U.S.A. RECOVERY PLAN

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18253, 23 November 1933, Page 3

U.S.A. RECOVERY PLAN

‘BRAIN TRUST’S’ METHODS CRITICSED BY SIR A COCKS SYDNEY, Nov. 9. In an address to members of the International Accountants ’ Corporation, Sir Arthur Cocks attacked President’s Boosevelt’s “brain trust” and its methods. “Our friends in the United States,” ho said, “are in the hands of academic economists. If the majority of the 'brain trust’ were accountants, the nation would have been saved a good many of the mistakes that havo brought it to its present confused and chaotic state. The order went out in the United States that retailors must soli in certain cases at a maximum profit of 7} or 10 per cent. But we know that often 15, 18, or 20 per cent is necessary if retailers are to pay expenses, and that in some cases expenses amount to 25 per cent of turnover. Yet in the United States, dictators —academic professors who have never had to battle for a penny—insist, that profits must amount; to 7} per cent of turnover.”

Similarly, in the control of the world's currency policy, inexperienced men were putting their fingers in the pie, lie added. Those who advocated the solution of fbo economic problem by inflation were shutting their eyes to past experience. The accountancy mind was the mind that Should be deciding ’those urgent problems. The old idea of a solid currency was the idea by which the world would make its way back to prosperity. There were no short cuts.