HIGH CURRENCIES

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18547, 6 November 1934, Page 7

HIGH CURRENCIES

TRADE AFFECTED LORD ROTHERMERE’S VIEWS CAPETOWN, October 13. Lord Rothermere, who has been spending a brief holiday in South Africa, left for England to-day. He said he had been struck by the number of people d Had met who appeared to shake hands with themselves Because South Africa . currency was linked with sterling. “Personally,” he said, I would O o further and have your currency placed on the same basis as Australia s currency. Why not? Currencies, until Britain was forced off the gold standard, were, really on on artificial basis com pared with the present-day wealth of the World. There is not enough money in the world to sustain these high currencies, which now, rather from emergency than wisdom, are on a basis wine makes business practicable.” What was going oh m France, Be - ,rium Holland, Switzerland, and Italy, said Lord Rothermere, was almost complete paralysis. Tho trade of those countries had been suffocated bv their very high currencies. They could nob compote with countries on low currencies. He did not, share General Smut s optimism that no country wanted war. “I, think there are one or two countries in 1 Europe— England is not one of them—which wpuld not bo averse to another war.” “ , v

MONETARY CO-OPERATION

NEW YORK, October 19. Tho Washington correspondent of the New York Times says: International monetary co-operation, “as a means of eliminating one of the principal motives for the imposition of trade barriers ’ is suggested in a memorandum submitted by the United States to the International Institute of Agriculture for discussion at th« Romo assembly on October 22. It also proposed the study of the possibilities of moderating import restrictions and export production subsidies through the medium of international commodity agreements, similar to thoso undertaken in regard to wheat, sugar, rubber, and tea. The memorandum added, “Consideration should bo given to problems which would be involved in any attempt to plan agricultural production in individual countries, through international cooperation to avoid maladjustments of over-procluction and a rapid fall m prices, which have greatly strengthened the tendency to raise trade barriers.