The Public Credit

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19455, 14 October 1937, Page 9

The Public Credit

Sir,—Because I have had no money to deposit and no assets on which to borrow I had not until recently come much in contact with bank managers, their tellers, and their clerks, and I had come to regard them as in some way responsible for certain monetary difficulties in which I found myself and to accept the opinion that these people were our chief public enemies. Imagine my surprise, when I made it my business to meet a few of our Gisborne bankers, on finding that they seemed to be almost up to the standard of the ordinary reputable citizen. Nor did I find when two or three of them were gathered together that they straight away entered upon a conspiracy to defraud. On inquiry I learnt that when they died they did not leave vast sums in ill-gotten gains and that the general manager of one of our banks in Sydney and the general manager for New Zealand of another of our banks were both at one time managers of branches at Gisfoorne and were spoken of by those who knew them as men of good character. I also learnt that the shareholders of the banks did not receive the stupendous sums in dividends which one woud expect to result from a successful conspiracy. I came to the conclusion that bankers were not knaves, that they were merely honest fools. So I took the matter up with

I one of them. “New Zealand," I said, "has been misruled for 100 years; this is largely through the bankers not making the public credit available to the public, its true owners; you do not give 100 per cent service.” He replied: “Would it have occurred to you that New Zealand had been misruled for 100 years if one of the Ministers had not said so?” Certainly he had me there. “And,” he went on, “if a man owns a farm and has £IOOO which he deposits at my bank, are not both the money and the farm his property? Does the money become public credit? His money could easily be made half as valuable—its purchasing power could be reduced to half by inflation, but Would this be using the public credit or his money? And then,” he went on, “if we do not give 100 per cent service, whatever that means, Mr. Savage should remember that he and his Government are themselves on trial, and if he can show the people before next election that he has performed 25 per cent of his promises he will not be doing badly.” Perhaps, after all, Mr. Savage and myself would be wise to leave banking to bankers.—Yours, etc., TORY.