DOUGLAS CREDIT

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 17944, 23 November 1932, Page 11

DOUGLAS CREDIT

SCHEME CONDEMNED SIR HAL COLEBACH’S VIEWS SYDNEY, Nov. Hi. ISenator Sir Hal Colebatch, in an address on the Douglas credit system and currency, under the auspices of the Sane i Democracy League, said he noticed that the State Government had decided—wisely, he thought—to refer to a competent authority investigations into tho Douglas credit system. Before giving any serious consideration to the request that Major Douglas should bo invited to visit Australia, ho hoped that due regard would be paid to the three comprehensive and entirely impartial investigations which had already been held into the system. The committees entrusted with those inquiries included -a very wide, range -of economic opinion, with orthodox banking under-represented rather than.overrepresented. . Each, of, those •committees,, without a .single dissentient, had condemned the scheme as one founded on fallacy, and entirely impracticable. Whatever might be the merits of the Douglas credit scheme, it could only be operated, in bis opinion, under a Fascist or Communistic form of government. The system was inspired by a total misconception of the cause and the nature of the troubles that afflicted, the world to-day. Their troubles were due to the creation by the -authorities representing the people—by Governments or by banks under Government control- —of enormous sums of spurious and artificial currency during and after. the war. The building up of enormous paper credits 'constituted claims to wealth that did not exist;, and services that had not been rendered. There was a distinct ray of sunshine in the fact that, notwithstanding alt opposition, tliis spurious currency and.the artificial fortunes that had attended it, were being rapidly washed out.

Sir Hal Colebatch said they must get back to a condition of reality, in which, from start to finish, (there was a fair exchange, of value for value.