upon any financial institution as comparable with a natural force, the effects of which can neither be altered nor evaded, nor to believe that the war made the World poorer in anything except in lives. What it did become'poorer in during the postwar period was only in money, the special commodity manufactured by banks, which, for their own purposes, the central banks proceeded to withdraw into cancellation shortly after the war ended. The Rev P. Paris occupied the chair, and the voto of thanks was moved by Mr Macdonald, of Portobello, who commented on the contrast between the advice offered two or. three years ago to the dairy farmers by the chairman of the Bank of New Zealand and that offered to-day.