FINANCIAL POLICY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25386, 18 November 1943, Page 6

FINANCIAL POLICY

Sir,—lf the quotation given by Mr Sivertsen in your issue of Saturday means anything, it means that Governments can and do control, at times anyway, such things as the rate of exchange. Was not the rate of exchange pegged by the New Zealand Government in 1933? Has not,the present Government belatedly made all sorts of regulations about the buying of exchange, mistakenly referred to generally as “ sending money out of the country ”? What Mr Sivertsen means by " financial transactions requiring bank money ” one may be pardoned for wondering. All the money we have at present is “ bank money ” —i.e., money “ created by the banking system and put into circulation by being loaned out at interest.” That is just the trouble. If Mr Sivertsen maintains that this process of creation of bank credit is beyond the control of the Government (he says “ beyond the control of the Labour Party in New Zealand ”) he differs from Mr Nash, who says that it. is not—that, in fact, the Government has full powers to deal with it. What else was the Reserve Bank Amendment Act for? And the Government of the day is doubly traitor to the people in that, having taken those powers, it has not used them to assert the people’s ownership of their own credit, but has heaped upon them further debt and taxation. Only Social Credit provides the way out, and Social Credit is coming.—I am, etc., Truth, Dunedin, November 15.